After reviewing the internship activity in chapter 12, “Industry: Healthcare” and completing independent online research, I have found helpful information on Business Intelligence dashboard best practices. As stated in the internship activity “Dashboards are a popular way to view business data” (Rainer, Prince, & Cegielski, 2014). In fact, Stephen Few sums up the definition of Business Intelligence dashboard in this sentence “A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance” (Lach, 2012). BI dashboards are a delivery method used to share information with appointed users or a number of individuals …show more content…
Doing this will bring users to the most important pieces of information located on the dashboard. When doing this it is key to avoid clutter, such as visibly unnecessary chart types. With any unnecessary information or visuals it can distract and turn the users away from the data being shown. A practice that goes along with this is using “color appropriately and sparingly to achieve maximum contrast” (Lach, 2012). When designing a dashboard of reports the color selection should be thought out to enhance readability of charts. The precise selection and use of color will help bring the users’ attention to the significant trends, developments, and actions. Making data points different from one another and from the charts and backgrounds will help the important information be seen. On the other hand, if there are too many colors being used it can be hard to find and grasp the information. A cool trick is to relate colors to their symbolic or metaphoric meaning, such as red equals bad. Another practice is to select the best visualizations, not the best looking visualizations. Imagery should be kept simple and the focus should be on the data not the dashboard. Too flashy visuals and chart types should not be used when there are simpler alternatives for users to understand the same message. When designing, the dashboard context should always be provided. If there is no context, then the data visuals presented are basically useless. Finally, dashboards should have support and prompt action. “After drilling to detail to ascertain the root cause of a notable change or event, users must be enabled with a range of options to share the new information and their associated thoughts with others, in order to drive appropriate resultant action” (Lach, 2012). BI dashboards should be effective and efficient for businesses to view their data. These are the best BI dashboard practices I have researched that will
Operational Dashboards These dashboards display data that facilitate the operational side of a business. For example, in a business with a website, it’s important to ensure that your website remains up and running, so you would monitor server up-time and utilization. In a business with an inside sales function, you may want to create a dedicated sales dashboard that displays number of calls made and number of appointments booked.
It displays relevant data and lets you drill down as necessary to take an even deeper look at any aspect of that data. For instance, a dashboard might show you that sales for one product line are way up today. A good dashboard lets you drill past that information and figure out why they’re up. Displays a relevant data.
Organizational dashboards are inclusive of three key elements, finance, operational efficiency and quality of care, which are driven by government regulations following Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. These elements are also in alignment with the goals triple aim to provide quality care, improve population health and to be cost effective. Our organizational dashboard is delivered to Directors to showcase and promote quality in various areas. Benefits of the dashboard are inclusive of real time results and the ability to compare performance results among various departments within the organization (Ghazisaeidi et al., 2015).
Currently, the dashboards I’ve created have not been successful in their goal because instead of providing actionable insight, they have simply been regurgitation and filtered views of the data. Due to my lack of a full understanding of the data and the business they have not provided the actionable insight, have left the interpretation to the Executives and are siloed to only
Adding context adds value to the overall dashboard. Benchmarks can be used for setting up internal / external goals, moreover, previous performance will provide context to the dashboard. The ultimate goal is not just to inform the performance of a metric but also provide the ways to improve. Secondly, segmentation is a tactic which is easily comprehensible and distinguishes the good performance to poor ones.
This study also made a comparative analysis of the use of different functionalities offered by a dashboard in three functional areas of the organization. Different departments in an organization use dashboards differently to serve their unique
Each type of analytics as seen on the diagram above, could share a common sub group which could in turn have additional classifications. understanding and reviewing the different types of analytics systems and choosing those that best suite an organization is very helpful in determining the analytic plan for the future of the business. Succeeding in this, will definitely give a boost to the overall value of a business platform.
9. Staheli, R. (2016). Healthcare Dashboards: 3 Keys for Creating Effective and Insightful Executive Dashboards. Retrieved April, 4, 2016, from https://www.healthcatalyst.com/healthcare-dashboards-3-keys-creating-effective-insightful-executive-dashboards
The dashboard should be viewed as a platform that helps drive decisions. Here is where the trinity mindset discussed in Kaushik’s blog ‘Occam’s Razor’ can help us design better dashboards. “Actionable Insights & Metrics are the uber-goal simply because they drive strategic differentiation and a sustainable competive advantage.” (Kaushik, 2006)
Dashboards are a visual representation of the overall business processes and magnify their successes and/or failures
When it comes to enterprise-level approach to and management of analytics, BofW’s abilities lie currently within one group in the company; BIDM. The business intelligence and data management group in BofW doesn’t have the same function as the BICC does as mentioned in Competing on Analytics. BICC is defined as “a cross-functional team with a permanent, formal organization structure… It is owned and staffed by the company and has defined tasks, roles, responsibilities and processes for supporting and promoting the effective use of business intelligence across the organization (Davenport 29). The BIDM group is a good start, but currently within BofW it serves as a central data warehouse, where other teams and business units can tap into for
Designers of metrics management dashboards need to incorporate three areas of knowledge and expertise when building dashboards. They must understand the dashboard users’ needs and expectations both for metrics and for the presentation of those metrics; they must understand where and how to get the data for these metrics; and they must apply uniform standards to the design of dashboards and dashboard suites in order to make them ‘intuitive’ for the end-users. This paper outlines dashboard design best practices and design tips, and will help dashboard designers ensure that their projects meet with end-user approval. It concludes with a checklist of design
However, dashboards can often be created ineffectively for a number of reasons. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to creating the dashboard as the metrics to track vary by industry, company, and even division within companies. Kaushik in his first book on analytics provides a number of guidelines to follow in order to create a dashboard that is effective and easily understood. (Kaushik 2010.)
Analysts have tried everything to make dashboards better. We have hired expensive consultants. We have purchased expensive software. We have replaced numbers with fancy visualizations (thermometers, anyone?). We have even tried to stuff as many tabs and metrics as we can into an excel spreadsheet. But still the dashboards we send are put on auto delete.
An executive dashboard is a computer interface that displays the key performance indicators that corporate officers need to effectively run an enterprise In information technology, the term dashboard refers to a graphical user interface (GUI) that organizes and presents information in a format that is easy to read and interpret. An effective executive dashboard serves as a starting point from which a corporate executive can get a sense of the big picture before digging deeper into data. It is an intuitive, flexible, customizable, 100% web-based Executive Information System (EIS). Implementing Executive Dashboard into an organization allows company executives and managers to view critical metrics in a dashboard setting, with the ability to drill down within the dashboard and view those metrics at any level. Executive Dashboard allows an organization to more effectively and efficiently execute on strategy, improve business processes and manage key company metrics proactively.