Dashboard

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

Here’s a look at how the ProClarity product (an enterprise business intelligence suite acquired by Microsoft) uses the “heat map” style of visualization to show relative importance to certain KPIs. The enterprise dashboard screenshot below shows what they call “performance maps”. You can quickly see the relevance of large quantities of data through relative sizing and colors (the basic idea of heat map visualization technology). Based on parameters you define, the performance map allows you to easily compare two measures at one time. Bigger shapes mean bigger impacts and different colors indicating levels of performance. The graphic layout isn’t so great, but it’s a start. I’ll feature other examples of enterprise dashboards that use heat map technology in upcoming posts on The Dashboard Spy.

Tags: Heat Map Dashboards, Financial Enterprise Dashboard, Executive Dashboard, Heat Maps

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

In a law firm, billable hours and bill rates are foremost metrics to track. Of course, the invoicing and collection procedures are key as well. Here is an enterprise dashboard used by a law firm to monitor their billing metrics. This dashboard screenshot shows the attorney tab of the system where a lawyer’s billing metrics are displayed. Note in the left side KPIs panel the measurement of the individual attorney against the firm’s objectives. Bill speed, collection speed and other invoicing statistics are shown as well as the lawyer’s margin percentage. Efficiency in the back end processes is obviously a big factor with this law firm. This enterprise dashboard approach looks to be a good solution to optimizing the relevant metrics.

Tags: Law Firm Enterprise Dashboard, Billing Dashboard, Client Financial Dashboards

>>>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.>>>>

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Lately we’ve been talking about the suitability for enterprise dashboards in life and death situations. Most of our examples so far dealt with health care enterprise dashboards. In this post, we examine a set of enterprise dashboards dedicated to helping companies handle crisis monitoring and communication. Missionmode.com offers the “situation” dashboards shown in this Dashboard Spy post. Examples of situtations include fires, natural disasters, and other types of events that require mass communication, tracking of alerts delivery and acknowledgements, situational updates and logs of response actions. A good use of enterprise dashboard technology in that the visual, at-a-glance summaries are quite helpful.

However, the same question arises: Can we trust the technology during a crisis? Are we putting lives on the line? I suppose it depends on the nature of the situation. Of course, a natural disaster affecting regional power outages would make the data acquisition impossible and render the system useless. Smaller localized situations are better suited for this type of enterprise dashboard reporting, but how real-time can it get? Take a look at these enterprise dashboard screenshots and you’ll get a good idea of the possible uses.

This first screen is a dashboard showing contact status, task list, resource library and situation log.

This is a peek at the admin screen for selecting type of situation:

Here is a dashboard screenshot showing contact status. That is, who has acknowledged the alert and in what manner (web, phone, etc.)

This is the situation log that monitors the crisis as it unfolds.

Tags: Enterprise Dashboard, Business Intelligence Dashboards, Executive Dashboards

>>>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.>>>>

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

As a nod to Election Day, I’ll start a dialog about using digital dashboards to track election-related matters. We’ve all seen the extension of business dashboards to encompass other subjects, but political statistics seem particularly well suited for dashboard-style presentation. Here is a dashboard dedicated to tracking the Tennessee Senate Race. You can view it at http://senate.tnpoliticsblog.com/.

Homework: If you see any dashboards tracking today’s voting results, please click on this post’s headline, find the comments link at the bottom and please post the URL. Thanks. The Dashboard Spy.

Enterprise Dashboard Tag: Medical Monitoring Dashboard, Operating Room Dashboard.  Update: It’s been months since posting these dashboard shots. Upon reviewing this post, I must say that it is impressive to see this Operating Room Dashboard. Once again, my congratulations to the enterprise dashboard team who built this lifesaving technology.

We’re all big fans of enterprise dashboards, otherwise we wouldn’t be reading The Dashboard Spy. Most of us are seasoned veterans of multiple software projects. We’ve seen our share of both software project failures and successes. While the failure rates were shockingly high in the past, we’ve become more hopeful in recent years of our ability to create applications that are reliable and available. All sorts of techniques exist to ensure quality, suitability to purpose, scalability, etc. So here is today’s million dollar question: Would you be willing to entrust your life to your enterprise dashboard?

In this post, we look at a very interesting enterprise dashboard - the Livedata Operating Room Dashboard. The screenshots below and the operating room pictures are the real thing. They show the use of the OR Dashboard at New York’s prestigious Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The hospital has set up what they call the “Wall of Knowledge” in 21 new operating rooms. These video monitors display live data from operating room systems and patient databases to support the surgical procedures. As you will see from the enterprise dashboard screenshots below, the OR Dashboard is an active tool - the dashboard follows the surgical workflow and displays data relevant to the procedures at hand.

I applaud the dashboard team that created this. It’s no easy task to take on this great responsibility. Let’s take a look at the particular screens to see their work in detail.

Homework: Let’s all stop a minute and think about the quality of our KPIs and Metrics. Obviously, we don’t all deal with life and death data such as these patient dashboards for operating room use, but this case makes clear three things: 1) The quality of the data is paramount. 2) The presentation of the information is critical and 3) The workflow of the underlying processes must drive the dashboard design. For usability of your dashboard designs, please take a look at this book: Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data

Tags: Enterprise Dashboards, Health Care Dashboards, Business Intelligence Dashboard

Dashboard Spy Info: This is another post in the series of business intelligence dashboard studies done by a mysterious individual known only as The Dashboard Spy. No one knows who he is, but his collection of BI Dashboards is becoming quite famous. If you have a business dashboard project that you would like to have featured, send Dash an email at info -at_ enterprise-dashboard.com. Please replace those funny characters with the @ sign.

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Tags for this Dashboard Screenshot: Digital Dashboard Implementation, Executive Dashboards, Business Dashboards, BI Dashboards

What is valuable for us Dashboard Spies when we look at today’s award-winning enterprise dashboard example is not what airline industry KPIs are shown, the integration of a document viewer, or even the fact that an award was won, but that the implementation team created a nice document explaining their process. Although the project pdf is really a sales support document, it has great design and implementation value and we should all flip through the 28 pages. Several dashboards are shown as well as closeups of various tables. 

A quick intro from their documentation:

The model has been created by CubeServ AG during a workshop at September 2005 as an example.
The dashboard is based on an generic data model, shows variable KPIs and may be used cross
industry.
The CubeServ Overview Dashboard shows in three views the major information for financial an nonfinancial
key performance indicators.
There are three dashboards available for the
• Overall view
• Customer view
• Product view
From the technology point of view the usage of layer technology and formula based selections is
shown.
For each view there are selections for
• the period
• the year
• the consolidation unit
via dropdown boxes available.
After the selection of period, year and/or consolidation unit a new selection will be shown after
pressing the Submit button
Via the dropdown box Select Dashboard you can navigate from one view to the other.
By pressing the Help button this user documentation will be shown.

The dashboard is an SAP Analytics dashboard created by CubeServ AG at a show in 2005. Here I show a dashboard screenshot:

Tags: SAP Dashboard, SAP Analytics Dashboards, Project Documentation for Dashboard Implementation

Where are these business dashboards from? And who is this Dashboard Spy? You got me, but this growing hodgepodge of enterprise dashboard screenshots has captured the imagination of the business 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.