Dashboard

Dashboard Spy Update: Dear readers - sorry for the wrong URL for the “Keeping Score Survey” pdf. I’ve fixed the link. See below:

Once a business intelligence project gets underway, there is a flurry of analysis, design, construction and testing. We get so busy that we sometimes lose sight as to the reasons why we adopt our dashboards, scorecards and performance alerting systems in the first place.

Let’s take a step back and look at the reasons behind the trend of the last few years toward enterprise dashboards, executive scorecards and other performance measuring applications.

In September of 2006, the Ventana Research Operational Performance Management practice group released a survey exploring what the reasons for adoption of dashboards and scorecards were for 590 participants: Dashboard & Scorecards Reasons for Adoption.

Take a look at these images:

As you see, the respondents gave reasons for adoption such as better decision making, business process performance, alignment of operations with corporate goals and strategies, optimization of company resources, and benchmarking of performance against industry or for regulatory purposes.

Ventana sought to learn why companies
are deploying scorecards, dashboards and
performance alerts. The top business
driver that respondents cited for adopting
them is to align operations with corporate
strategy and goals. Approximately onethird
of companies identified this as the
most significant reason for their initiative.
It was most prevalent for scorecards (36
percent), not quite as much for
dashboards (29 percent) and least so for
alerts (24 percent)

It’s important to know how the Ventana Research group differentiated between scorecards, dashboards and alert systems. Take a look at this graphic:

Basically, a scorecard is a software app that shows progress of a company towards strategies, goals and objectives. This measurement is judged via KPIs and metrics.

A dashboard is more of an enterprise reporting application that measures performance of specific business metrics or of certain departments. The emphasis is not on a management methodology such as a balanced scorecard.

A performance alert is a communication system that transmits the triggering of a certain level, action or condition.

Tags: Dashboard Project Return on Investment, Dashboard ROI, Dashboards vs. Scorecards, Reasons for Adoption of Dashboard and Scorecard Projects.

PS. Here is another Dashboard Spy post that spoke about the rationale behind BI dashboarding efforts.

What do you think about this dashboard post? Please leave a comment. Your opinions are valuable to the entire business dashboarding community.  

Leave a Reply

Last Modified: Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 @ 22:00

This business intelligence dashboard blog entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Dashboard Screenshots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Dashboard Spy Readers: See these related Business Intelligence Dashboard posts:

• Enterprise Dashboard Initiative ROI Factors
...
• Banking Dashboard - Risk Concentration Screen
...
• Enterprise Project Portfolio Dashboard - tracking costs, comments, status, economic benefits
...
• Heat maps - an eye tracking data visualization technique
...
• Venture Deal Dashboards
...
• HR Financial Data and Benefits Enterprise Dashboard Screenshot
...
• SLA Dashboard
...
• Excel Dashboard With Essential Metrics for Online Marketers
...

Latest posts of interest to the business intelligence dashboarding community - Have you read these recent enterprise dashboard posts?

Recently Posted

• Excel Infographics
• iDashboards Winter Olympics Dashboard
• Go Back to School for Excel
• 7 Ways to Remain Relevant for Business Intelligence in 2010
• Dashboard Data Table Navigation
• Dashboard Metrics Status Indicators
• Communicating Through Business Dashboards
• Building a Flex Dashboard
• Retail Store Scorecard
• Google Analytics Marketing Dashboard