PerformancePoint Server Dashboards – BI or BS?
Dashboards at any price? We take as gospel the value of Business Intelligence. No one doubts the value of actionable intelligence or the guidance that a good decision support system brings. We let the fat cats up top dictate a direction and we hustle to implement a business intelligence system. We check the Gartner BI Magic Quadrant and peruse the vendor literature. We even check the trade magazines for reviews. Standard operating procedure, right?
Well, imagine my surprise the other day when I came across a magazine article that actually called into question whether a certain Performance Management system was really BI or BS. Talk about rocking the boat and upsetting the status quo. What happened to the usual cheerleading?
The article Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007: BI Worth the Price? calls into question the value that the $20,000 per server license brings. They quote skeptical IT managers who call the product the “magic 8 ball server”, the “Dilbert Point-Haired Boss Server” and “eye candy for managers”. Ouch!
Well let’s take a quick look at the so-called eye candy. Here are some screenshots of PerformancePoint Server dashboards thanks to the contribution of Dashboard Spy reader Todd.
And here is the screenshot that got Todd upset initally (see his comment). It’s using the Excel add-in to provide the front end.
Let’s take a look at the product and see what it offers:
Performance Point Server 2007 is a performance management analysis server that provides balanced scorecards, dashboards, analytics, forecasting, planning budgeting and reporting.
It began life in 2004 as the Biz project and incorporated Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) in 2005. Microsoft acquired Proclarity Desktop for business analytics and rolled it all together in PerformancePoint Server 2007.
Of particular interest to us Dashboard Spies, it offers the Dashboard Designer. The 6 components of Dashboard Designer are:
- Dashboards
- KPIs
- Scorecards
- Reports
- Data Sources
- Indicators
I’m not going to pass judgement as to the proper pricing of the product. Take a look at the article and judge for yourself.
Tags: PerformancePoint Dashboard, PerformancePoint Server Dashboards
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I’m floored that you obviously have not done your research on this product. The screenshot you show is for PerformancePoint Planning, not PerformancePoint Monitoring & Analytics (basically 2 separate products with one price).
What you show is a planning worksheet, not a dashboard. PerformancePoint dashboards are solely delivered on the web through SharePoint.
Yes – you are right. The screenshot there is using Excel as a front end. I’m still looking for an appropriate screenshot. Can you you send one? For some reason, I can’t get a hold of one. Thanks Mucho!!
It’s unfortunate that people with this little information about a product have the ability to write articles about it. If anything, you’ve at least given me enough information I need to avoid this website knowing there’s little to no value to gain from it. It’s just too bad there are people who read it and “think” you know what you’re talking about, and make decisions (misinformed ones at best) based on what they read here.
This guy who wrote the article has no freaking clue about the product. READERS BEWARE OF THIS STUPID CRAP ARTICLE!!!!!!!!!
I was looking into dashboards in wss 3.0 as part of SBS 2008 now that I wanted to use sharepoint a little more in 2010 I find out that the free sharepoint foundation does less….
The article was a bit lean. I really wish there was more information about PPS available. My main problem with PPS is the limitations. It works really well for throwing up fast dashboards. The feature that allows pulling KPIs from an SSAS cube is lovely. But if you have to create them, you’ll probably need a working knowledge of MDX. The Analytic Grids and Charts are wimpy compared to Excel. And what really annoys me is that using Excel Services or Reporting Services, you are almost guaranteed that your report won’t fit the wireframe and you’ll have scroll bars.
The feature that allows linking a scorecard to an Analytic Grid report is great! But the report has to be in the same window – it won’t automatically open in a new window. You have to do that manually.
Bottom line – A good fast way to put together a quick dashboard for Sharepoint. But don’t expect a lot of bells & whistles.