Dashboards in Data Warehouse

What is a Dashboard in Business terms?

 

A Business Intelligence Dashboard visually represents the key organizational performance data in a near real time, user friendly manner that can be understood instantaneously. Technically speaking, a Dashboard is a visual representation that reflects the Key Performance Indicators(KPIs) of interest for managerial review and not only that it enables them to drill-down further. Business Intelligence Dashboard is similar in function to a car dashboard in that it displays and provides access to the powerful analytical systems and key performance metrics in a form enabling business executives to analyze trends and more effectively manage their areas of responsibility.

Features of Dashboard

 

A typical web based Business Intelligence Dashboard encompasses the following features

• Web based Interface: Managers can gain broad visibility into the real-time key measurements of a business with the help of this multi-window, intuitive and interactive interface.

• Role Based View: Executives can clearly track their organization's overall performance against its goals.

• Reports: Configurable, user-level as well as management-level reports.

• Charting and Graphing: Dashboards are better known for their easy one-click charts and graphs that gives instant access to complex solutions.

• Pre-defined Performance Metrics: All the Dashboards are built with the common pre-defined metrics by default which eases the business user in tracking the regular yet important performance metrics.

Benefits of using Business Intelligence Dashboard

 

Dashboards quickly convert and communicate the complex corporate data into a meaningful display of charts, graphs, gauges and other formats concurrently. A dynamic, intelligence Dashboard will allow the managers to drill-down data to go deeper into the analysis. It eliminates the need to go through several reports, in one shot Dashboard gives a clear picture about how a company is performing in its critical areas.

Dashboard Softwares

Following are few of the famous Business Intelligence Dashboard softwares available in the current market.

Cognos ReportNet

A product from Cognos that helps to build, distribute, and view multi-object dashboards with graphical elements such as gauges, charts, and clickable pictures. Connects dashboards with underlying tabular data, letting people go from a high-level view to a deeper understanding.

Source: www.Cognos.com

MicroStrategy

Microstrategy Dashboards are designed to deliver maximum visual impact in a format optimized for quick absorption, using a combination of tables, graphics, gauges, dials and other graphical indicators, as well as conditional formatting, free-form labels, borders and background colors.

Source: www.microstrategy.com

BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager:

Dashboard Manager lets one choose the level of detail they need - an overview, a specific chart or graph, or the underlying report.

Source: www.businessobjects.com

The Compliance Management Dashboard

A product from Hyperion provides easy-to-use screens, meters, and stoplights that quickly convey critical information. The Compliance Management Dashboard includes a data model with pre-built connectors to data sources, a set of compliance metrics, and a series of easy-to-use screens, meters, and stoplights designed to quickly convey critical information needed by finance executives. Source: www.hyperion.com

Scorecards:

Scorecards are similar to Dashboards in a way that it provides easy-to-understand, summarized, at-a-glance data for the managers and top officials to tell them about their company's present and past performance.

Scorecards thus help to monitor the Key Performance Indicators accurately and to communicate the goals and strategies across the organization in an efficient and elegant manner. In a Business Intelligence environment, Scorecards allows managers to set metrics or targets and monitor them to see their impact on every department.

Balanced Scorecards:

A methodology created by Drs. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton in 1992, is a management concept which helps managers at all levels monitor results in their key areas, including financial performance, customer knowledge, internal business processes and learning. It has been implemented in thousands of corporations, organizations and government agencies worldwide

 Business Intelligence Tools Directory:

• Actuate

• Business Objects

• Cognos

• HummingBird

• Hyperion

• Information Builders

• MicroStrategy

• ProClarity

• Siebel