Dashboard

Did you know that the July 2006 heatwave-related electrical outages in parts of New York City lasted over 10 days? First there was the outage, then there was outrage from the community. The main area affected was the Sunnyside/Woodside/Astoria section of Queens, a predominantly working class area with a large immigrant population. The outrage came mainly from the management of the issue. First, the city did not officially recognize the problem until four days into the situation. Con Edison, the electrical utility in New York City, also severely understated the number of people affected. They said that 2,500 people were affected when the number was actually 100,000. Needless to say, as the days without electrical service mounted, the situation turned into a political mess with charges that the city’s poorer residents were left to suffer - the implication being that if this had occurred in a tonier part of town, much more attention would have been alloted to the issue. In retrospect, everyone agrees that more resources should have been applied earlier.

The point of all this is to introduce this enterprise dashboard that serves as a utility service company’s operations dashboard. It is used to track asset outages. There are portlets that sync up with a mapping program. The overlays indicate outage areas. Close attention is paid to the weather as it is the main influence on when repairs can be started. I will do some research on how Con Edison tracks their outages. Do they have a similar dashboard? If so, there was absolutely no excuse as to what happened. Let me try to recruit some Dashboard Spies from Con Ed.

Homework: If you want some background on the utility industry, check these books on electric utilities.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s books on enterprise dashboards. His current favorite is Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing executive dashboards.

Thanks to a Dashboard Spy with an interest in marine terminal mechanization, we have this marine terminal operations dashboard to examine. The point of this enterprise dashboard is to allow the marine terminal management to monitor yard operations in real time and to alert them of conditions outside of normal boundaries. Marine terminal operations fall into three main areas of focus in terms of production management: crane operations from/to vessel and train/truck, yard production of container stacks, container parking and rail cars, and gate operations involving entry and departure into the terminal. I am reminded of the mess in our ports with lines of trucks awaiting access to terminals in the aftermath of 9/11 and the increased port security.

Here is the screenshot of the dashboard. You’ll find lots of marine terminal KPIs such as Container Gate Moves, Average Turn Time, Yard Inventory of Containers, Outbound Trucks Still on Terminal Over 1 Hour, etc. The main point, obviously, is that time equals money.

Homework: Check out these books on marine terminal operations

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books on business dashboards.

PS: If you find yourself part of an enterprise dashboard effort, you must study Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing enterprise dashboards.

Sales Management Dashboards

Dealership management dashboards is the topic of today’s post on The Dashboard Spy. Here we have a screenshot of PFW Systems Corp’s IntelliDealer Dashboard. Obviously, sales performance is the prime focus, but there is significant attention paid to less obvious but much needed metrics. For example, we start with a list of Recent Equipment Lost Sales. To me, this is the right approach to sales management. Let’s first answer the question of why we lost a sale so that we can get on the right track. Below the dashboard screenshot is a very helpful list of sales related KPI metrics. 

Updated: This post is being updated as we have been studying sales management dashboards and these particular screenshots have generated quite a bit of interest.

Tags: Sales Dashboards, Management Dashboard 

Homework: If you work with the sales department and want to speak intelligently about forecasting sales, take a look at Sales Forecasting Management: Understanding the Techniques, Systems and Management of the Sales Forecasting Process.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books on business dashboards.

PS: If you find yourself part of an enterprise dashboard effort, you must study Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing enterprise dashboards.

We’ve been looking at some heavy duty business dashboards so let’s have a little fun today and examine this Golf Swing Distance Optimization Dashboard. It’s available for you to try out so feel free to twiddle the interactive dials. I had to click on the “How to Use this Tool” link because the input controls are not intuitive. The upper left box with the 3 gauges is where you change the ball speed, launch angle and spin rate. These are depicted as dial gauges when in fact they should be knob controls. As you know, dial gauges are for reading values and knob controls are for changing inputs.

Homework: There are 2 areas of follow up for you enterprise dashboard project members. First, if you are not familiar with Xcelsius as a dashboarding product, start with the Crystal Xcelsius for Dummies book. It’s quite a good introduction to this visually exciting dashboard technology. I’m reading it myself. In a nut shell, Xcelsius lets you present Excel data in a flash-based presentation. It is geared toward business users and lets them create a polished interface. The power of the flash components is that you can interact with them. You can literally turn dials and read the effects of your what-if changes on the guages. The second area of study is the need to understand the issue of usablity as illustrated by this wrong usage in this example of gauges versus knobs. Usabilty is key when presenting to the end user through a dashboard. Study up on the discipline of usability. Start with these usability books.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books on business dashboards.

PS: If you find yourself part of an enterprise dashboard effort, you must study Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing enterprise dashboards.

Tags: CPK Process Capability Index. You Six Sigma blackbelts out there know all about the KPIs associated with manufacturing quality process improvement, but the rest of us need the pretty pictures to see what you mean. What better way to learn than off of a series of enterprise dashboards? Here are some screenshots of Manufacturing Dashboards that focus on part quality metrics such CPK (Process Capability Index). The dashboards are from a demo that you can try out from satit.com.

This first screenshot shows the monitoring of the CPK and CP index numbers:

Basically, here is a quick definition of CP and CPK:

Cp = Process Capability. A simple and straightforward indicator of process capability.
Cpk = Process Capability Index. Adjustment of Cp for the effect of non-centered distribution.

This from isixsigma.com:

“If you hunt or shoot targets with bow, darts, or gun, try this analogy. If your shots are falling in the same spot forming a good group this is a high cP, and when the sighting is adjusted so this tight group of shots is landing on the bullseye, you now have a high cpK.”

Here is an enterprise dashboard screenshot showing plantwide quality monitoring:

If you drill down on the red alert indicator shown for Line 3, you see this:

Drilling down gives you the equipment statistics summary:

Another section of the Dashboard allows you to monitor many plants at once with this multi-facility view:

The following KPIs are available for each plant. They fall into the areas of Production, Financial ROI, Supplier/Customer and Quality Metrics.

Drilling down into a particular part gives you this detail page screenshot:

Tags: Six Sigma Dashboard, CPK Dashboard, Process Capability Index

Homework: Sig Sigma and the pursuit of quality is an arcane science of mythic porportions. Start your study with this six sigma for dummies list.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books on business dashboards.

PS: If you find yourself part of an enterprise dashboard effort, you must study Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing enterprise dashboards.

Here are a couple of hospital management scorecard screenshots. This hospital is tracking metrics such as payroll, GL, statistics, costing, and patient information. The first dashboard screen shows the following metrics:

 Productive FTEs per Adjusted Patient Day
 Expense variances 
 % Overtime 
 Payor mix
 Days in AR
 Patient census
 Patient revenue, collections
 Product line profitability / performance

This next executive dashboard screenshot shows a graph that illustrates patient profitability. Do hospitals use this to target more profitable types of stays?

Homework: Need background? Check these books on hospital management. If you are on an enterprise dashboard project, do yourself a favor and take a look at Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing enterprise dashboards.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books on business dashboards.

Sorry for the delay in posting today’s enterprise dashboard screenshot. The heat in New York caused a loss of electricity for my building. I’m posting off of a boosted wireless signal. To celebrate, I dug out this facilities management dashboard. It is used by a professional engineer to track energy sources and loads. Gotta run. It’s 100 degrees out here.

PS. Oops! I just realized that I revealed that my location is in NYC. Oh well, I’ll leave it out there as a clue to the identity of The Dashboard Spy.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books on business dashboards.

PS: If you find yourself part of an enterprise dashboard effort, you must study Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing enterprise dashboards.

Frequent contributor to The Dashboard Spy, Robert Allison, strikes again with his submission of an SAS/GRAPH enterprise dashboard that illustrates an example from the much-studied book from Stephen Few, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. As Robert explains:

Hopefully I’m not “hogging/overfilling” you with SAS dashboard samples? If I am, just let me know, and I’ll slow down!
Here’s yet another sample using SAS/Graph to implement a dashboard from Stephen Few’s new dashboard book.  My first two were the Wine Sales Dashboard (p. 177) and the TeleSales Dashboard (p. 199).

This one is the “Web Marketing Analysis” dashboard (p. 201).  I would think any company in the business of marketing products on the web would be well-positioned to take full advantage of a good dashboard (both in terms of data collection, and also having the technical skills to get the data into a dashboard).

Although this dashboard is not fancy/flashy, it does appear to contain some very well though-out metrics. This enterprise dashboard presented in a straightforward manner that is easy to understand.

The dashboard contains bullet graphs, sparklines, and bar charts with target-markers.  You can see the interactive web version of this sample (along with the SAS code used to create it) on the following website - note that the bars have mouse-over html charttips (so you can see the exact data values), and the ‘www.’ names in the bottom/left chart have drilldown links to those websites (similarly, the product names, etc, could have drilldown links to that product in an online catalog).

http://robslink.com/SAS/democd22/aaaindex.htm

Can you believe that Robert offerred to slow down? No way! Keep them coming, doc! It’s contributions like these that help build this dashboarding community into the most unique enterprise dashboard forum on the web. Thank you, Robert, and all the other Dashboard Spies out there for sharing your business dashboard passion.

Here is the web analysis dashboard screenshot:

Homework: Want to follow along with Robert’s examples? You’ll need the Stephen Few book, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. And if you are new to SAS/GRAPH, of just not sure of what it is, check out these books on SAS/GRAPH.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s books on enterprise dashboards. His current favorite is Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing executive dashboards.