Monthly Archives: October 2006

Drug Supply Dashboard – Using Executive Dashboards in AIDS Treatment & Research in Rwanda

Posted on by
Reply

Business Intelligence Dashboard Topic: Supply Chain Dashboard Example. Use of Supply Chain Dashboards for complex logistics systems.

The Republic of Rwanda is a small east-central African nation with around 8 million people. Unfortunately, it is best known for its problems such as the genocide of a million Tutsis by militant Hutu groups.  Today, AIDS is a major problem. It is being addressed via a rapidly expanding anti retroviral care and treatment program. 10,000 Rwandan adults are receiving treatment, and the government plans to expand coverage to as many as 101,000 adults and children by 2007. 

The program is supported by the Ministry of Health and the Treatment Research and AIDS Centre (TRAC) through an IT project named TRACnet.  It is an enterprise dashboard type of solution that collects, stores, and displays program, drug and patient information related to HIV/AIDS care and treatment. The web-based system is accessed in a variety of health care settings. It was deployed nationwide and connects every facility dispensing care (94 of them). The support network is considerable, with telephone operators speaking both French and English. The system allowed the shift from paper-based reporting to dashboard-style access and is credited with incredible increased efficiencies.

This enterprise dashboard system includes data and metrics such as  Program Indicators, Drug inventory information from point of care, Patient registry, Lab results, Group and individual communications, geographic display, charting and role-based Management Dashboards.  The dashboard screenshot shows, among other key indicators, the weekly drug supply status, new patient statistics and a map of facilities offering treatment.

Drug Supply Dashboard

Tags: Health Care KPI Dashboard, Executive Dashboard, Digital Dashboards

Homework: Public health management is a noble and challenging pursuit. For background start by flipping through the previews of these books on public health management.

Note: Hey, Dashboard Spies!: Do you know how smart you are getting by reading The Dashboard Spy? From AIDS treatment, pig production to airplane crew size optimization to monitoring presidential campaigns, we’ve studied enterprise dashboards from all aspects of business. I’ll keep spying for those elusive dashboard screenshots that keep this growing dashboard screenshot collection interesting.

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.

Hospital Performance Scorecard – using enterprise dashboards to track health care KPIs

Posted on by
Reply

Hospital Dashboard: A fair number of Dashboard Spy readers are interested in enterprise dashboard techniques for tracking hospital and other health care facility metrics. I’m always glad to accomodate business dashboard and scorecard requests and have a couple of hospital performance scorecards to show you today. These digital dashboards are from the Hospital Report Research Collaborative based at the University of Toronto. These scorecards serve to rank the hospital’s departments both internally and against peer facilities. The use technology from govmetrics3d.com.

This first enterprise dashboard screenshot shows the hospital’s organizations and their clinical performance KPI figures:

Hospital Unit Performance Snapshot Dashboard

This second screenshot shows the performance scorecard. The Scorecard tab on the left is active. Other available tabs are Strategy Map, Initiatives/Actions and Commentary.

Hospital Performance Scorecard Screenshot

This last screen shows a split view of performance metric and report.

Hospital Performance KPI Metrics

Tags: Public Health Dashboards, Executive Dashboard, Digital Dashboards , Hospital Performance Dashboards, Enterprise Dashboard

Homework: Do you understand the fundamentals of measuring hospital performance? Take a quick look at these books on hospital performance. When dealing with healthcare financial management, how do we juggle compassion and respect for our fellow humans with the realities of corporate management? Learn more about this rigorous field with these healthcare financial management books.
So who is the Dashboard Spy? No one really knows, but his growing collection of enterprise dashboard screenshots has captured the imagination of the executive dashboarding community. From excel dashboards and custom-built business scorecards, to xcelsius and flex-based visualizations, the dashboard screenshots at dashboardspy.com serve both as nuggets of inspiration and warnings of what not to do on an enterprise dashboard. These hits and misses will enlighten and entertain. Technology-neutral, and always business-driven, the Dashboard Spy website is the place to go to learn about the latest enterprise dashboard packages. Check out the Dashboard Spy’s latest recommended book, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Dashboards – Scorecards, Analytics and Planning with an Excel Dashboard as the Front End

Posted on by
Reply

>>>Update for Dashboard Spy readers: Ok you excel power user, financial analyst types out there in the Dashboard Spy readership – here is some hot news for you. This book just came out: Performance Dashboards and Analysis for Value Creation (Wiley Finance). I’ll be checking it out, but it looks like a real practioner’s read. The author proposes a methodology for increasing value called the Value Performance Framework. There is a companion CD with Excel models and sample performance dashboards.>>>>

If you haven’t heard about the upcoming Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server product, it represents Microsoft’s latest Business Intelligence solution.  Meant to power performance tracking and analysis, the product’s integration with the Office stack is its main edge.  This performance management product includes functionality from (and supercedes) the Business Scorecard Manager 2005 product and the ProClarity acquisition. The frontend of the product will be the new version of Excel.

I spotted some executive dashboard and business scorecard screenshots from this business intelligence blogger’s post on his viewing of a PerformancePoint presentation. Check out the post for a more detailed write-up. I grabbed a couple of highlights for posting here on the Dashboard Spy.

The first two screenshots show excel dashboards. The first one shows the new conditional cell background graphics. The second has columns marked in yellow to denote forecasts. The third dashboard is a balanced scorecard.

Update: As per Charlie (the source who did the hard work of capturing the screens out of the powerpoint), PerformancePoint does not rely on having Excel 12. The Office 2003 version will work fine. Thanks for the comment, Charlie.

Excel Dashboard

Excel Dashboards

Balanced Scorecard Dashboard

The rest of the dashboards show peeks at the PerformancePoint Server functionality. Note the presense of the PerformancePoint Addin tab at the top of the excel spreadsheet. The last dashboard shows the business modeler screen.

PerformancePoint Excel Dashboard

PerformancePoint Dashboard

Business Modeler Dashboard

Homework: Time to start studying up on the new version of Excel. There are now finally a bunch of books on Excel 2007 released.

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.

Celtics Stadium Ticket Sales Dashboard – optimizing group sales through enterprise dashboards

Posted on by
Reply

Dashboard Spy Dashboard Example: Sales Dashboard

The ticket sales staff for the Boston Celtics has grown to over 20 something people from just 4 three years ago.  This with the team’s performance staying mediocre during this time. What gives? Take a look at the executive dashboard screenshot below. Sorry about the fuzziness, but it’s the best I can do. The original is shown in the front office of the Boston Celtics organization on a 40 inch plasma TV.  While I do my best at being a good Dashboard Spy, I couldn’t quite grab a screenshot from the computer monitors of the Celtics IT department. (I did once have free rein of the computers at Target Center in the Timberwolves office once, but there was a WWF event and I got chased off by a really huge guy with a shiny belt!)

Anyway, we have a really interesting dashboard today, as unclear as the screenshot is. The marketing department commissioned a ticket sales dashboard that shows in real time the seats sold for each game. They had wanted to do extensive analysis of ticket sales data, but their ticketing vendor, Ticketmaster, did not have a way to give the Celtics a real time view of which seats were filled.  Data was available only through excel spreadsheets with the usual delays. This hampered the sales effort. The marketing department wanted a way to enable the sales team to see in real time the ticket availability so that they could call back group ticket sales inquiries.  The ticketing sales dashboard was a big success. In the 2005 season, with performance of the team rather uneven, ticket sales were up 10%. The sales group was able to instantly service group ticket requests and proactively marketing games with low ticket sales. The underlying package for this enterprise dashboard is StratBridge.

Ticket Sales Dashboard

Homework: If you loves sports and IT, your idea of heaven is working on a system for the NBA. Send them your resume. I’m being told that this Boston Celtics tickets application was a trial and because it was so successful, it is being rolled out to the other teams. I’ll try to find out more. Better brush up on sports finance KPIs with these book on sports finance.

For an interesting way to display a sales dashboard, see Klipfolio’s Sales Dashboard. It appears on your PC Desktop!

So who is the Dashboard Spy? No one really knows, but his growing collection of enterprise dashboard screenshots has captured the imagination of the executive dashboarding community. From excel dashboards and custom-built business scorecards, to xcelsius and flex-based visualizations, the dashboard screenshots at dashboardspy.com serve both as nuggets of inspiration and warnings of what not to do on an enterprise dashboard. These hits and misses will enlighten and entertain. Technology-neutral, and always business-driven, the Dashboard Spy website is the place to go to learn about the latest enterprise dashboard packages. Check out the Dashboard Spy’s latest recommended book, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

Company Info Resource Dashboard – Information On Demand (IOD) Center Dashboards Provide News, Research Reports, Events

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to Sarah, a well-placed Dashboard Spy at Periscope Solutions, we have these enterprise dashboards to study. These screenshots show the IOD – Information On Demand Center, an enterprise dashboard solution that marshalls a company’s various information resources.  Users get one-point access to items such as corporate news, analyst reports, research reports, subscriptions, key documents and events info.

The first dashboard shows a user’s main dashboard with personalized portlets containing user views, topics, upcoming events, resources, recent records and recent notes.

Information On Demand Enterprise Dashboard

The next dashboard screenshot show the profile tab with a user’s subscribed content categories.

Personalized Content Dashboard

This dashboard screenshot focuses on news and reports.

News Clips Dashboard

Homework: 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 who is the Dashboard Spy? No one really knows, but his growing collection of enterprise dashboard screenshots has captured the imagination of the executive dashboarding community. From excel dashboards and custom-built business scorecards, to xcelsius and flex-based visualizations, the dashboard screenshots at dashboardspy.com serve both as nuggets of inspiration and warnings of what not to do on an enterprise dashboard. These hits and misses will enlighten and entertain. Technology-neutral, and always business-driven, the Dashboard Spy website is the place to go to learn about the latest enterprise dashboard packages. Check out the Dashboard Spy’s latest recommended book, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

Backdoor Access to Enterprise Dashboard Screenshots – The Dashboard Spy Image Gallery of Executive Dashboards

Posted on by
Reply

Some Dashboard Spy readers have asked me to accelerate the posting schedule of my extensive collection of business dashboard screenshots. They are unhappy with the pace of my blog and website. When I replied that I’ve been writing commentary for each of the dashboard samples, and that it takes time, they said that they don’t need the explanations and that they just want to see the screenshots.

To keep those Dashboard Spy super users out there happy, I’ve started to dump my dashboard screenshots out onto my website without commentary. I’ll still post enterprise dashboards with comments as I’ve been doing, but this way, you now have the option of just browsing the images. The dashboard screenshot gallery is located at http://dashboardspy.com/screenshots.

BTW, I do believe that I have the world’s largest collection of executive dashboards, KPIs, metrics, business scorecards, enterprise dashboards, digital dashboards - all the various names of at-a-glance business intelligence applications.  If only by default – is there anyone else out there who collects these screenshots?  Am I just a nut? Is all this effort helping anyone out there with their executive dashboard projects? Please let me know by visiting my dashboard site. Meanwhile, here is a screenshot of the screenshot gallery:

Dashboard Spy Gallery

Executive Dashboard Screenshot Collection

Homework: Help me out by visiting the image gallery and providing feedback. The gallery seems slow, but maybe it’s my connection.
So who is the Dashboard Spy? No one really knows, but his growing collection of enterprise dashboard screenshots has captured the imagination of the executive dashboarding community. From excel dashboards and custom-built business scorecards, to xcelsius and flex-based visualizations, the dashboard screenshots at dashboardspy.com serve both as nuggets of inspiration and warnings of what not to do on an enterprise dashboard. These hits and misses will enlighten and entertain. Technology-neutral, and always business-driven, the Dashboard Spy website is the place to go to learn about the latest enterprise dashboard packages. Check out the Dashboard Spy’s latest recommended book, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

Mobile Enterprise Dashboard – Delivering reports and KPIs via blackberry

Posted on by
Reply

Update: Dashboard Spy readers looking for KPIs and Metrics should visit http://kpilibrary.com – they have a wide reference collection of key performance indicators from a variety of industries and business niches.

Business Dashboard Topic: KPI Reports on Alternative Platforms.

A couple of posts ago, we talked about the lack of enterprise dashboards for the mobile worker. I’ll rephrase that – after all, aren’t we all mobile workers, now? – executive dashboards that we can access through our mobile devices. The technical challenges seem to still be high and we haven’t seen many dashboard screenshot submissions from our Dashboard Spy readers. One Dashboard Spy, who was taking in the IBM Information On Demand trade show, did send us these screenshots of a mobile dashboard that is in beta. Offered by a company called Webalo, it is a hosted service that delivers reports and KPIs to RIM BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm Treo and Java smart phone devices.

The 2 screenshots that were sent to me show text-based KPI displays. Seems promising. Anyone else out there with mobile dashboard screenshots?

BlackBerry Mobile Enterprise Dashboard            Executive Dashboard Mobile Device

Also, a note about the desktop dashboard user experience. By the term “desktop dashboard”, I mean that literally. Business dashboards don’t have to live in the software level anymore. They can be brought up to the desktop level and incorporated into desktop widgets and gadgets. Very cool implications for dashboard design. Klipfolio is a company that is bringing KPI reports to the desktop. More on this exciting business intelligence innovation in future posts.

Note: Hey, Dashboard Spies!: Do you know how smart you are getting by reading The Dashboard Spy? From pig production to airplane crew size optimization to monitoring presidential campaigns, we’ve examined enterprise dashboards from all aspects of business. I’ll do my share to keep snooping around for those elusive dashboard screenshots that keep this dashboard screenshot collection interesting.

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.

Estimates, Jobs & Invoices Dashboard – Optimizing small business workflows

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been spying on the progress of a small business dashboard being done by a designer in Wales. Take a look at his first post about the need for a better way to track the workflow and metrics surrounding project estimation, billing and job status for his design practice. After getting a sense of his requirements, take a look at this update where he posts his progress. I grabbed for you the dashboard screenshots shown here. There are 4 tabs: dashboard, jobs, estimates and invoices. I’ll only show a screenshot or two for each tab, but you can go to the links above to see (and read about) the lower level pages such as the edit pages and generated bills and estimates. A nicely designed solution to a common need for small businesses to track the job process from estimation to invoicing.

job invoices estimates dashboard

Project Listing Dashboard

Estimation Dashboard

Client Estimate

Invoices Dashboard

Homework: Need a handle on handling the finances and accounting for your small design business? Here’s a list of books about small business finances

Tags: Executive Dashboard, Enterprise Dashboards, Business Dashboard, Financial Dashboard, Dashboard Design

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.

Service Desk Dashboard – tracking support call KPIs for a helpdesk operation

Posted on by
1

Service Desk Dashboards: For the enterprise’s IT trouble-shooters, a service desk dashboard is likely one of the most valuable tools in their collection. Few teams in the enterprise suffer from more real-time urgency than the service desk which makes the need for an effective help desk dashboard more acute.

First we examine a typical help desk dashboard, then we have a quick glance at a desktop dashboard for service desk dashboard reporting.

This peek at a support desk KPI enterprise dashboard comes from a company running the HEAT service management suite to optimize its IT service functions. The IT group takes the performance data as input for this call data dashboard. KPIs include number of open calls, escalated calls, calls received today, percentage of annual daily average, closed calls, calls more than 3 weeks old and a statistic that I really like – calls not updated in the last 7 days. I feel that this statistic is important in terms of customer satisfaction. The client obviously wants fast action. As the open call ages, the satisfaction index would obviously decrease. The 7 day mark seems like a good spot for some “We’re working on it” contact.

helpdesk dashboard

Now we look at using the desktop area as a deployment platform for a service desk dashboard. Take a look at this help desk dashboard from Klipfolio. It actually works as a widget that resides on your desktop!

service desk dashboard

From the Klipfolio site:

Cut response times and increase customer satisfaction

Improve performance across the support department with real-time tracking and sharing of incidents, cases, and metrics. Frontline agents can make choices based on up-to-the-minute data. Management can shuffle resources to accommodate changing workloads – leveraging data from Parature, Remedy, Heat, and other systems. Resolve more problems in less time. Make a direct impact on customer satisfaction.

Put priorities front and center

Desktop dashboards put individually tailored KPIs on support-organization desktops. Key indicators are “top of mind” at all times. Individuals never lose sight of what they are accountable for and must act on. They can do more with less. Their actions are aligned with goals driven by carefully crafted strategies underlying the indicators in front of them. No more real-time data trapped in enterprise systems, in trouble-ticketing applications, or on big-boards, white boards, or flip charts. Priorities are front and center.

Helpdesk Dashboard

Homework: Study up on this subject with these books on help desk management.

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.

Vendor Compliance Scorecard – Enterprise Dashboard for Service Level Agreements

Posted on by
Reply

Dashboard Topic: SLA Compliance Dashboard, Helpdesk Dashboard.

Here we look at how one company tracks the performance of their vendors. First, a note about their vendor management philosophy in general. Upon establishing a relationship with a partner company, a service level agreement is reached and written into the contracts. There is a governance process to overseeing the vendor relationships that is taken quite seriously.  As the relationship matures, data collection and analysis is constantly done. The IT department (responsible for both this SLA Dashboard and the Helpdesk Dashboard) established an SLA Portal with this Vendor Compliance Scorecard as the main tool. The dashboard shown below brings up a real pet peeve of mine. I can’t stand unclear tab onstates. For example, take a look at the two tabs in this dashboard. One says Vendor Breach Summary for last Month and the other says Vendor Compliance. Can someone please tell me which is the on state? On dashboard after dashboard, I find unclear tabs. The top level tab line is clear. It is obvious that we are on the dashboard tab as the red on the tab continues directly under it to the horizontal bar. On the second level however, there is a white line that separates the tab from the bar. I would guess that the vendor compliance tab is on, however, it is not 100% clear to me.

Vendor Compliance Scorecard

Homework: Can we stop designing by accident and take a moment to study some basic principles of graphic design? Take a look right now at The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type. A great source of sample dashboard designs is this book: Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

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.