Dashboard

Keane Practice Management Dashboards are part of their H.I.S. (Hospital Information Systems) offerings and are designed to allow MSOs (Management Services Organizations), PHOs (Physician Hospital Organizations), IDNs (Integrated Delivery Networks), large multi-specialty group practices and even large physician practices to track profitability and minimize risk within their practices.

Here we see an example of an executive dashboard focusing on financial management summaries. The center panel provides a daily management snapshot with revenue, accounts/receivable, DNFB (Discharged Not Final Billed), and other financial metrics. Flanking either side of the center portlet are a series of dial gauges with various KPIs.

Click on the dashboard screenshot to enlarge it for viewing.

Executive dashboard with summary of financial KPIs

» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: Hospital Financial Management Dashboard ............

BI for Breakfast? Here’s a look at how a restaurant might monitor their business via a performance dashboard. Thanks goes to Robert Allison who created this restaurant dashboard in SAS/GRAPH leveraging a design by Charley Kyd of ExcelUser dashboards.

Here is the restaurant performance dashboard. It’s titled “Performance for the Month”.

I’m particularly intrigued by the commentary:

Sales continued their downward trend again this week. The continuing rise in gasoline prices increased freight costs and has hurt gross profits throughout the company. The recent series of ads has increased breakfast traffic. The series for dinner traffic starts Feburary 8. All items have been replaced. New menus to be completed by Feb 4 and distributed by Feb 8.

I’m always a big fan of comments on dashboards, particularly when they are well written and insightful. But the main challenge is exactly who provides the comment.

Topic: The BI Stack - business intelligence architecture stack. Here is an excellent depiction of the business intelligence architectural stack as envisioned by the analysts at Forrester.

Here at the Dashboard Spy’s Dashboards by Example, we have been focusing on Dashboards (of course!) but are fully aware that they are but a portion of the business intelligence landscape. This excellent diagram shows the place that dashboards have within the entire structure.

Click on the BI Stack Diagram to enlarge the image:

bi stack diagram

Click on the “more” link to see what Forrester says about the BI Stack.

» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: Business Intelligence Architectural Stack ............

Performance improvement is both amazingly simple and frustratingly difficult. I say “amazingly simple” because of the effect where simply focusing attention on an area will lead to improvements. And of course, in terms of “frustratingly difficult”, we are all aware of the wall we run into where no matter what further actions we take, we no longer get returns on our efforts.

In researching some educational performance improvement dashboard projects, I came across a nice slide presentation that summarizes well three key steps for achieving performance improvement.

Let’s take a look at this case study.

The spirit and motivations behind the “No Child Left Behind” Act of 2001 served as the impetus to quite a few performance measurement and improvement projects in the world of public education. Today we look at a performance dashboard project and its presentation on ed.gov: Strategic Use of Data for Improvement in the School District of Philadelphia.

Basically stated, the goal of the project was to take the following three steps for ultimately improving performance:

1. Turn Data into Knowledge
2. Turn Knowledge into Action
3. Turn Action into Improvement

Hey, isn’t there a song? Turn, turn, turn….

Here are some graphics from the slide deck:

Tags: Continuous Improvement Process, School Dashboard, Performance Dashboards, Performance optimization, Performance Improvement dashboards, business intelligence dashboards, school dashboards, school metrics, student dashboard

The question of whether pie charts are as good as they would appear to be (judging by their popularity with business users), continues to be examined. The excellent statistical visualization / infographics blog, flowingdata.com, recently discussed alternatives to the pie chart when reviewing the results of a reader survey. Here is a brief screengrab from their post:

Continue with this post for more by clicking on the “read more” link:
» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: More on the Pie Chart ............

Dell’s IdeaStorm project embraces their customer’s ideas and input in a serious manner. Customers have contributed over 9700 ideas through the program. Dell management is committed to reviewing submissions and identifying trends in customer ideas and wishes - “to gauge which ideas are most important and relevant to the public”.

Once you sign up, you may click on “suggest an idea” and post your ideas. These ideas, along with those of others, are commented on by the community at large. Users get a dashboard that includes statistics on the number of ideas you have submitted, voted on, commented on, etc. The dashboard shows the latest community activity on your ideas and those ideas on which you have voted or commented on.

Here’s a screenshot of the “My Products” dashboard:

For more on this user dashboard, please click on the “read more” link:

» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: Dell IdeaStorm Dashboard ............

A Dashboard Spy reader wrote me to ask about adding comments to his Excel worksheets so that his users would be prompted to take certain input actions. He’s building a series of excel dashboards complete with data input screens.

I directed him to Michael Alexander’s latest Excel Tip: Adding Tool Tips to Cells, a quick but excellent video tutorial on how to achieve a tool tip effect such as you see below:

» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: Excel Tool Tips ............

Take a look at this business dashboard. Forgive me for saying so, but upon viewing this dashboard, I couldn’t help but think of Rube Goldberg Machines, those convoluted devices that take incredibly complicated paths to perform a simple task.

I’ll let you decide for yourself. Here’s the video of the dashboard. It is titled “Visual Communication - Business Dashboards” and has the stated goal of “Improving communication of data - an example of an escape from the traditional spreadsheet”.

Maybe, it’s just me, but I find the design way too complicated. Plus isn’t it overwhelming in a mechanical sort of way? I can’t help but think of those Rube Goldberg cartoons.

Below the video is another video that you should watch. It’s a real favorite of mine.

Visual Communication - Business Dashboards

MythBusters Rube Goldberg Machine

For more videos of interest to business intelligence and dashboard practioners, please visit the new dashboard video blog, Dashboards.TV where you’ll find videos on digital dashboards, business intelligence software, metrics, KPIs and more.

The Dashboard Spy