Known by various names, dashboards come in all types. Business intelligence front-ends, scorecards, enterprise dashboards, executive dashboards, digital dashboards, KPI reports, just to name a few.
Whatever you call them, the intuitive nature of business dashboards have become the universal "face of business intelligence". Dashboards allow at-a-glance understanding of the business situation and makes for easier decision making.
The easiest way to learn about enterprise dashboards is to study examples of them. That's what the Dashboard Spy is all about. Take a look at the screenshots gathered here. You'll learn a LOT about dashboards and business intelligence.
The Dashboard Spy is all about bringing you interesting business dashboards to study. Click here to bring up a random example of a digital dashboard to study.
Or simply scroll down for more business intelligence dashboard examples.
Rising star business intelligence blogger, Tricia Aanderud, is on fire with her SAS BI blog posts over at http://www.bi-notes.com/author/tricia.
Her post today is quite excellent and worth reading through in detail. It’s available here at http://www.bi-notes.com/2012/02/dashboard-sas-bi-google-analytics-data. I’m cross-posted it here:
Web Site: http://www.bi-notes.com
I have to say I’m in love with the new SAS BI Dashboard and it’s many features. It really brings the Google Analytics to life and helps me understand how the Website traffic changed over time along with the key influences. The following figure gives you an idea of how you can integrate dashboardindicators for an interactive user experience. The best part is how easy it is. Once I understood the how the feature worked, this indicators below took less than an hour to setup and most of that was deciding what data I wanted to see. [More articles about Google Analytics here.]
This dashboard has two indicators, a line graph that shows the traffic over time and a spark table that contains specific data about site visitors. As the user drags the slider and clicks, the data in spark table updates. I left the Week variable in the Spark Chart to help you understand what was happening. Also in the Last Wk Delta, New Visitors (%) and New Visitor Delta columns, you can see the various gauges available.
For several weeks I’ve been discussing using Google Analytics with the SAS Business Intelligence tool set to get more value out of the data. When you can understand how the trend has changed over time, it helps you determine your next steps. In a previous post I showed you the basics for creating a SAS BI Dashboard and in this post I’m just going to show you the highlights for how I created the above dashboard.
For the SAS BI Dashboard, you can use several data sources, such as a SAS dataset or SAS information map. [Read more: Here's how I extracted the Google Analytics data.] The dashboard uses two indicators: Chart with slider prompt and a Spark Table. With some planning, I was able to use the same data for both indicators.
It was important that I had the week over week differences to determine the growth rate. If you notice, the traffic is divided into Segments based on the source field from Google. You may have read Dominick Frasso’s article last week about the importance of using advanced segments based on the ideas of Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0. Instead of using the Segments from Google Analytics, I wrote some code to parse the source variable and create the segment variable. Here’s a snippet to give you an idea what was done and the inset shows the results.
The week over week difference was important, so this code determines the growth rate by Segment for weekly and new visitor traffic. So after creating the data (1) I used the SQL query (2) to create the data for the Spark Table. Notice that all of this data is summarized, which is a requirement for using the SAS BI Dashboard.
Data created in SAS Enterprise Guide
If you notice, the three new columns are all based on percentage growth. Basically meaning, growth over N percentage is good and under N is bad. This means I can create one range that I am able to use multiple times instead of trying to create 3 separate ranges. You can see how the range was setup in the following figure. All values from 0% to 100% are covered by this range.
In the figure inset, you can see the Range in use. For this range, anything over 60% is green or exceptional is how I like to think about it. Truthfully, probably any increase over 20% is exceptional for the small amount of traffic on my blog.
Tip! It might be worth it to create several ranges like this one that can be reused in multiple dashboards, you would just need to copy the range to the new folder. [Angela discussed dashboard naming conventions here.]
After you have your data and range available, create two indicators for your dashboard.
The first indicator created was the Chart with slide prompt indicator. In this figure you can see the end result along with what settings I used to create it. Using the data table above, I created a SQL query to sum the visits variable by week. This way the line graph shows the total traffic for each week along the X-axis. Again – reusing to keep things lean.
When I added the indicator to the Dashboard, I was able to change it’s displayed name to Traffic by Weekly Visits. [See Angela Hall's blog post Removing the Object Name from the BI Dashboard for more details about indicator names.]
What I like about Spark Tables is that I can add as many columns as I please. One thing to note about this Spark Table, I did not group anything. All of the variables were grouped by segment and week during the data creation step.
Once you have created the two indicators, add them to a new or existing dashboard.
Don’t be alarmed: Note that when the Spark Table is added to the dashboard, it shows the data for all weeks and the line chart does not have the slider.This is normal – nothing is wrong. When you view the dashboard, the indicators will come to life.
To add the interaction, do this:
Dashboard Spy Readers – you are in for a very special treat. Today’s guest blogger is Dr. Harold Kerner, Senior Executive Director at the International Institute for Learning, Inc. and author of Project Management Metrics, KPIs, and Dashboards: A Guide to Measuring and Monitoring Project Performance
The Ever-Changing Dashboard
by
Harold Kerzner
Sr. Executive Director for Project Management
International Institute for Learning (www.iil.com)
If you are reading this short article, then you are on the Dashboard Spy website. I have been a fan of Dashboard Spy for some time, have read every article, but am often disappointed because only a small percentage of the articles are directly related to my profession, project management. I assume I have now gotten your attention! If you want to know more about why I am sometimes disappointed, read on.
I have been a project manager for more than four decades. In all of my years of experience, my greatest curse has been the cost of paperwork on projects. Every piece of paper handed to a client can cost between $1200 to $2000 per page. To prepare a report, the steps we follow are: organizing the report, typing, proofing, editing, retyping, graphic design, approval, reproduction, distribution, storage, security classification if needed, and ultimately, disposal. As a rough guess, we estimate approximately 8-10 fully burdened hours per page, which includes everyone involved in the previous steps. For companies with high overhead rates, reports can consume a large portion of the project’s budget.
Not all reports can be eliminated, but we can somewhat reduce the impact of this curse by striving for paperless project management, where appropriate. In the past, reports were needed to assist clients and stakeholders in making “informed” rather than seat-of-the-pants decisions on projects. Projects thrive on decisions, and decisions require meaningful and timely data. The bad news was that decision makers often had to read through volumes of irrelevant information to find the few pieces of critical data that they required. Fortunately, dashboards have come to our rescue in replacing reports.
The need for dashboards in project management is now quite evident. That’s why I became fascinated with Dashboard Spy. Unfortunately, the majority of the articles that I have read have a common thread: they focus on business intelligence data and information related to the long-term, ongoing business base of the company. The metrics in these dashboards may not change for decades, especially the financial metrics. These dashboards are more strategic than operational.
To understand why these dashboards may not be directly applicable to project management, we need to look at how project management will work in the future. Consider the following steps, that are listed in the order in which I believe they will take place:
By now, you should recognize the differences in the dashboards needed for project managers. They include:
A mixture of metrics and KPIs rather than merely KPIs
Hopefully, you are beginning to see the complexity of project management dashboards. Unfortunately, for some companies the situation becomes more challenging. For most BI and strategic dashboards, we know who the viewers will be. There may be only a dozen or so executives at the top floor of the building reviewing the dashboard information. But for companies that are managing project for external clients, the audience of client and stakeholder viewers can be several orders of magnitude greater than internal viewers. And each of these viewers may have different dashboard needs. It is impossible to develop standard dashboards that will satisfy everyone all of the time.
When you manage projects for external clients, you always strive for repeat business. Follow-on work is based upon customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customer satisfaction can be directly dependent on the timely flow of meaningful information. At the end of each project, we generally debrief the client and stakeholders and ask them what we can do differently on the next project we manage for them. Most customers respond that they want the information displayed in the dashboard to be more closely aligned with their business model rather than your company’s business model. This may require new metrics. The price you must pay for this is the requirement for an ever-changing dashboard.
Project managers may have three information systems on their project:
The first two bullets may be satisfied by standard dashboards that do not change often. The third bullet will most assuredly require ever-changing dashboards.
The last topic to be discussed is metric/KPI measurement. With strategic and BI dashboards, the majority of the data needed to support the information in the dashboards comes from the company’s information systems. Information on topics such as market share, new customers and profitability is relatively easy to measure and report.
But what happens when clients and stakeholders want metrics that require complex measurement techniques? Before agreeing to provide a metric or KPI in a dashboard you must be sure that you understand how to perform the measurement and that you have people on the project team trained in metric measurement. As an example, clients today are asking for a metric that reports the ongoing value of a project as the work progresses. Without a good grasp on metric measurement, you cannot promise that this metric will be included in the dashboard.
As can be seen, the dashboard environment in project management has some different requirements than the traditional BI dashboards and strategic dashboards. I enjoy reading the material in Dashboard Spy and encourage all of you who have ideas for the best way to design project management dashboards and ever-changing dashboards requiring flexibility in design to submit articles to Dashboard Spy. I look forward to reading them.
___________________________________________________________________
HAROLD KERZNER, (M.S., Ph.D., Engineering and M.B.A) is Senior Executive Director for Project Management for International Institute for Learning and Professor Emeritus of Systems Management at Baldwin-Wallace College. He has published more than 50 books (including later editions) on project management. His latest book is Project Management Metrics, KPIs and Dashboards, released in August 2011. Contact Dr. Kerzner at harold.kerzner@iil.com
The idea of benchmarking the performance of a municipality or governed area such as a state is quite interesting. The Connecticut Economic Resource Center or CERC has been using business intelligence dashboards to provide perspectives on Connecticut’s competitive performance.
Visit the dashboard here: CERC Dashboard
Take a look at the CERC dashboard and you’ll note that it’s basically an Economic Dashboard for the state of Connecticut. The dashboard is from idashboards.com and is interactive in nature. The graphics used in the dashboard represent both well-established metrics and newly developed measures to benchmark the state’s current conditions and potential for growth in areas such as:
Government
Housing
Transportation
Urban vitality
Workforce
Education
Business vitality
The designers wanted to give different perspectives on the economic metrics and thus incorporated the following techniques:
Often, a single webpage shows different data items that highlight interactions among the variables.
Graphics were chosen that quickly showed general trends as well as focus and highlight recent critical changes.
To further understanding of the issues, different presentations of the same data are often used.
Here is the link to the dashboard. Please check it out. Also, take a look at this page and note how promotion of the dashboard is important as well. Note at the bottom of the page the news releases about the dashboard called “Dash Flash”.
Dashboards in the home can lower energy consumption. The growing availability of “energy dashboards” for home owners to use for monitoring their energy consumption is helping to reduce electrical loads.
Here’s a look at one such unit:
It’s from this post:
Here’s an excerpt:
In recent years, the technology of our cars has advanced at a more rapid rate than the technology of our homes. A new car’s dashboard has gauges that display all kinds of information, including the amount of fuel in the car’s tank, the oil pressure, the electrical system voltage, and sometimes the tire pressure. Many new cars even have a real-time fuel-efficiency gauge that displays miles per gallon.
If you’re interested in comparable information about your home, you’ll probably have to go down to the basement and look at the float gauge on the top of your fuel oil tank. Then you can go outside and read the gauge at the top of your propane tank. Next, stick the prongs of a multimeter into an outlet to verify your electrical system voltage. And if you want electrical use data, you can wait until you get your utility bill at the end of the month.
It will probably be many decades before most homes have such car-like features as electrically operated windows or dashboards that indicate whether the doors are latched. But technology-savvy homeowners can already install a real-time whole-house electricity meter with a display for the kitchen or living room wall. Often referred to as “energy dashboards,” such monitors are available for less than $200.
You can even buy a more sophisticated dashboard that displays electricity, natural gas, and water use — although the cost of the required monitoring equipment rises steeply with these added features, into the thousands of dollars.
Documented energy savings
Studies have repeatedly shown that homeowners do a better job of conserving energy if they get real-time energy-use feedback. If you can see how many kilowatts your house is consuming, you’re more likely to check whether you accidently left the basement lights on.
In a March 2006 paper, “The Impact of Real-Time Feedback on Residential Electricity Consumption,” researcher Dean Mountain, a professor of economics at the McMaster Institute for Energy Studies in Hamilton, Ontario, reported data from an energy-dashboard study conducted by a Canadian utility, Hydro One. On average, the 400 Ontario households that received a PowerCost whole-house electricity monitor reduced their electricity usage by 6.5%. Mountain noted, “An important observation from the study is that the behavioral response remained persistent and did not decrease over time during the study period.”
In an April 2006 paper, “The Effectiveness of Feedback on Energy Consumption,” researcher Sarah Darby reviewed published studies of savings attributable to electricity and natural-gas dashboards. “The literature reviewed here mostly consists of primary sources, with a few review papers. The focus is on feedback on gas and electricity consumption,” she wrote. “The norm is for savings from direct feedback (immediate, from the meter or an associated display monitor) to range from 5%-15%.”
An article titled “Evaluating Energy Use Feedback Devices,” published in the July/August 2008 issue of Home Energy magazine, reports the results of a Florida study of electricity-use monitors. Three researchers from the Florida Solar Energy Center —Danny Parker, David Hoak, and Jamie Cummings — measured electricity savings in houses equipped with an electricity monitor called The Energy Detective.
After correcting the data for reductions in energy use that were weather-related, the researchers concluded that the homes with energy monitors had average electricity savings of 7.4%.
When it comes down to the very essence of the “Why Dashboards?” question, the answer really comes down to speed. There is a measurable need for faster and more digestible, more accessible information. I believe that this “need for speed” in understanding business metrics and trends is what drives the adoption of business dashboards.
Take a look at this chart from the Aberdeen Group on the Top Pressures Driving Dashboard Initiatives:
Want to see the full report? Go here (this link is a direct link to a pdf):
Aberdeen’s Executive Dashboards: The Key to Unlocking Double Digit Profit Growth.
From the paper:
Aberdeen’s latest research on dashboard usage validates the business adage that “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” From the executive management team down to the line-level business managers and “front-line” employees, the research shows that employees of all levels and functions are deriving value from the business visibility that dashboard tools provide. By leveraging a strong set of process, knowledge, organizational, and performance measurement capabilities, Best-in-Class companies are employing both strategic and tactical dashboard solutions in order to drive double digit improvements in profitability and have achieved substantial increases in customer service and sales performance. This benchmark report is based on feedback from 285 organizations globally.
Those of us who have done dashboard projects in multiple industries know that the first step is to understand that vertical’s particular workflows, business rules and measures of performance. Finding out what KPIs to display on the enterprise dashboard for a particular type of business is no easy task unless you have first hand knowledge of that industry. Most consultants called in to implement a business dashboard don’t really know the industry first hand and must rely on the client’s subject matter experts. That is fine, but the dashboard vendor or consultant must do as much preparation in studying the client’s business as much as possible in advance. Yes, your particular expertise may be in dashboarding as a horizontal service, but as nice as your dashboard looks and works, it will not succeed if it doesn’t measure the right things.
For anyone involved in healthcare-related performance dashboards, here is a great primer on the workflows for a hospital. This is from a vendor named statcom and, while it is a sales and marketing tool, it does offer plenty of value-add and education for us dashboarders. It is offered as an interactive flash hospital workflow and patient flow simulator. I’ve grabbed a couple of screenshots of the demo as well as the different executive dashboards involved:
Read the remainder of this entry »
Executive Dashboard Topic: Measuring Brand Strength and Marketing Metrics with Dashboards
An executive dashboard can be a powerful force multiplier, especially when it comes to areas that, while traditionally reliant on trend analysis and data crunching, have not jumped on the idea of enterprise dashboards as quickly as other parts of the organization. Such is the case in the area of marketing, particularly brand management. Read the remainder of this entry »
Dashboard Spy Topic: Costing Dashboards. There are many factors when it comes to determining the cost of a business dashboard project. Of course, one of the big determining factors is whether you build the dashboard yourself (a custom dashboard development project), integrate an off the shelf dashboard product from a dashboard software vendor, or some combination of the two (customizing an engine for example).
Take a look at the article titled “Cost of Dashboard Deployments“.
Here’s an excerpt:
Selecting a dashboard solution for your organization can be stressful or overwhelming. Many considerations have to be taken into account such as the purpose of the dashboard, how widely it will be deployed, what integration criteria is required, and important features and functionality. In addition to all of this, organizations compare these criteria based on pricing structures. Whether this means the initial cost of deployment, the implementation times associated with the solution, or what the solution will cost over time, identifying cost and how it affects the overall evaluation process cannot be overlooked.
This article looks at what cost considerations exist when looking at dashboard solutions and what realistic expectations are regarding dashboard solution costs. In addition, some dashboard vendors have provided averages of the cost of deployment for their products based on the number of users or various licensing fees/structures. These numbers (excluding names) will provide additional insight into what organizations should expect when implementing dashboard solutions.
tag: cost of dashboard deployment
I had the opportunity to browse through the book Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. I could not put it down. It’s a big book, hard to find and impossible to put down once you start looking at it. Use the link above to find a used copy. Take a look at this online version to see the kind of examples that enthralled me:
Online version (Google Books) of “Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think”
