We all know that competition among software application vendors has become cut-throat in our slow economy; vendors are challenged to find ways to improve their revenue. One way to come out as a winner amongst the competition is to have a better product – a product with an X-factor. [Easier said than done] Often times, companies employ different ways to distinguish themselves, which includes providing extra features within their core software application.

Even for a great application, there may only be an average level of reporting/graphing capabilities. The sales team looks for enhancements to the presentation layer for increased sales. If IT could provide some dashboards with a high-level picture using the application’s data, that could be a dealmaker. Now, let’s say, a vendor has decided to better their presentation so that the executives of the client could readily access information. The question then arises about build vs. buy. Should you employ more IT resources, or should you select to integrate a product that can deliver the information? If you find a product which excels at data visualization the choice will become obvious – embed a best-of-breed platform and leverage the data in your application.

Recently, I was on an engagement with a bank software vendor. It was very interesting to see how the presentation gap in their core offering was quickly filled with a dashboard tool. It clearly became a differentiating factor among competition, and a strong sales tool for the sales team. This vendor is now able to present their information in an easy-to-read format with dashboards. These dashboards are highly interactive and can be rolled out to different layers of management i.e. executives, VPs, directors, managers. These dashboards also pull information from different data sources to show the synergy among indicators on one single dashboard e.g. teller transaction volume vs. call center call volume vs. automated phone banking system.

I hope the blog was helpful for management and IT alike. Should you have questions/comments, please feel free to post.

Zahid Ansari - Technical Consultant, iDashboards

I visit a lot of customers throughout the year. I spend roughly 2 weeks of every month in front of new faces, introducing them to iDashboards. We cover the training manual, software, storyboarding and building dashboards from scratch. We work through multiple exercises with dummy data to get individuals used to the feeling of creating things with our software. Almost invariably, the proverbial wall is hit. When it comes to building charts and dashboards based off of the customers’ data, I get a sea of blank faces. A mild form of analysis paralysis sets in and these once competent & interactive participants retreat rapidly into their shells.

When it comes to working with your own data, it’s important to remember that what you create doesn’t need to be perfect. Too often individuals are concerned with thinking that every chart they create is must be included on their final dashboard – It doesn’t have to. It often helps to get the creative juices flowing but simply creating some basic charts to get a feel of how iDashboards will handle and display your data. This usually leads to ideas for additional charts and dashboards.

One important tool for helping overcome this mental energy sink is storyboarding. Storyboarding is a term borrowed from the animation industry. It’s a way of laying out exactly how your dashboard will look, before committing to the build process. In order to successfully complete a storyboarding session, you need to follow a few rules:

1. Verify the data exists and you can access it.
   • Nothing is worse than spending precious time on an engagement trying to track down IT resources to open up data access.
2. Draw a basic 4 panel frame.
   • You can always add or subtract from this. It just helps to relieve the ambiguity around the design process.
3. Identify the metrics that need to be displayed on the dashboard. Keep your target audience in mind as you do this. For example, a Sales Manager might not  need to see the volume of calls for a call center.
   • Split your metrics up by the product, and timeframe. For example; Average Sales, by Sales Manager, then Account Manager, Current Month vs. Same Month Previous Year.
4. Figure out what chart you’d like to use to display the data. Keep in mind; this may determine the layout of the data required.
   • At this point, draw the chart in your 4 panel frame.
5. Determine the layout required to support your data. Chart types, pivots and drilldowns should all be considered.
6. Repeat steps 2 – 4 for each of your metrics.

Following this procedure will assist you in the creation of your dashboards. It should act as your roadmap to success.

Matt Crawford- Technical Consultant, iDashboards

I had a scary dream the other night. I dreamt that I was driving late at night, when my car sputtered and came to a halt. I tried different things, but the engine refused to start. Standing on a dark road in the middle of nowhere, I came to a sinking realization. My car had run out of gas. How had I not seen this coming? Was my fuel gauge broken?

Imagine if this was my real fuel gauge in my car’s dashboard. It is telling me all sorts of information about the (non-existent) gasoline in my car. I don’t need to know where the oil was drilled from before it became gasoline, when it was delivered to the gas station where I last filled up, or the name of the owner of the gas station. All I need to know is how much fuel I have left. This helps me plan how far I can drive.

Take a few minutes today to review your company’s dashboards. Look at every chart that is included. Think about whether the metrics captured are truly important and lead to critical decision making. If they are anything like my nightmare dashboard, it’s time to re-evaluate your design before you find yourself running on empty. Your dashboard should convey key metrics in a quick glance or two. Anything more and the important information may get lost. Make sure your dashboard is preventing – not causing – information overload. Your users will thank you for it.

Until next time, I’ve got to go and pull over at the next gas station. My “low fuel” light just came on, and that’s all I need to know!

Warren Singh- Technical Consultant, iDashboards

One of the most critical set of metrics for Higher Education organizations is related to applicant yield rates. In this blog I will discuss, and illustrate, an example of how this set of metrics can be visualized, beginning with the first point of contact point a student has with a university, an inquiry from a prospective student. Figure 1 depicts a scenario where 1000 inquiries from prospective students are received, of these inquiries 600(60%) “Did Not Apply”, and 400(40%) “Applied”.

In order to dive deeper into this information, the next step is to breakdown the Application Decisions, as displayed in Figure 2. It’s important to note that at this point in the process we are left with 400(40%) prospective students of the total 1,000 inquiries. The chart shows that of the 400 applicants there are 100(25%) “Not Admitted”, and 300(75%) “Admitted”.

As we continue to drilldown deeper into the data it is necessary to breakdown the number of students still remaining into a pool of prospective students whom have enrolled. Keep in mind that initially we began with 1000 inquiries, and thus far in the process there are 300(30%) remaining which will make an enrollment decision. Figure 3 shows that in this scenario 75(25%) are “Not Enrolled”, and 225(75%) are “Enrolled” at this snapshot in time.

Finally we will analyze the prospective students whom have “Deposited/Confirmed”, note that there are 225(22.5%) inquiries remaining at this point in the process. As illustrated in Figure 4 we can now see that there are 25(11.1%) “Not Deposited/Confirmed”, and 200(88.9%) are “Deposited/Confirmed”. This provides a total yield from “Inquiry” to “Confirmed” of 20%, and a loss of 80%.

The complexity of this scenario could certainly increase by adding filter criteria to the process such as; College, Student Type, Gender, Athletic Status, State, Financial Need, etc., however, in this scenario, we examined a simple example of a yield rate using a funnel cone chart type and a method utilizing a funnel cone chart process.

Zach Breimayer- Technical Consultant, iDashboards

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of BI Dashboards is the fact that I don’t have to read through 50 page PDF reports or thousands of rows of Excel data in order to try to decipher which information is critical to interpret, analyze and take action on. BI Dashboards take those traditional 50 page PDF reports or flat files and transfers them into a visualization environment that tells a dimensional story. The traditional dashboard functionality including drilling down into information for root cause analysis, pivoting or filtering on various data elements and, of course, the flashy look and feel are all important factors in a BI Dashboard solution. The one functionality that often gets lost in the mix is the ability to receive real time alerts based upon threshold values and rule sets. Traditionally, word of mouth in a company was often the alerting mechanism; when something went right or wrong in the business operations, someone was getting praised or chewed out. With real time alerts in a dashboard solution, many KPIs that may otherwise get missed or come to light too late, are brought forth as the backend database triggers an event which then alerts the group of users who need to know the applicable information. So when the east coast regional sales office has only reached 62.54% of goal for the month with 1 week to go, or flight delays are increasing throughout the day at a rate anticipated to interrupt several connections for passengers, the proper management needs to receive that dashboard alert, email or text message. Without real time insight, how can you make better business decisions for the long term?

Andy Jesudowich- Technical Consultant, iDashboards

With the recent launch of iDashboards v7.5 came a variety of new chart types; primarily Presentation Charts. For the first time in iDashboards history our charts can display more than text, dates or numbers. Presentation charts have the unique ability to dynamically display images and formatted text.

Our charts and graphs already have the ability to tell a story through the visual representation of data. In essence, the chart below should tell part of the story on how Plant ‘South’ has high costs and low productivity compared to Plant ‘North’.

So how do Presentation Charts relate to a BI dashboard? Here’s an example:
Manufacturing plants assign part numbers to different components. Business users often type part numbers into the engineering product drawing database to retrieve the image of the part. In the image below, the user found a chart where the product failures were high. By using interactive intelligence and a presentation chart, the image and details of the part are quickly displayed within the same dashboard. This would allow for faster retrieval of the image without using additional steps.

Presentation charts can save time and enhance the discovery of critical business data.

Ken Rose - Technical Consultant, iDashboards

I think it’s a safe assumption these days that most organizations have changed operational gears; looking to our past, let’s say the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was a lot easier to hit the auto-pilot button, sit back and relax while watching profit and revenue soar. Our global economy has evolved through the early 21st century though, most if not all organizations have clicked off the auto-pilot and business has truly become a cost-cutting struggle to extreme efficiency.

Lately, we’ve seen the effects of this economic downturn spread across every industry from the financial sector, to the housing industry, even bringing down the behemoths of the auto industry. To me this says one thing: it’s time for a game changer. It’s time to shift gears, and pass your competition. Perhaps you’ve been sitting right behind them, drafting, waiting for the perfect opportunity to down-shift and blow right past them. Well perhaps that opportunity has been there all along, you’ve always kept the data, you possibly even had to (thanks to regulation and compliance). So why not take all the time and money you’ve invested in, harvest that data and turn that into something. Turn it into insight. While you’re competition is still reacting, you can be evolving…to the next level of business intelligence. Deploying dashboards is an excellent way to monitor every aspect of business throughout your organization. While your VPs and directors are busy tracking performance, management can be busy measuring it. From there you begin coordinating those results to foster interoffice promotional campaigns and next thing you know, you’ve drastically improved your productivity and efficiency; if from nothing else due to the increased internal competition arising from the improved insight and transparency you’ve established. The paradigm then shifts and your organizational culture now moves to a mode of competitive excellence where nobody wants their numbers showing up as last month’s subpar performance.

Sure there’s an additional time and monetary investment involved to get there, but isn’t ignoring the problem part of what got us here in the first place? Micromanagement is overkill in many eyes, but no one said it needed to be that way. Oversight is plenty, and dashboards are the perfect solution to organizational oversight, all it takes is a commitment.

Jason Wolan- Technical Consultant, iDashboards

If you are planning to purchase a dashboarding tool, or have recently purchased one, chances are that it is for specific requirements and needs. Maybe the executive team needed a quick at-a-glance view of the entire company or a certain department wanted to monitor specific indicators. Or perhaps the need was to capture various indicators for several departments. A dashboarding tool thus should provide metric visualization from various applications and departments.

The purchase of the dashboarding tool could be for very specific purpose, however, often times that tool finds usage in unexpected ways. Let’s take an example of a company where the main purpose for the dashboarding tool was to monitor the sales & marketing projects, however, the technical support department could also use the application for their department management. Not only could they measure the KPIs for the management, but they started using the tool to monitor call activity and corresponding resource management by connecting to the telephone system. Another example is the IT department utilizing the dashboarding tool to monitor the status of various servers. A simple visualization of the servers’ status as stop lights provide easy monitoring.

Do you have a story of your own to share?

Zahid Ansari - Technical Consultant, iDashboards

One trend I’ve noticed while working with customers is a scenario we’ve named “scope creep”. This refers to the tendency of dashboarding projects to quickly get out of range with the target the developer is trying to hit. Something to keep in mind while constructing your dashboard is who will be the actual end-user of this dashboard. Doing this will greatly improve end-user adoption. For example, if I’m a C-level executive, I have a lot of big picture decisions to make. I need to worry about vision & direction. I shouldn’t be bogged down with everyday minutia like whether individual team members are meeting their KPIs or not; that’s for people managers to worry about. What I need to see is:
1) How the company is doing as a whole.
2) If the vision milestones I’ve created are being achieved or not.
3) Sticking points holding back the company’s progress towards my vision.

Creating dashboards that drilldown to individual transactions may be a great feature, but you should remember your audience & consider not burdening people with extra details they may not need. In the example cited above, drilling down to the individual level would detract the Executive from their focus of vision & direction.

Another example, going in the opposite direction, is providing individuals with info that is beyond their level of concern. For instance, if I’m a teller at a credit union, I shouldn’t be privy to the total number of deposits my branch has made that day. I shouldn’t know how much in cash reserves are on hand at any given time. I definitely shouldn’t have access to information about another branch. What I should be focused on is the customer I’m servicing. Should I try to up sell them into a line of credit? A home equity loan? A car loan? Take a moment to step back and consider the KPIs with which the person would like to interact. It might be more of a hassle for someone to comb through a bunch of metrics that doesn’t impact their working life.

Just taking the time and care to remember your core audience members, when constructing dashboards, will definitely help user-adoption rates and make you look like a pro working with the iDashboards software. Not only does this show intelligence, it shows business intelligence.

Matt Crawford- Technical Consultant, iDashboards

Collaboration via document management has become a central focus for many organizations, raising the question, how can we expand the concept beyond simple document collaboration and begin to collaborate on the central mission – including the critical metrics and KPIs that should be a focus for a user, group, or department?

Dashboard collaboration is essentially the act of providing business users, analysts, and executives with real-time views of their data, and creating an environment in which they can have discussions remotely as the data is captured. The concept of collaboration includes users working in sync and communicating effectively in real-time. Typically, businesses decide to implement SharePoint for the document management functionality, which allows users to collaborate on team documents. With this in mind, we can take this functionality to the next step and enable users to collectively work together by developing and viewing dashboards in an environment conducive to collaboration. Many organizations have static snapshots of their data in the form of reports, allowing discussions to only take place during predetermined intervals, such as weekly meetings, and not as the data is captured.

A reporting/dashboarding solution may enable features such as sharing developed content in real-time and commenting within the application. This will provide a platform for communication, enabling discussions regarding important metrics to take place, and fosters effective decision making. If these features are unavailable in your solution perhaps there are some workarounds for creating the dashboard collaboration effect. If your organization uses SharePoint it may be possible to embed the metrics within a site and configure the page to allow user comments or discussions within an existing collaborative environment.

Zach Breimayer- Technical Consultant, iDashboards