WHAT IS A DASHBOARD?"A digital dashboard, also known as an enterprise dashboard or executive

dashboard, is a business management tool used to visually ascertain the status (or "health") of a business enterprise via key business indicators. Digital dashboards use visual, at-a-glance displays of data pulled from disparate business systems to provide warnings, action notices, next steps, and summaries of business conditions."

Source: Wikipedia2

NEED FOR A DASHBOARD

• In today’s world where people are inundated with more data than they can process, dashboard design plays a very important role as it is the channel through which information flows to the decision-maker

• Top level executives do not have the time to wade through voluminous sets of reports

• Easy access to actionable information

3

TYPES OF DASHBOARD

4

KEY FEATURES OF A DASHBOARD

• Clarity

• Balance

• Appropriateness

5

BEST PRACTICES (AESTHETICS)• Layout and Clarity – 3 and 10 seconds rule

• Use date windows so that end-users can change the date to see different report.

• Band / highlight selected dates to so that users know what they are looking.

• Use effective colors

• Use basic charts

• Be smart with data labels 

• Let your users customize the dashboard

• Highlight important information

• Show metrics by dimension

• A good dashboard tells what is important and what is not

6

BEST PRACTICES (KPI)• Customizable KPI List

• Content is king. Do not roll out a new functional area (e.g. marketing,

finance, etc.) until there are at least 3 to 5 KPI’s available for users to

select.

• Three to seven KPI’s per tab seems to be most effective.

• Overall the median number of KPI’s on most user’s dashboards is 20

across all functional areas. (e.g. 3 to 7 KPI’s per tab, with 3 to 5 tabs).

• KPI’s should be indicators only; analysis is accomplished via drill-down.

• All KPI’s should be “drillable” to access additional detail and conduct

further analysis.

• Be judicious in your use of graphic icons and color coded indicators.

Too many graphics or the proverbial spinning logo can quickly confuse

or annoy users.

7

APPROACHES

• Build a custom application

• Use a Dashboard Designing Tool

• Use of Big Vendor’s BI Tool

• Creating Dashboards using Excel

8

CHOICE OF TOOL• Heavy Analytics vs. Static reports

• Geographical data (i.e. Sales by Province in Canada) – Map

• Data over time, ratio data, comparison of linear data – Chart

• Snapshot data, single values (i.e. KPIs) – Gauge

• Multidimensional data – OLAP

• Other data – Diagram

9

CHOICE OF TOOL

10

LATEST TOOLS• Performance Point 2010

• Report Part SSRS R2

• Dundas

• Power Pivot

• PushBI

11

DECOMPOSITION TREE

12

SAMPLE DASHBOARD

13

SAMPLE INTERACTIVE DASHBOARD

14

SAMPLE INTERACTIVE DASHBOARD

15

HANDS-ONHands-on walk through of Power Pivot

16

?

17

THANK YOU

18