Dashboard

A Dashboard Spy reader who is getting involved in a balanced scorecard reporting project asked me the difference between enterprise dashboards and balanced scorecards. He was getting confused between all the different approaches that his team could take. We had an interesting conversation with a couple of interesting screenshots that we passed back and forth. I thought it valuable enough to share with you today.

An interesting webpage on the difference between balanced scorecards and enterprise dashboards can be found here: Dashboards vs. Scorecards.  The page states correctly that the difference lies in the degree of “balanced scorecard formality”, that is, the balance scorecard approach has strict elements:

Components of a True Balanced Scorecard: While both Balanced Scorecards and Dashboards display performance information, a Balanced Scorecard is a more prescriptive format; a true Balanced Scorecard should always include these components: Perspectives (groupings of high-level strategic areas), Objectives (verb-noun phrases pulled from a strategic plan), Measures (also called Metrics or Key Performance Indicators/KPIs), and Stoplight Indicators (red, yellow, or green symbols that provide an at-a-glance view of a Measure’s performance). These specific components help ensure that a Balanced Scorecard is inherently tied to the organization’s critical strategic needs.

They provide the following example of a balanced scorecard dashboard:

This is contrasted against the more loosely defined standard of an enterprise dashboard:

Dashboards – More Loosely Defined. The design of Dashboards, on the other hand, is much more open to interpretation. Most Dashboards are simply a series of graphs, charts, gauges, or other visual indicators that a user has chosen to monitor, some of which may be strategically important, but others of which may not. Even if a strategic link exists, it may not be clear to the person monitoring the Dashboard, since the Objective statements, which explain what achievement is desired, are typically not present on Dashboards.

As an example of a dashboard, the company took a subset of the above balanced scorecard and presented it as a more high-level KPI dashboard. It focuses on presenting a manufacturer’s sales KPIs.

Tags: Balanced Scorecard vs. Enterprise Dashboard, Manufacturing KPIs and Metrics, Enterprise Dashboard Design, Balanced Scorecard Methodology, Difference between scorecards and dashboards

Dashboard Spy Reader bonus link: Download article from the Harvard Business Review - The Balanced Scorecard - Measures That Drive Performance

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

This departmental dashboard is part of the Microsoft SharePoint application templates and is meant for a professional services firm to use in monitoring the contract stage of a professional engagement. Nothing too earth-shattering here. There are only a handful of webparts such as ones for announcements, discussions, forms and links. Of most interest is the listing of milestones for the contractual setup process: Proposal accepted, Contract drafted, Internal legal review complete, Client legal review complete, Client sign-off on contract, Write project charter, communication plan complete, Escalation plan complete, Purchase Order open, and Engagement ready to commence. 

Tag: Contracts Enterprise Dashboard, Professional Services Contract Dashboard, Executive Dashboard
Enterprise Dashboards: Designs & Best Practices for IT

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

A Dashboard Spy in an IT consulting firm worked on this project a couple of years ago. He was brushing up his resume, came across this screenshot of a dashboard application he worked on, and thought to send it to me. Thanks, the Dashboard Spy and his enterprise dashboard readership appreciate it!

The idea of this dashboard is to monitor the health of a PeopleSoft system. The client company that this KPI dashboard was pitched to had a concern about the performance of their PeopleSoft Financials and HR modules. This dashboard is somewhat hard to see clearly due to the compressed size, but you can see that this summary page is simple. The first column is titled Application Measures (KPIs) and has the following KPIs: Overall Health Temperature, Performance of Batch and Online processes, Stability in terms of Availability, Help Desk Calls and Level of Change, Risk of Infrastructure and Software, Cost of Maintenance and Per User, and User Activity (user load). Note that in addition to the usual red/yellow/green states, there is an indication of the trend of each metric via an up or down arrow icon.

Tags: Enterprise Resource Package Performance Dashboard, Enteprise Dashboard, System KPIs, Application Health Metrics

Enterprise Dashboards: Designs & Best Practices for IT

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Here’s a look at a corporate dashboard based on the matrix dashboard product by datajungle.com. It’s a highly interactive enterprise dashboard that concentrates on letting users slice and dice data as they need. Based on SQL Server relational, Analysis services and Cognos data sources, it lets end users build their own views of OLAP data.

There is high use of hover-over, tool-tip type displays as you can see from the mouse-over shown on the Top 3 sellers by channel portlet. Also, I can’t tell from this static dashboard screenshot, but there is some sort of popup used to explain the legend of the charts (see top markets and revenue KPIs).

Note the name of the company and the quote in the title bar of the corporate dashboard: “Kramerica - It’s business as usual at Kramerica”.  Sound familiar?

Yes, you guessed it. We’ve been looking at the enterprise dashboard for Cosmo Kramer’s company, Kramerica. You know, Kramer, from the Seinfeld TV show. 

Here are some quotes from the episode called “The Voice”, where Kramer hires an intern for his company:

“I’ve been reviewing Darren’s internship journal. Doing laundry, mending chicken wire, high tea with a Mr. Newman?”

“Well, it all sounds pretty glamourous, but it’s business as usual at Kramerica.”

“Far as I can tell, your entire enterprise is little more than a solitary man with a messy apartment which may or may not contain a chicken.”

And for you fanatics out there, here is some dialogue from the script: 

Scene: At Jerry’s apartment)

(Jerry walks in. Kramer is showing his “intern,” Darren around)

Kramer: …So that’s the bedroom. Here’s the bathroom. If you need to, you can familiarize yourself with the kitchen…Yeah, go ahead and look through some of the drawers.

Jerry: And you are?

Darren: Oh, hey, I’m Darren. I’m new here.

Kramer: Yeah, that’s Jerry, you don’t have to worry about him. Why don’t you go across the hall and get started on that mail.

Darren: Right!

Kramer: He’s a go getter!

Jerry: Who’s he?

Kramer: My intern from NYU. Well, you remember my corporation, Kramerica Industries.

Jerry: Alright.

Kramer: Well, apparently NYU is very enthusiastic about their students getting some real world corporate experience.

Jerry: But you only provide fantasy world corporate experience.

Kramer: Well, this will really free up my time so I can focus on more important things, like my bladder system.

Jerry: Alright, it’s time to go.

Kramer: Jerry, it’s not for people, it’s for oil tankers.

Jerry: (sarcastically) I know!

(Jerry tries to shove Kramer out the door)

Kramer: You see the idea is for a rubber ball inside the tanker so if it crashes, the oil won’t spill out.

Jerry: Actually, that is not a bad idea.

Kramer: (smiles) yeah.

Jerry: Now, it’s time to go.

(slams door)

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.

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog

Enterprise Dashboard design has been quickly evolving in the past two years. Increasingly sophisticated users have been demanding more functionality and slicker designs. The Dashboard Spy, a business intelligence industry insider, has been keeping a blog dedicated to tracking trends in enterprise dashboard design and usage. He has had the pleasure of working with the world’s top design experts on some of the most critical business intelligence dashboard projects. 

The availability of such top flight design talent has enabled the Dashboard Spy to build a custom blogging platform that leverages the latest in dashboard design. Due to increasing pressure from his faithful readership to release a screenshot of his blog posting dashboard, the Dashboard Spy is finally letting the public view this unique resource. The Dashboard Spy Blog Posting Dashboard is extremely feature-rich.

“All the editing functionality that a blogger may ever wish to call upon while creating an article is handily available, as you can see from the screenshot…And I owe it all to my dashboard design heros such as Stephen Few”, gushes the Dashboard Spy.

Tags: Feature Bloat, Enterprise Dashboard Design, Usability, Feature Set

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.

The Dashboard Spy Business Intelligence Dashboards Blog