While ajax programming technology has really caught on for coding enterprise dashboards, let’s not forget the other big player in terms of rich user interfaces - Adobe’s Flex technology allows visually slick interaction. Rather than trying to describe what it can do for an executive dashboard user, let’s actually try out a demo: 

A very talented flash/flex developer at http://merhl.com/webdevblog/ posted this demo of a Flex dashboard for retail and online stores. It tracks site members by month, products by collection, wishlist and referrals and top stores by state.   See the dashboard screenshot below, but definitely go to the interactive demo so you can try out the various controls. I particularly like the actions within the charting element in the upper right. You can select a chart via a drop down control and also toggle the view from a chart to a table. The line graph has a slider control so that you can move along the time axis. What is also neat is how the various parts can be enlarged, reduced and dragged around.

Homework: For more info on the financial side of retail management, please browse these books on retail financial management.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of business dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of an enterprise dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books, some of which are listed on this page: