Business intelligence is about getting the right information in front of key users at the right time. Dashboards, when used with a powerful analytic engine, represent the ultimate manifestation of this principle. Dashboards have different degrees of deployment, anything from a single view in four easy measures of the health and wealth of the business, right down to the alignment of appropriate resource to requirement.

Dashboards have become an integral part of today’s global businesses. Prior to dashboards, business analysts had to read dozens of reports to learn of profits by product, new quarterly customers, or expenses across business units. Dashboards remove the need for these reports, and allow analysts to view data in a single graphical interface.

When effectively used, they empower managers to make smarter decisions by relying on measurable data via at-a-glance summaries of key performance indicators. Dashboards can then be used to drill down to gain valuable insights that show what’s truly driving the business performance.

Dashboards readily reflect the state of an organisation and represent a very holistic, high level view with some containing more latent views than others. It’s very easy to look at a profit and loss (P&L) display to determine if a company is down on profit. Viewing the P&L however, doesn’t show management why business is down and what it relates to on the bottom line. Just as easy as it is to view a P&L, it’s easier to design a dashboard that not only shows the company’s financial status, but also reports back to management the direct connection in the business that relates to increased or decreased profitability.

Information, now
Immediacy is a crucial element of any successful dashboard – as action is taken as a result of timely information. For example, a bank running a network of ATMs needs to know what’s happening with its machines. How much cash does it have? Is it up? Are there any outages? Information about an ATM will not be useful if it appears in a report the next week. It needs to show up with a simple click prior to the Friday evening rush.

Dashboards can report with such immediacy. Prior to dashboards, the bank would have to rely on a monthly statistics report on ATM transactions, or perhaps a daily statistics report that showed ATM sites by geography or cash amount. Everything would be in a post mortem approach – costing the bank money in transaction fees if it didn’t know of an ATM outage for several days, rather than within a few minutes.

By enabling these business decisions, dashboards can be among the highest ROI technology solutions an organisation can implement – allowing managers to intervene quickly when things go wrong. Dashboards are also powerful tools for cost control. All in all, they offer tremendous business value – especially as they fully leverage an organisation’s existing IT investments.

The people question
Like other technologies, dashboards rely significantly on the success of user adoption and are generally only as successful as how rapidly a critical mass of users adopt the dashboard interface to perform their daily activities. Before implementing dashboards, a company must go through a discovery process to evaluate the cultural changes that dashboards will have on its people as well as its business.

Without examining issues that drive employees, dashboards will be off target. Part of the discovery process includes understanding the key drivers, as well as behavioral and organisational goals.

During this discovery process, managers should consider three things.

Dashboards are a contextual information delivery vehicle. Without such understanding, dashboards can become a dumping ground for incongruous, unrelated, items that aren’t tied to either the overall business or to something that is contextually relevant to a user.

Dashboards should help reveal the answers to the questions that organisations ask of themselves, irrespective of department objectives. What does each person in each area need to do to support the individual business goal? How does an individual perform the role that ultimately drives performance? Where is the connection between an employee’s individual role and the overall success of the company?

In terms of data used within a dashboard, what is the breadth of accessibility that will drive each dashboard? As mentioned, a dashboard is a delivery vehicle, but for what and from where? Successful dashboards will be delivered when managers have 100 % access into the data that feeds the application.

Understanding the impact of dashboards will determine which approach to take when implementing them. It’s also important for managers to decide which staff members need to see what information. Users are often given far too much functionality. People should only see the data they need.

Change management
There are two ways to ease employees into the cultural changes. Managers could either drip feed the technology over time – meaning the software becomes part of the user’s desktops, and training is provided over time. Or the organisation could require that dashboards become the standard tool for viewing the business, delivering critical messages to its employees, as well as the mandate for individual performance evaluations.

However, determining the type of dashboard necessary for company success is merely the first step. The next is tying employee accountability to dashboards, creating an even more critical need for their understanding. Because dashboards can be representative of the state of the business, they not only provide management with a clearer view of the bottom line, but they also provide other staff with a view of the top line.

It’s easy for employees to say they understand how their activities affect the overall success of a company. Dashboards quantify the activity to success ratios – creating a direct connection between employee behavior and incentives that directly impact individuals. Employees of all levels have access to critical operational and financial data that drive the business. Rather than using a cattle prod method to increase employee productivity, many companies tie user incentives directly to their compensation programs, using dashboards. Take an employee’s personal compensation plan, for example.

If 40 % of the variable income is bonus based, a typical company determines that bonus amount on intangible manager input. Dashboards bring more tangible elements to that success evaluation. This gives incentive programs more meaning, and creates urgency for the employees to develop goals for themselves that relate directly to the overall success of the business.

A team approach
Dashboards can help drive a employee culture of being part of a business organism. Each employee receives a goal, then uses a dashboard to understand the context of their role and measure their individual performance against that context. There is an implicit sense of load balancing. If dashboards are implemented in the right way with usable triggers, alerts and perceptions, every member of the team will understand their part and work toward the organisation’s common goals.

Another aspect to the success of any business is the appropriate allocation of staff resource. How do you match the right people with the right skills to the right role? A talent management focused dashboard may help reveal where latent skills exist within individuals. In a hospital, for example, a pediatric nurse might have skills they could use in the oncology department. By designing the dashboard with the right exceptions and alerts, companies can take existing staff profiles and match them to internal head count requirements – more effectively utilising its people. The first step is for managers to understand the cultural effects on personnel by implementing dashboards – as choosing good performance indicators is tantamount to achieving one’s goals.

For more information contact:
Mark Fazackerley
Senior Account Manager - NZ
Phone: +61 2 94553330
Mobile: +61 4 17021582
Email: mark_fazackerley@hyperion.com
Web: www.hyperion.com

October 2004

By Colin Dover