Comparing Enterprise Reporting Platforms? The recent focus on enterprise reporting and executive dashboard vendors has been well received by the Dashboard Spy readership. Thanks for the feedback. One Dashboard Spy recently did an analysis of several enterprise business intelligence / reporting products and wanted to share. I’m happy to offer his analysis in full. Feel free to just scan this post if it’s not of interest to you. We’ll be back to featuring the enterprise dashboards of the vendors featured in the Meta Group study tomorrow.

Update: Regarding business dashboard product selection for Embedded Dashboards, check out the OEM possibilities of the Desktop Dashboards at Klipfolio.com.

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Reporting tools
DEFINITION: Software designed to generate reports based on a wide variety of sources to allow organizations to better understand business.
The major players in the field of reporting tools include Cognos, Actuate, Business Objects, Microsoft, Oracle and Hyperion. Each of these provide comprehensive BI packages of which reporting is an integral function. Generally, in reporting packages, users judge the following:
·          Easy to use interface
·          Customization feature
·          Export formats and platforms
·          Data access and integration with other applications
·          WYSIWYG formatting
·          Ability to create adhoc reports
Let’s have a look at the features of some of the leading reporting application service providers.
Enterprise Reporting Applications from Actuate
Actuate provides a software platform for Enterprise Reporting Applications. Actuate Enterprise Reporting Applications combine executive dashboards, web reports, ad hoc query, business intelligence analytics, and server-managed spreadsheets to deliver a unified user experience.
Actuate BIRT is a flexible, Java reporting tool for building and publishing reports against data sources ranging from typical business SQL databases, to XML data sources, to in-memory Java objects. Actuate BIRT is based on the Open Source Eclipse Business Intelligence Reporting and Tools (BIRT) project.
Features of Actuate BIRT
·          Flexible report output formats. Delivers single or multi-page PDF or HTML reports in multiple viewing and printed formats using parameters, multiple sections, grouping levels, charts, and more. Report content can also easily be exported to CSV format.
·          Build reports from any data source. Access and generate reports from SQL databases via JDBC, in-memory Java objects, text files, XML, or EJB.
·          Design reports in a powerful, easy-to-use environment or with Java code. Includes a robust visual design environment with intuitive wizards that enable you to create and deliver reports in minutes. You can also create and control reports programmatically with scripting and provided APIs if required.
·          Preserve formatting from screen to paper. Deliver reports that print as they appear in a browser.
Concerns: based on open source software. Issues with open source software include: a lack of indemnification, which could increase legal risks, a lack of maintenance and support, so no entity is accountable to address and resolve product defects in a timely manner, and a lack of enforceable Service Level Agreements (SLAs). However, in order to offset these, Actuate BIRT has provided the added benefit of an indemnified license along with maintenance and support, on an annual subscription basis.  These services provide subscribers with accountability for issues and bugs, legal indemnification and experienced support. 
Actuate Analytics: analytics as an offering is for organizations that want to provide analytic reporting functionality to users who aren’t comfortable with ad hoc reporting tools or sophisticated multidimensional analysis.  Actuate Analytics comprises several components, including Cube viewer, an interface program that lets users analyze cubes, define reports and save multidimensional cubes for offline analysis. In addition, Actuate Analytics features a wizard-driven designed tool—dubbed Cube Designer—that lets users define and create lightweight OLAP cubes.
Actuate Analytics is a customizable OLAP tool that looks pretty much like other OLAP viewers. It allows personalization as well as support for customization, in much the same way that a portal provides both these sorts of capabilities. It works on the basis of user roles and supports LDAP directories (and Active Directory) again in much the same way that portals do. Another useful facility is the ability to run off-line. On the other hand, there are some features that it does not have for example, there is no time series forecasting yet.
There’s also an integration option for Actuate’s iServer report distribution and management platform, called Analytics Option for iServer. Users can tap integration with iServer to generate cubes, while iServer itself can be configured to cache and deliver cubes and cube reports to consumers of Actuate’s reporting applications.
Actuate Analytics is comprised of three components:
·         Actuate Cube Viewer: An easy-to-use interface that empowers users to analyze cubes, define reports and save multidimensional cubes for offline analysis.
·         Actuate Cube Designer: A wizard driven designer that enables the user to define and create lightweight OLAP cubes step-by-step.
·         Actuate Analytics Option for iServer: A server-based component that generates on-demand or scheduled cubes, caches and delivers cubes and cube reports to users of Enterprise Reporting Applications.
Key Features:
·         One-click access: provides single click access to data cubes from anywhere that hyperlinks are supported, including users’ home pages, Web-based reports, Acrobat report files and Excel spreadsheets.
·         Personalized cubes: Secure and user-specific content for rapidly accessing relevant and specific business information.
·         Customizable interface: interface can include or exclude functionality, thereby tailoring the front end to each user’s skill level.
·         Mobile analysis: enables users to analyze anywhere for offline, remote analysis.
Parameter analysis

Crystal Reports: is an offering from Business Objects. It is another application providing reporting services to users. It can help you create flexible, high-fidelity reports and seamlessly integrate them into applications. Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET provides a comprehensive reporting solution for .NET developers that is thoroughly integrated with both the Visual Studio .NET IDE and the .NET Framework. Crystal Reports supports ADO.NET, XML Web Services, and ASP.NET server controls and caching. It also integrates seamlessly with the Visual Studio .NET Server Explorer, toolbox, and design environment. It has a rich programming model and flexible options for customizing and deploying reports.  
Crystal Reports Version XI features enhanced exporting configurations, including RTF exports, HTML previews, a workbench and enhanced sorting functions. Report prompts, which help users, interact with reports at each execution. Prompt definitions now can be shared among multiple reports, simplifying the design process. Sorting group values now can have their own formulas, with sorted reports being consolidated via a parameter mechanism. Sorting formulas used in parameters allow users with different sorting requirements to access the same report. This feature reduces the number of reports that need to be maintained.
Crystal Reports’ HTML WYSIWYG preview feature speeds development time as it eliminates the need to publish reports every time an update is made to a design. There is an automated method of adding report data into charting and cross-tab features without having to create any links. Charts and cross tabs can now be generated automatically during the design process. Through a native XML driver, Version XI can convert raw XML files into formatted reports and even transform XML into other formats such as HTML and WML. The driver accepts both DTD (Document Type Definition) and schemas, and works on top of Java’s J2SE 1.4 SDK. The software also arrives with a DataDirect that accepts XML over ODBC data sources. This access is limited to specific structures but can accept multiple file types such as data island, ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) and hierarchical formatted files.
Crystal Reports’ OLAP Expert in Report Designer provides six steps for processing OLAP cubes. The software provides OLAP connectivity to IBM’s DB2 OLAP Server, Hyperion Essbase, Holos HDC Cube and Microsoft’s OLAP Services. In addition to OLAP server connectivity, Crystal Reports provides direct access to OLAP cubes on local files and distributed as HTTP cubes. By allowing access to cube files, Crystal Reports provides better access to OLAP data outside of supported servers. Crystal Reports separates OLAP dimensions into tree structures, allowing report designers to work with OLAP data in the same way as relational data. Within the function repository, developers now can add custom Java functions. This signifies that any data accessed from Java-based applications using Enterprise JavaBeans or Java message queues now can be used by Crystal Reports. Java Server Faces are available through a new JSF developer kit. Crystal Reports provides a full programming control of every function through its API.
Features of crystal reports:
·          Data access: access any kind of data with more than 35 data drivers, custom data access, and tight control over database connectivity.
·          Specific information can be highlighted for end users
·          It provides the user with the option of previewing reports before publishing the same on the web.
·          Drill down on relational and OLAP data for uncovering details which could have gone unnoticed.
·          Formatting and design: it can help you in designing professional-looking, interactive reports using features like the visual report designer and dynamic prompts.
·          Report viewing and interaction: end users can view and work with their reports by customizing them to match their needs.
Crystal Reports has been a popular report generator. But, due to the inherent shortcoming of its architectural design, Crystal Reports has some limitations including
Unable to Modify Generated Reports – Once you use Crystal Reports to generate reports at runtime, you do not have the option to allow your users to edit and/or modify the reports.

Incapable of Technical Drawings – You can not create and include sophisticated technical drawings in your text-based reports created by Crystal Reports.
Parameter analysis

Hyperion System 9 BI+ is a business intelligence platform that provides the full spectrum of management reporting capabilities that combine both operational and financial information. You can customize high-volume, pixel-perfect reports for publishing tens of thousands of consumers over the Web with superior throughput. A specialized financial reporting module with predefined formatting and built-in financial intelligence lets you quickly assemble and publish production-quality report books for management control and regulatory filings. And for ad hoc query and reporting, line of business users can create their own interactive reports for monitoring their performance and spotting trends.
The product is strong in the field of analytic functionality which is provided by an OLAP engine along with unification of the interface, with general metadata functionality, application scalability, report layout, and Microsoft Office integration. Hyperion offers both analytic and enterprise reporting capabilities on an integrated platform.
Parameter analysis

Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, Reporting
Reporting is a key capability within Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. Reporting gives you access to a complete list of self-serve report types, is adaptable to any data source, and operates from a single metadata layer for a variety of benefits such as multilingual reporting.
Cognos ReportNet
·          One authoring environment for creating all report types, including dashboards.
·          Federated queries—one query drawing on multivendor data sources—even within a single reporting object.
·          Adaptive authoring automatically adjusts report layout when objects are added, moved or removed.
·          Embed live applications, Web sites and non-BI content within a report.
·          Drag-and-drop authoring incorporates data, text, charts, graphs, and images.
·          Edit reports with prompts and toolbar commands.
·          Advanced visualisations and charting abilities through Cognos Visualizer.
·          Use a variety of charts: crosstabs, bar/3D bar, pie/doughnut, line, gauge, funnel, scatter, dot density, waterfall, and more.
·          Create complex, multi-page layouts using different data sources without programming or workarounds.
·          Complete connectivity regardless of environment – relational databases, SAP® BW, Excel, XML, JDBC, LDAP and Web Services.
·          Support for Windows, UNIX, and Linux operating systems, including mixed platform deployments.
·          Multiple export formats: Excel, PDF, XML, HTML, and CSV.
Parameter analysisReporting is a key capability within Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. Reporting gives you access to a complete list of self-serve report types, is adaptable to any data source, and operates from a single metadata layer for a variety of benefits such as multilingual reporting.·          One authoring environment for creating all report types, including dashboards.·          Federated queries—one query drawing on multivendor data sources—even within a single reporting object.·          Adaptive authoring automatically adjusts report layout when objects are added, moved or removed.·          Embed live applications, Web sites and non-BI content within a report.·          Drag-and-drop authoring incorporates data, text, charts, graphs, and images.·          Edit reports with prompts and toolbar commands.·          Advanced visualisations and charting abilities through Cognos Visualizer.·          Use a variety of charts: crosstabs, bar/3D bar, pie/doughnut, line, gauge, funnel, scatter, dot density, waterfall, and more.·          Create complex, multi-page layouts using different data sources without programming or workarounds.·          Complete connectivity regardless of environment – relational databases, , , XML, JDBC, LDAP and Web Services.·          Support for Windows, UNIX, and operating systems, including mixed platform deployments.·          Multiple export formats: , PDF, XML, HTML, and CSV.

Microsoft SSRS:
Along with the SQL Server 2005 comes a group of interrelated applications, known as the SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS). SSRS includes all development and management pieces necessary to publish end user reports in HTML, PDF, Excel, and CSV formats. SQL Server Reporting Services can be used to create end user reports in several different formats including HTML, PDF, and Excel. All the tools necessary for report creation and management are included with SQL Server.
If you have experience with working with tools such as Crystal Reports, or Microsoft Access, then SQL Server Reporting Services will be quite familiar as it includes a drag and drop report builder called Report Designer. In addition to the drag and drop report builder, SSRS also includes an application for letting power users generate their own ad hoc reports called Report Builder. One unique feature of SSRS is the ability to create report subscriptions, where users can request reports to be emailed to them automatically at various intervals.
Another feature is the Report Manager which is a web-based application for organizing, securing, and displaying created reports. Report Manager performs the following functions:

• Viewing Reports
• Searching and browsing for specific reports
• Configuring report viewing security
• Creating schedules and subscriptions
• Launching Report Builder for ad hoc reports

Features
·         SSRS can be used across the enterprise by various users simultaneously.
·         SSRS leverages .NET data providers and can query a variety of data sources. Examples of the .NET providers are SQL Server, Oracle, Analysis Services, Microsoft Access, and many more. If needed, SSRS can also be extended through the custom data-processing extensions.
·         SSRS includes delivery mechanisms to distribute reports to individual users on demand or on a scheduled basis.
·         SSRS reports can be rendered to a number of formats, including Excel or HTML. The reports themselves can also be used as data sources for other applications when rendered to XML.
·         SSRS provides mechanisms for ad hoc reporting.
Limitations
SQL Server Reporting Services, on the surface, appears to have a simpler license model: it’s free with the purchase of a SQL Server license. Of course, when you look at it in more detail, things are not so simple. If you want to install SSRS on a standalone server, you must buy an additional license of SQL Server for each computer. The reason this is important is because SSRS is very resource intensive. Rendering reports consumes additional CPU resources and memory and these are the same resources that SQL Server is competing for. Many companies find that it isn’t practical to keep SSRS on the same server as SQL Server.   
The SSRS report designer has a few limitations that you should be aware of. First is that it is not a true WYSIWYG designer. The way a report appears in preview mode can be different than how the report is printed.  SSRS isn’t as accurate as say Crystal reports because it is a 1.0 product and this creates problems for users who require precise formatting for report objects. This however is not of much concern for the general business user. Though SRSS provides depth for sub reports upto 20 levels, one problem with sub-reports here is that it has trouble exporting them to Excel. The Excel export only supports nested List objects. SRSS also does not support different formatting within objects. You have to create multiple objects, each with their own formatting, and place them next to each other. SRSS is also said to have issues with providing WYSIWYG formatting.
SSRS isn’t as accurate because it’s a 1.0 product. This is primarily a problem for users who require precise formatting of report objects. It doesn’t have much impact on the general business user.
Parameter analysis

Oracle reports
Oracle Reports is Oracle’s enterprise-reporting tool. Oracle Reports Service provides a stable environment to create and distribute reports to their users via a virtually endless list of distribution channels.
Oracle reports comes with flexible layout models which allow you to create optimized reports for both paginated output, such as printing, as well as Web-oriented output. Based on standards, the reporting environment can be extended to solve a customer’s exact needs. Oracle Reports consists of two components – Reports Builder and Reports Services. Reports Builder can be used to connect to any data source like relational database, text files, XML, or OLAP.
Reports Services allows you to generate the report output in any format once your report is designed. For example, you can generate reports in PDF, RTF, XML, HTML, Excel, and other formats. These reports can be sent to any destination like file system, e-mail, printer, or FTP server.
With Oracle reports, you can:
a)      Publish reports on the web: Formatted data can be published on the web in PDF, HTML (3.2), HTML Cascading Style Sheets (HTML 4.01), and XML formats. You can also inject dynamic content into existing web page.
b)      Use the report wizard, to quickly create reports with commonly used formats.
c)       Use layout to create new report styles. New report templates can also be created
d)      Create and embed graphs in the report
e)      Included reports in java applications
f)        Describe an entire report definition in XML
Parameter analysis
Oracle Reports is Oracle’s enterprise-reporting tool. Oracle Reports Service provides a stable environment to create and distribute reports to their users via a virtually endless list of distribution channels.Oracle reports comes with flexible layout models which allow you to create optimized reports for both paginated output, such as printing, as well as Web-oriented output. Based on standards, the reporting environment can be extended to solve a customer’s exact needs. Oracle Reports consists of two components – Reports Builder and Reports Services. Reports Builder can be used to connect to any data source like relational database, text files, XML, or OLAP.Reports Services allows you to generate the report output in any format once your report is designed. For example, you can generate reports in PDF, RTF, XML, HTML, Excel, and other formats. These reports can be sent to any destination like file system, e-mail, printer, or FTP server.With Oracle reports, you can:a)      Publish reports on the web: Formatted data can be published on the web in PDF, b)      c)       d)      e)      f)        Describe an entire report definition in XML

MicroStrategy Enterprise Reporting
MicroStrategy’s reporting technology allows companies to create full range of report formats from classic business reports to very detailed operational reports that are typically paper-based. One of the most important and unique aspects of this solution is the ability to combine traditional banded report layout techniques used in operational reporting with the powerful, graphical zone-based layout used to produce scorecards and dashboards.
Features:
·          Drag and drop method used for creating reports.
·          Excellent formatting for quality presentation
·          Parameter-driven Reporting: Users can answer any number of questions prior to running a report, letting their answers dictate what content will be displayed in that report. Advanced prompting based on a Prompt Engine that allows users to pick and choose report content completely independent of the report design.
·          Automatically Customized Content: BI administrators only need to create one report that the system automatically slices into the different views appropriate for each user. Multiple variations of this report are then automatically generated and distributed based on each user’s role and group affiliation.
·          Personalized user interface based on the user profile: 
·          With a single web based interface the user gets enterprise reporting, cube analysis, adhoc analysis, data mining facilities. 
Parameter analysis

In conclusion:
How they fare:

Among the reporting tools evaluated, Business Objects and Cognos have been identified as the leading contenders. Both score high in terms of query, usability and metadata. Crystal Reports XI, the solution from Business Objects offers comprehensive layout and formatting, report development, and ease of use with limitations in process association. Business Objects’ combination of Web Intelligence, OLAP Intelligence, and Desktop Intelligence within the Business Objects XI platform — all leveraging the metadata “Universes” make for a strong, integrated offering that includes products for both analytic and enterprise reporting. Cognos scores in terms of layout, formatting, and metadata but showed limitations in application scalability and report development.
Crystal Reports is the most flexible tool on the market and is widely recognized and recommended.
Cognos takes a single product approach with Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, which contains analysis, query, and reporting capabilities that leverage the metadata “Framework Manager. The product is strong in all three areas — analytic functionality, application development, and usability with comprehensive support for unification, internationalization, and open APIs, and strong support for OLAP, query, metadata, dashboards, and scorecards.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005, provides a strong OLAP engine and has advanced analytic capabilities but it has limitations in the front-end capabilities for most of its core engines. Oracle Business Intelligence 10.1.2 provides general OLAP, query, and advanced analytic capabilities, as well as strong Open APIs with BI Beans, but lags in metadata and overall usability.
Actuate has a strong language for professional report writers, and something nicely sets up data relations for users who know their data but don’t understand database concepts.

Cognos Vs Crystal reports XI

After studying the features offered by leading enterprise reporting tools, Crystal reports XI emerges as the clear choice. This solution has many important features for meeting various requirements.

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The above report was written and shared by a Dashboard Spy and represents opinion based on research of the vendor’s marketing material. The scoring system may not be as scientific as it appears. Consider it a “gut” reaction.

Tags: Enterprise Reporting Software, Enterprise Reporting Platform Review, Enterprise Dashboard, OEM Dashboard, Embed Dashboard

As a follow-up from yesterday’s Dashboard Spy post on the ranking of enterprise reporting and business intelligence dashboard vendors by Meta Group, we take a look at enterprise dashboards from their leading vendor, Information Builders. The WebFOCUS Business Intelligence Dashboard product provides a single interface to enterprise reports that the user is interested in. The reporting portal is customizable by the user in terms of report selection, color-coding, font and other user interface personalization.

As we saw in the enterprise dashboard vendor comparison, Information Builders scored a rating of 5.6, beating Business Objects and Actuate, both with scores of 5.4. See yesterday’s post for details.

Here is what the Meta Group said about the product:

Information Builders WebFocus 5.3

Information Builders finishes as the overall leader in the enterprise reporting and dashboards vendor evaluation. Information Builders is only one of two vendors to score above average or best in class in all evaluation categories. A longstanding product, WebFocus delivers enterprise reporting and dashboard capabilities to more than 11,000 customer sites with deployments in excess of more than two million users.

Strengths

• Best-in-class distribution, parameter processing, usability, and pricing
• Above-average scores in presence, distribution, scalability and performance, development, and
administration
• Support of real-time and native data access through an extensive offering of more than 180 data adapters
• Good Excel support with cell locking becoming available in the next release
• Strong visualization capabilities through ownership of Advizor source code

Limitations

• Real data not represented in WYSIWYG report formatting interface
• Support of report caching only; additional caching features planned for future releases
• No check in/check out or versioning support for multiple developers

Here are the screenshots I promised on several enterprise dashboards done using WebFOCUS.

This last enterprise dashboard screenshot (immediately above this paragraph) is a capture of an online dashboard demo that you can grab the html from if you want to play around with some code.

Tags: Meta Group Rating of Vendors for Enterprise Reporting and Enterprise Dashboards, Enterprise Dashboard Vendor Shootout, WebFOCUS Dashboards

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Dashboard Spy Reader Update: Dashboarders looking for a recent Enterprise Business Intelligence Tool Vendor Ranking Report should see this Dashboard Spy post about the 2007 IDC BI Tool Vendor Study: http://www.enterprise-dashboard.com/2007/09/06/top-5-business-intelligence-tool-vendors-2007/

Back in March of 2005, the information technology research and advisory company, Meta Group, released a vendor evaluation study of companies offering solutions in the category of “Enterprise Reporting and Dashboards“. There were 9 criteria used to judge the competing enterprise dashboard vendors: Presence, Connectivity, Distribution, Scalability and Performance, Parameterization, Usability, Development, Administration and Pricing. Thanks to a Dashboard Spy reader at Cal State University, we have a copy of the study to share with you.

We’ll look at sample dashboards from each vendor in the next few posts, but here are some graphics from the study to look at. The enterprise dashboard vendor study itself has detailed commentary that everybody involved in enterprise dashboard projects should study. It’s a must-read, so enjoy.

Tags: Enterprise Dashboard Vendors, Executive Dashboard Vendor Comparison, Business Intelligence Dashboard Shootout, Enterprise Reporting Vendor Rankings, Dashboard Vendor Ratings

Follow up info: Managed services automation

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Dashboard Spy readers – here is another research clip I saved while browsing through a news database. Interesting enterprise dashboard article on the best process to use to align business users and IT personnel before and during an enterprise dashboard project. It’s called The War Room Approach. Thanks for the feedback on the previous executive dashboard article clip by the way. I was told by many of you that it would be nice to get plenty of business dashboard-related articles to browse through. Some of the articles are quite hard to find on one’s own on the web. These come through searches done on various commercial and academic reference databases.

Tags: Digital Dashboard Implementation, Enterprise Dashboard, Excel Dashboards, Business Intelligence Dashboards, Executive Dashboard Project, War room approach, KPI, Metrics

The War Room Approach To Dashboards; Bringing Business Users and IT Together Creates Balance
Working with IT
By Mark Piro
1174 Words
1 March 2006
Business Intelligence Review
19
Vol. 2, No. 1
English
2006 Business Intelligence Review and SourceMedia Inc. All rights reserved.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at a major BI vendor’s international user conference. My subject was a case study on the good, bad and ugly of an enterprise dashboard project. In the spirit of “knowing your audience,” I polled the attendees to see how many people described themselves as technical (using jargon to help classify themselves). About two-thirds of the 400 attendees raised their hands (after all, this was a BI tool conference). The balance of the audience described themselves as business users with minimal technical background. I then asked how many of this latter group felt they were not getting the dashboarding functionality they needed. Nearly all the business users enthusiastically acknowledged this fact. This was not a revelation, just a reflection of the challenges of deploying enterprise dashboard systems that balance the needs of business users and the IT groups that support them.

With enough time and money any company can develop and deploy a successful dashboard. There may be several design iterations to get it right, and throughout the process, challenges include finger pointing, source data gaps, data quality issues, management changes and even temporary loss of sponsorship. I can name several companies today that have very impressive dashboards, all of which have equally compelling horror stories involving squandered time and budget. This is where BI professionals and their counterparts can do better.

The following describes the necessary pre-conditions and initial steps in the design process aimed at correctly engaging IT and reducing redesign iterations. This process was put into practice with several client projects and has been informally referred to by those involved as the “The War Room Approach.” This name is borrowed from military and aerospace industry practices where an acute focus on a multidiscipline concept is required for days, weeks, or months. This approach is not new to anyone who has correctly executed a Joint Application Development (JAD) or Rapid Application Development (RAD) session. The difference here is in the preparation, the mix of people, and the facilitation.

Dashboard Project Pre-Conditions

A dashboard, pure and simple, is a business-centric function enabled by technology. Therefore, business users must be involved in this initiative. A lack of business participation increases the risk of a dashboard solution skewed by unnecessary BI tool features and functions. The result will be a dashboard with little traction among users.

I have a client who reacted very negatively to those sexy speed dials when she saw the first iteration of her dashboard. No one bothered to truly vet the concept with her. Of course it is critical that IT is engaged and leads key technical tasks, but business users must get in front of the project and drive it. This is easier said than done in cases where IT organizations are powerful entities that peg business users as inarticulate participants. At a minimum, business users must champion and help lead the design process in order to ensure their needs are represented. Such ownership gives a dashboard a reasonable chance for success.

War Room Preparation

The first iteration of a dashboard should “pave the cow path,” meaning it must be simple in its design. Think about your first success being the representation of your existing reports, KPIs and analysis related activities on the dashboard. Of course, there may be a brand new wiz-bang report that a key user or business sponsor has to see. The point here is that the first release of a dashboard should have enough “legacy” elements to initially attract the user and ease them into full acceptance as new functionality is introduced, such as graphics, triggers, alerts, forums and external links.

Ahead of this, business users need to apply meaningful thought to their reports, analytics, KPIs, etc. and develop a catalog with these items allocated to subject areas (sales, financials, inventory, etc.) and user types/roles (executive users, operation users, analyst, etc.). Preliminary thought should address the relationship of the reports to one other (referred to as “linkage”) and develop some sense of a hierarchy of reports. Finally, there should be a prioritization of reports, KPIs, etc., with respect to the importance to sponsors, criticality to operations, complexity, etc. This will help to crystallize aspects of the dashboard concept, including:

1. The visualization concept of the high level subject areas on a dashboard (this will translate later to tabs and screen real estate concepts);

2. The screen navigation of the dashboard from subject area to subject area or report to report;

3. The prioritization of subject areas and reports for incremental development.

Note that there is no mention of technology in this process. This step is all about business users developing a framework in order to identify the appropriate enabling tools and technologies.

It is best for business users to share any preliminary outcome of the above three aspects with IT sooner rather than later. This will help IT with its own preparation in areas that include:

1. High-level requirements for sourcing required data;

2. High-level design requirements of underlying data structures;

3. A sense of what can and can’t be delivered by the dashboard tool/platform.

War Room Execution

Beginning with the end in mind, participants in the war room need to collectively produce two key deliverables. The first is a high-level dashboard concept with subject area definition, report/KPI linkages and hierarchies, roles, screen real estate allocations and a first cut at identifying miscellaneous dashboard functions (messages, alerts etc.). Second, a high-level roadmap is needed to identify prioritized increments, a timeline, high-level tasks, milestones, deliverables and resources.

Participants should include champions from business and IT, business users from each subject area, a dashboard architect familiar with dashboard design concepts tools and technologies, and source data experts who can quickly put a reality check on the availability of data to support desired dashboard functionality. A popular killer of dashboard projects is limited availability of underlying data; therefore, it is imperative to have source data experts engaged at this stage to determine what is possible and when.

The duration of the war room exercise is typically three to four days. It is best to develop an agenda around deliverables and time box the activities. An experienced facilitator can help steer around “analysis paralysis,” keep the focus centered and the process moving.

The key takeaway is that careful war room preparation and execution are critical for success. By having business users and IT participating equally in the process, you will balance the needs of these primary constituencies, and deliver the critical mindshare and joint ownership required to make the dashboard concept a successful deployment that allows an organization to manage business more effectively.

Mark Piro, managing officer, business intelligence, at Adjoined Consulting, can be contacted at mpiroadjoined.com. (c) 2006 Business Intelligence Review and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.bireview.com/ http://www.sourcemedia.com/

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Getting back into the Dashboard Spy tradition of focusing on internal materials not really meant to be shared by outsiders, I had to censor this application development scorecard so that the company would not be recognized. Thank you to the enterprise Dashboard Spy who sent me this excel dashboard used by the IT department at a major insurance company to report on the progress of application development projects. Looking at this executive dashboard, you see that it really is meant for upper level reporting. There is no reporting of application development issues such as defect tracking, issues, etc. When I asked about the usage of these reports, I was told that at the managerial level involved, they only wanted the broad brush strokes.

Also, if you look closely, this tracking sheet is for a cost reduction initiative. Look at the sections for tracking reduced head count and the associated savings. Scary.

Tags: Application Development Dashboard, Executive Dashboards, CIO Dashboard, Enterprise Dashboard Screenshot

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Last month on The Dashboard Spy, we looked at how the winner of a business intelligence dashboard design contest won using sparklines on the dashboard to show a maximum sense of trends in a very small space. Previous to that we looked at another entry using SAS/GRAPH for its dashboard.

Well, it’s time to revisit the contest again. Thanks to Stephen Few’s excellent article on the contest entries and winner, we get to see some of the other executive dashboards.

For those unfamiliar with the contest, the challenge was issued to create a compelling airline executive dashboard from an excel worksheet. Basically, the idea was to create an executive scorecard. Mr. Few’s article (download it in pdf form from the above link) describes the contest scenario as well as tells us how he judged the results. Stephen Few, business dashboard guru and visualization expert, is the author of that great dashboarding book, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

Here are some of the entries in the dashboard contest. I am just showing the graphics. Please read Stephen’s article for in-depth analysis and judgement of each executive dashboard.

Here’s one of the BI dashboard entries:

This next one goes with the approach of bigger charts:

A little color and a panel approach to dividing the scorecard into zones by KPI category:

This is the SAS/Graph one by Robert Allison discussed previously on The Dashboard Spy.

I rather like this dashboard entry:

And, finally, we get to the winning enterprise dashboard. As previously discussed, the sparklines make for great efficiency.

Be sure to read Stephen Few’s pdf of the contest entries. It’s part of his monthly newsletter. By the way, he announced that he’ll have a new book out next year. Great news!

Homework: If you haven’t read Stephen’s book, please do so. It’s a beautiful book. Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Recently I forwarded to a Dashboard Spy reader an interesting article on the importance of enterprise dashboard technology to HR departments. I casually mentioned that they should look up similar articles and was told that it was difficult for them to find relevant information. Upon discussing it, we realized that the reason why I can so quickly find executive dashboard stories and others have a more difficult time. Not every has access to online databases such as lexis/nexis or factiva. I will now start clipping to this blog the reference material I come across during my executive dashboard research. Here is the article  about how the HR departments of various companies track the KPIs of their staff.

Tags: Business Intelligence Enterprise Dashboards, Executive Dashboard

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Using Dashboards To Drive HR
Onley, Dawn S
1672 Words Topic: Enterprise Dashboards
01 April 2006
HRMagazine
109
Volume 51; Issue 4; ISSN: 10473149
English
Copyright (c) 2006 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.

Dave Heberling, senior director of corporate human resources at Erickson Retirement Communities of Baltimore, knows which of the company’s 13 independent retirement complexes are having trouble retaining staff and which ones have seen employee satisfaction ratings dip. Erickson has 10,000 employees spread out from Texas to Massachusetts. Neither Schuyler nor Heberling are clairvoyant. But they do share one thing in common: Their companies use digital dashboard technologies that allow them to track key performance indicators that are relevant to their business and that can help them spot workforce trends. The dashboards can measure everything from workers’ compensation claims and diversity statistics to employee skill sets, training and workforce morale. Just as the dashboard of a car gives a driver indicators of how the car is performing, digital dashboards give a company a glimpse of how a workforce is meeting its goals, using whatever areas a business decides to measure. HR professionals are using these interactive graphing tools to monitor and manage their organization’s workforce and chart HRs progress toward meeting strategic and tactical objectives. Gaining Perspective At Capital One and Erickson, needed information is available to each of the companies’ HR executives at the speed of a computer click. “It’s a one-stop shop for information that our people need on a daily basis,” says Schuyler. “In the past, there was no previous system to point to. It was catch as catch can. HR professionals would run around and catch data in a variety of databases.” These days, Schuyler can tailor the Hyperion software suite he uses to compile a list of employees who have exempt and nonexempt status and those who are independent contractors. He can also get a breakdown of workers by the divisions and managers they work for, or by salary or competencies using integrated systems that connect with the dashboard. Using Capital One’s dashboard, which runs on a PeopleSoft platform, Schuyler, and other senior executives, can review performance ratings on employees and categorize individuals by the college or university they graduated from to determine which schools produced their highest performers. This way, human resources “can target schools we want to recruit from in the future,” he says. 

In the past, unit directors from a particular division were able to measure the performance of employees under their supervision, but they had no clear idea how the rest of the company was performing. Now they can track a variety of data, including turnover rates, diversity statistics, management groups and workforce morale, which has improved HR’s accuracy in its internal reporting. “It was a lot more haphazard without this technology,” says Schuyler. Measuring Tools Franklin Joseph, senior director of human resources at Henry Ford Village in Dearborn, Mich., one of Erickson’s retirement communities, says his business started using HR dashboard technology about four years ago to keep up with the rapid growth of its staff. “Things got more complex,” says Joseph. “Using dashboards made information processing a little more efficient.” Plus, people pay attention to things that get measured, says Joseph. “When we put it on the dashboard, we know we’re accountable for it so it does change behavior. Everyone wants to make sure they’re successful,” he says. Erickson executives say the company’s dashboard saves the business money by saving time. Previously, the process of overseeing its food budget required managers at each community to look through myriad reports, from Excel spreadsheets to written revenue statements, to gather information on staffing, costs and revenue. 

Now the company gathers information from residents and employees on a monthly basis and sends it up to the corporate office where Heberling and other senior executives aggregate the data into a monthly report. The statistics give the company instant feedback on communities that are struggling or succeeding in any of the measurable areas. “Think about it in terms of business process improvement,” Heberling says. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. This helps to point out areas where we might need some improvement. If we see a spike in a lot of workers’ comp cases, we can work on it and improve it.” Erickson’s dashboard also helps the company identify and share successful business strategies. The dashboard, just like a traffic light, uses three colors that rate performance in a particular area. Green shows a target has been met, yellow indicates that some improvement is needed, and red means performance has dipped to a critical level. For example, if Henry Ford Village receives a yellow rating for employee retention and another community’s score is green, Joseph can find out what the other community did to retain workers and then adopt some of those practices to improve his community’s score. ‘We can objectively evaluate how a budget compares to how a community did something in the past,” says Cradg Erickson, vice president of financial planning and analysis for the retirement living communities. “It’s a much more efficient way of evaluating performance,” Erickson says. “A good dashboard is going to draw your attention to problem areas.” Too Much Information Nationally, companies began deploying dashboards to handle proliferating amounts of data. HR executives are using the web management tools to get an up-to-date view of their company from a single portal by selecting an assortment of metrics to monitor and track performance. Today, many of the largest companies in the world-from technology giant Microsoft to home improvement retailer Home Depot-use digital dashboards in several departments, including HR. “We recognize that our customers are awash in data,” says Mark Christensen, director of product management at Corda Technologies in Lindon, Utah. Many companies began developing their own dashboard solutions to sort through it all, Christensen says, but the problem was that the technology was piecemeal and didn’t give HR executives the enterprise view that they longed for. “We’re seeing such great success because the customers are realizing ? can buy it rather than build it.’ “ 

Corda launched its CenterView enterprise dashboard in August, which brought the company’s performance management process to the web. The technology aggregates data from various databases and applications, including business intelligence and enterprise resource planning, into a common dashboard picture. It can also be programmed to run over a mobile device that has Internet access. The dashboard uses color-coded graphics, charts and other displays to illustrate key performance indicators that customers seek to measure. “We want them to be able to visualize the data,” explains Christensen. A Macro View Many companies use dashboard technology to keep a close eye on employee performance. The dashboards allow senior executives, including HR, to routinely monitor how an employee is performing and whether key metrics are being met. “We think one of the problems that happens when you do performance reviews is a big surprise at the end of the year,” says Kevin Dobbs, senior vice president at Workstream Inc., a provider of enterprise workforce management solutions and services headquartered in Orlando, FIa. “Dashboards make this information visible. This enables an open discourse on ‘how am I doing?’ This has a positive effect on an organization, plus it helps the employee. By opening lines of communication between managers and employees about performance throughout the year, companies can do a more effective job of managing. “Our products provide a lot of different analytical capabilities,” Dobbs adds. “Organizations are looking at how things are currently structured and also what to look at three to five years in the future. It allows them to visually take a look at that.” Workstream has 450 customers that use HR dashboards, including Nike, Motorola and VISA. Dobbs says his company has three proprietary dashboard technologies: Workstream Compensation, Performance Management and Succession Planning. But while large companies are the most common users, Dobbs says small and mediumsized companies can scale down the dashboard technology at a minimum cost of $1 per employee per month. 

Corda offers CenterView under various packages, costing from the tens of thousands of dollars to over $1 million, depending on the level of support and the number of concurrent users a company needs to accommodate. Christensen points out that Cordas Center-View technology secures sensitive employee data by having the software provide single sign-on authentication and by restricting user access based on position and authority within a company. The data are also encrypted. But despite the growing use of dashboard technology, some critics argue that the acceptance of dashboards could create a Big Brother atmosphere by opening a virtual window into various aspects of a workforces successes and failures. Erickson says the fears surrounding dashboards are no different than those for any new technology.  “Anytime you introduce change in an environment, it becomes disruptive,” he says. “Better reporting solutions help you identify the top performers in a company. If your goal is to keep good people, you need to be able to identify them and reward them. I think we have better capabilities to do that today.” Schuyler says political concerns that the dashboards can be used to monitor employees’ productivity do not represent or reflect how Capital One is using the technology.  “Our dashboards are at a more macro level,” Schuyler explains. “We’re looking at broader trends like how many workers do you have, what skill sets do they possess, how much training did they take. We don’t look at statistics around vacation. We don’t monitor their hours. We’re not using it in that way.” ‘Anytime you introduce change in an environment, it becomes disruptive.’

Enterprise dashboard programmers sometimes deal with issues involving how best to portray real-time data. Most often, dashboards display information that is read from data warehouses that are refreshed during a nightly batch process. Transactional data that is presented in real time raises the complexity of the system. Here is a look at the ultimate real-time reporting of metrics. Literally, this is a real-time performance dashboard.

Us enterprise dashboard implementation types are visually-oriented people, right? Ok, then here is a little executive dashboard game the Dashboard Spy would like you to try.

Take a look at this picture: It’s a shot of business users hard at work with their executive dashboards, isn’t it? Or is it?

OK, so let’s pan the camera up a little to see their computer screens. Hey, maybe we’ll even be able to sneak a look at their enterprise dashboard screens?

Nice little setup, isn’t it? But the location seems unusual. Are these executive dashboard users outside? Let’s pan out some more and see what is going on. Wait a minute. This looks like a mobile control center or something. This is some setup. Eight work stations with multiple screens and video feeds – all running real-time business intelligence software that displays data via enterprise dashboard-style front-ends:

Now let’s see what they are so intently monitoring. Is it some critical enterprise event? No, it’s the performance of a formula 1 race team:

In real time, the performance dashboard makes possible lighting-fast evaluations of hundreds of metrics and decides within seconds whether or not to make pit stops and other decisions. Information is gathered at the race track and relayed to a business intelligence center where the decision processing is done. This leads to a clear advantage:

If you think I am pulling your leg, take a look at the Time Magazine article entitled: “Very Rapid Response – What can business learn from auto racing? Split-second decision making, says a British tech firm”.

Here is an excerpt from this excellent article:

When the caution flag comes out in Formula One racing, crews typically use the opportunity to bring their cars in for a pit stop. But when yellow came out in the 25th lap of last year’s Monaco Grand Prix, Team McLaren Mercedes made the counterintuitive decision to keep driver Kimi Raikkonen on the track. The ploy worked; Raikkonen won. But the decision wasn’t made at trackside. It came from team leaders based at the McLaren Technology Center in leafy Woking, south of London, who were using prediction software they had developed to help them make split-second tactical decisions in a sport in which speed is king.

All F1 teams have their own versions of software that analyzes thousands of variables–from weather and road conditions to fuel levels and competitors’ probable actions–and how they may interact to affect a car’s performance, before and during a race. The program spits out possible options and assesses the chances of success. Now that racetrack technology is coming to the equally fast-paced world of business.

McLaren and its partner, British software company SmithBayes Ltd., are launching a business version of the team’s “decision-engine” software, designed to help companies that face countless variables and constant volatility. “Businesses make a lot of strategic decisions that involve uncertainties this software can track,” says Simon Williams, ceo of SmithBayes.

Companies can use the software to measure the risks and rewards of moving into new markets and products or making capital investments. Myriad data and assumptions can be plugged in: competing technologies, changes in government regulations, what rivals may do. The one constant most businesses can count on is churn. “If you know something to be true, it’s already history,” Williams says. Prediction software, he argues, makes it easier for executives to “accept uncertainty and move on.”

It also helps companies practice “strategic agility,” a popular management theory endorsed by Donald Sull, a management expert at the London Business School. He argues that chaotic working environments frequently harbor hidden opportunities. “You successfully compete by consistently identifying opportunities and threats and reacting before your rivals,” Sull explains. Team McLaren, for example, had just 10 seconds to make its decision.

Interesting article. Definitely worth reading the whole article. Hope you found this post interesting too. Was the game too silly?

Tags: Enterprise Dashboard, Executive Dashboard, Rapid Decision Support System

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Remember when I lauded the enterprise dashboard approach to showing metrics relevant to the citizens of the Region of Peel? I really liked how the residents of that municipality could check on the KPIs and metrics that make up their quality of life. Well, long-time Dashboard Spy reader, Lynn Scott, sent me a link to an even better executed performance dashboard by a municipality – it’s the community of Whatcom, a county in Washington state that can be monitored via a really neat performance dashboard. Visit the site to try out this great dashboard. Here are a few shots of this really pleasing dashboard design.

Here is a clip of a section of the homepage with some highlights shown enterprise dashboard style with gauges:

The view when you click on a See All Indicators link is a long page broken into KPI sections. Here is the economic indicators:

This dashboard screenshot shows the education-related metrics. Note that the names of the KPIs are links. Also, note that the arrows in the gauges actually mean something. The graphics are not just placeholders. They actually impart meaning. The degree of precision is of course not high but are entirely sufficient for a thumbnail.

Now let’s look at a drill down view. Here is the percentage of people with a bachelors degree or higher:

Bottom line? I love this enterprise dashboard. It’s great for a community’s leaders, citizens and potential residents. Any more community dashboards out there?

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog