Today’s executive dashboard topic: HR Dashboards (specifically, a diversity dashboard).

The Arizona State University Office of Diversity Dashboard allows the human resources department of the university to demonstrate the school’s compliance with federal and state laws regarding affirmative action in employment and educational programs. This employment monitoring dashboard is presented on the ASU Office of Diversity website with the navigational link “Dashboard Graphs”.

This dashboard is considered a valuable tool at the university that measures progress toward the stated strategic goal to “Increase the cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity of student, faculty, professional and administrative employees”.

Here’s a quick Dashboard Spy video of the Diversity Dashboard:

The Excel Dashboard that placed second best in the MicroCharts 2008 Excel Dashboard Competition was created by Jim Uden. His Outpatient Surgery Center Dashboard shows the metrics for the operations of a health care facility. Owned by a partnership that demands comprehensive reporting, the ambulatory center operations generate large volumes of data that must be digested and presented in a clear and concise manner.

We’ll examine the Excel dashboard itself in a moment, but I wanted to point out this dashboard received a special mention on account of the great documentation and project background that the developer provided with the dashboard. Take a look through this Dashboard Walk-through Document and you’ll be impressed as well. A nice document to emulate in our own dashboard projects, for sure.

Here is the screenshot of the Second Best Excel Dashboard of 2008. It’s a large screenshot, so please click on the image to bring it into full view.

We’ll pull some backgound material from that great project document that I mentioned earlier, so please join me in reading the rest of this post by clicking on the “read more” link below.

» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: Second Best Excel Dashboard of 2008 ............

For those Dashboard Spy readers out there who may be unfamiliar with the finer points of titles within the world of academia, “Provost” is usually the senior academic administrator. Think of him or her as the “Chief Academic Officer” of the university or college. The provost would report to the “CEO” of the college, usually titled President or Chancellor.

Anyway, getting back to executive dashboards, the point of this post is to bring out the fact that, just as in the corporate world, the academic management space is ripe for the growth of business intelligence dashboards. The provost has needs equivalent to a senior vice president within a business. There is a pressing need to manage the vast amounts of KPIs and metrics that surface every day.

Let’s look at an example dashboard that would be used by a provost. Thanks to long=time Dashboard Spy reader and contributor, Robert Allison (SAS/GRAPH Dashboarder and Guru), we have this example of a provost dashboard:

The dashboard is a big one with lots of fine detail, so be sure to click on the dashboard screenshot above to enlarge the image.

Click on the “read more” link below for the rest of this post.

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

Looking for the 2008 Summer Beijing Olympics Medal Count? Use this shortcut:

Olympics Dashboard

Dashboard Topic: Olympic Dashboard

The dashboard design paradigm will be making frequent appearances on the public stage from now until the end of the year. I’m thinking in particular of two events that drive heavy news coverage:

1. 2008 Summer Olympics
2. 2008 Presidential Election

I’m confident that we’ll be seeing quite a few data visualizations based on business intelligence dashboard approaches for both of these events. The need to slice large amounts of data in many different ways and the requirement for ease of use and comprehension make these news events perfect for generating plenty of business dashboards.

As a preview of a summer olympics medal tally dashboard, we look at the work done by iDashboards in this Adobe Flex-based Olympics Dashboard.

You can visit the demo at the link above or preview the Flex dashboard in this video.

Click on the “Read More” link for the rest of this post. We’ll present a few screenshots from this flex dashboard as well as some commentary from the iDashboards folks.

» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: Flex Dashboard Tracks Olympics Medal Results ............

Business Intelligence Worst Practices as listed in the Information Builders white paper, Worst Practices in Business Intelligence | Why BI Applications Succeed Where BI Tools Fail:

1. Assuming the Average Business User Has the Know-How or Time to Use BI Tools
2. Allowing Excel to Become the Default BI “Platform”
3. Assuming a Data Warehouse Will Solve All Information Access and Delivery
   Requirements
4. Selecting a BI Tool Without a Specific Business Need

According to the white paper author, these are the four top worst practices for business intelligence implementations as seen over years of observing many companies. They have been repeated over and over by some of the smartest enterprises out there. Typically these worst practices are the result of wanting to ride the lastest technology wave without moderating the hype with practical knowledge.

In this post, we’ll list out a couple of points within each of the four worst practices, but you’ll need to read the whitepaper itself for the full details. Use the link at the beginning of this post.

Excel dashboard enthusiasts may need to cover their ears when it comes to worst practice number 2: Allowing Excel to become the default business intelligence platform.

Click on the “read more” link to see the rest of the post:

Business Intelligence Worst Practice Number One:

Assuming the Average Business User Has the Know-How or the Time to Use BI Tools

The end-user market is flooded with hype from the vendors indicating that “Business Intelligence tools are for everyone”. Even though the tools no longer require programming or database knowledge and are based on graphical, drag and drop approaches, they are often still too complex for everyday use by business users. Also, average business users are often not involved with the purchasing decision process and wind up with tools forced upon them by IT and business side power users.

• Overlooking the True End User
• Too Much for Too Few
• It’s a Matter of Time
• Usability Trumps Capabilities
• Business Intelligence Go-To Guys and Multiple Versions of the Truth

Business Intelligence Worst Practice Number Two:

Allowing Microsoft Excel to Become the Default Business Intelligence Platform

According to the white paper, Excel “thrives in the absence of true BI applications”. There are many benefits but, the problems include:

• Manual Error-Prone Processes
• The Impact of Data Errors
• The Creation of Spreadmarts

Business Intelligence Worst Practice Number Three:

Assuming that a Data Warehouse Will Solve All Information Access and Delivery Requirements

Data warehouses are a very important part of information technology and, in particular, are a critical component of many analytical systems. So it is not the data warehouse that is the problem. Rather the worst practice arises when a data warehouse is viewed as the solution to all information problems or when it is expected that the availability of the data warehouse will drive business users to information.

The truth is that not all BI applications require a data warehouse. Many BI applications are better served with integration and portal technology that allows data to reside where it currently exists and pulls it on an as-needed basis. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to assess whether or not a data warehouse is the right solution to their challenge before starting down the warehouse path.

The white paper goes on to explore:

• Failing to Fully Assess the Need for a Data Warehouse
• Identifying the Best Solution for your Needs
• Identifying When Data Warehouses Make Sense

Business Intelligence Worst Practice Number Four:

Selecting a BI Tool Without a Specific Business Need

The worst thing to do is to purchase BI software for “general purpose analysis”. The white paper explains that the purchase of business intelligence software for general purpose BI results in the worst ROI and largest expense.

Tags: White Paper Business Intelligence Worst Practices

Excel dashboards submitted as candidates for the best 2008 Excel dashboard design contest run by BonaVista Systems have been evaluated.

Wade Stokes is the winner of the best excel dashboard with his entry of this International Bank Dashboard. Click on the dashboard screenshot to enlarge the image and you’ll see a dashboard that make efficient use of screen real estate through incorporation of the popular sparkline graphic:

Click on the “read more” link to read some commentary by the dashboard designer:

» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: 2008 Best Excel Dashboard ............

Topic: Performance Benchmarking Dashboard Example: Medical Practice Costs Dashboard.

Executive Dashboards display metrics from across an enterprise. We, as business managers and information technology professionals, work hard at compiling, cleaning and delivering the correct data from sources distribution across corporate systems and data stores. Of course, you say, “That’s what we’re trying to accomplish with our enterprise dashboard projects. What are you getting at?”

My point is that usually the point of view of our corporate dashboards is inward. We compare metrics with past periods or targets, but we usually don’t bring into our dashboard targets much in the way of industry metrics.

So, let’s look at performance benchmarking and dashboarding. I came across some interesting management dashboard applications from the MGMA (Medical Group Management Association). Their dashboards specialize in allowing medical practice management users to benchmark the metrics of their facility against industry standards.

I thought this worth highlighting for Dashboard Spy readers, because it’s not often that our dashboard metrics incorporate comparisions against standards external to the enterprise.

The dashboards are simple to use and understand. They are powered by Xcelsius as you can see in this video.

If you can’t play the video of the dashboard example, click on the more link below to bring up the rest of this Dashboards By Example post. I’ll provide screenshots of the dashboards and links to the xcelsius dashboard examples.

Here is the video of the Medical Practice Costs Benchmarking Dashboard (yes, it’s fuzzy, but click on the image and it’ll be sharp when the video runs): 

» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: Performance Benchmarking Dashboards ............

Dashboard Spy readers will recall that we have discussed the use of heat map techiques for data visualization. We looked at Google Eye Tracking heatmaps for marketing optimization and the ever popular heat maps for stock market dashboards. We even looked at this ridiculously simple size and color sensitive heatmap dashboard.

Today we look at how heat mapping is used in data visualizations to optimize the customer preference of various gaming machines at Las Vegas casinos. In this environment, the likes and dislikes of customers for different machines or table setups translates to a lot of revenue. Tweaking the slightest variable can mean a huge impact on profitability.

Here’s a close up view of the data visualization heatmap. It shows usage of the machines overlaid across a floor plan.

To see this heatmap in action, take a look at this video:

» Read more about this business intelligence dashboard example: Heat Maps for Data Visualization ............