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Digital Dashboards
Digital Dashboards use Microsoft Exchange and other Office 2000 products to knit together a real-time system that integrates information from many different sources. The idea is like the dashboard of your car -- at a glance, you can see if things are working or not (engine, transmission, speed, tach, electronics, radiator temperature, etc.) and make quick, yet informed decisions based on what the information tells you. Digital Dashboard ExampleA sales department has a digital dashboard that tells them what products are selling well, how regions are selling relative to one another, key customers and accounts receivable. Using real-time information from the Web, direct connections to operational systems databases inside the company, and other systems, the dashboard presents a concise picture of your business to the people who can make decisions quickly. A FBC Customer uses their Digital Dashboard to let them know a few pieces of key information clearly, concisely and in real-time:
Using the Digital Dashboard enables management to deal with the issues in real-time. A dealer’s telephone representative is ill -- and no calls are being made back to leads. Previously, they would find this out a week later, when the percentage converted to sales was low and they investigated it. Now they can call the dealer and say: “You have 5 calls in you queue you have not called back … why?” In this case they can assist the dealer or re-direct the calls to a dealer that can handle the workload. Similarly, the effectiveness of marketing campaigns can be seen immediately. If a campaign is successful, the marketing group can recognize it immediately and refocus resources to the most successful campaign. In the past we have performed post-mortems ... today we can provide real-time treatment of business problems. How does it work?Office 2000 has features that make the integration of information to Knowledge Workers (MS calls it Knowledge Management or KM) relatively easy. We can connect to SQL Server, Oracle or DB2 databases and extract information as it is requested. The information is placed in a web-page format and displayed in Outlook -- where users look at their mail, their calendar and other relevant business information. The Digital Dashboard can display any web pages, from the WWW or internal webs, as well as the public and private folders of the user. The user easily customizes the dashboard and the flexible reporting features can be used instead of the many printed reports generated by most business systems. |
Isn’t this an Executive Information System?
Yes and no. In the past Executive Information Systems (EIS) were developed to provide very similar function to Digital Dashboards. The key difference is the information in the Dashboard is real-time, generated by connecting to databases or the web. It is not coded in static pages or assembled by a support person. As a result, the information in the Dashboard has far wider applicability in business. While a CEO may be able to justify a headcount to gather and sort this type of information, a Sales Manager cannot. That does not mean however, the Sales Manager doesn’t need this type of information. It just means it is often hard to get the real data. (Anybody who has tried to get real budget/actual data from a finance department knows what I mean) Isn’t a Digital Dashboard a Data Warehouse?To a certain degree, but Data Warehouses are the answer to poorly integrated and unfriendly systems. The warehouse integrates these disparate systems together. The best example I can think of is the Telephone Company. They think of you as telephone numbers (home, fax, internet, cell, pager) and each of these numbers is an account. Unfortunately, they cannot think of you as a person. The warehouse lets them do it until their systems become more market-focused. To a great extent, connecting to the data in real-time will eliminate data warehouses. If this isn’t possible, an intermediary, such as a SQL Server database can accumulate the information, and pass it to the Dashboard. How do I get started?You can read about Digital Dashboards from Microsoft on their web-site. They have a few demonstration Dashboards you can look at to get a look and feel. Naturally, I would recommend you engage a consultant with the business experience to help you determine what information is worthwhile putting on your Dashboard, and how to access the data at its source. How can First-Break Consulting help?We have senior consultants that will help you determine what you need to view on the dashboard and how to connect to your data. We can quickly and inexpensively mockup a few screens to review and refine. Our technical experts can build the web-pages and Exchange folders required. We can also assist in managing the connectivity requirements to databases inside your organization. For more information and a discussion on how we can help you implement Digital Dashboards in your organization please contact Matt Alexander at matt.alexander@firstbreak.com |
