Business intelligence through executive dashboard

Business intelligence (BI) tools have emerged as vital tool for helping top management in achieving strategic objectives. Business intelligence represents a subset of BPM tools that are data driven as they deal with huge database systems and are also model driven as they construct analytics using optimizing algorithms, decision trees, rules engines, forecasting algorithms etc.

Business intelligence tools have gained prominence as they facilitate decision making in an organization. Decision making is of crucial importance today in the face of change and competition. Top management teams require all the analytical and forecasting capabilities like never before to prepare the organization for next strategic change. Business intelligence systems provide an interactive system to help decision makers.

Dashboards drive decisions
Business dashboards or executive dashboards as they are popularly known are in fact a sub-system of BPM and more precisely of business intelligence systems that give one an ability to extract learning from historical trends, compare with current trends and provide model driven analytics to make informed decisions. They are extremely helpful in optimizing the performance by improving the quality of decisions. It can be said that dashboards are process oriented – they relate to process outcomes along the value chain of the company, and are goals focused – they indicate the measures that align corporate goals with process outcomes.

Dashboards can be designed for unit levels also but emphasis is on executive dashboards that support decision making at highest level. They typically process huge volumes of data and provide actionable information for management to respond to critical events in an intelligent way. Dashboards are based on data integration and information visualization. It is a visual communication tool for the top management, which gives them the requisite business intelligence and reason to act on the information. In other words the strong visual representation backed up with sound data integration and analytical logic can inspire top management into action. Contrast this with the traditional IT systems which generated bulky and mundane reports which left remote chance for management to know where to act and how to act.

With its multi dimensional analytics, dashboard adds on to the ability of the key managers by providing them in depth insight of the business. Data integration is at the heart of dashboard design and provides information in many layers. Users can dig deep into the information uncovering layers of overview information and thus getting to the minutest of details and trends. For example sales trends geography wise, product wise, customer segment wise can effectively understand some undesirable trend with respect to a specific business element.

Some precautions
Dashboards provide insights into the performance in all critical areas and their impact on the company’s strategic goals. To achieve this is no easy task. There are a few critical factors that may make or mar the system.

Dashboards are not about great graphics and cutting edge technology – they are simply about the outcomes that company desires to achieve – never lose sight of them during the design.

Identification and preparation of relevant data is the key – integration is the next critical thing, do not worry about graphic generation and visualization at this stage.

Picking up the right data requires decent understanding of the processes – emphasize process expertise not IT expertise.

Do not be carried away by the animation and 3D features – use animations and fancy graphics only when absolutely necessary for better understanding of the information.

Ensure that the system is being used to fullest extent and respond promptly to any suggestions for improvements, so that the system is not reduced to another IT artifact that failed to live to its promise.