Business Intelligence
Dashboard Design
Business dashboards have been around in some form or other since the 1980s in the guise of
an Executive Information System (EIS). The name has changed and the underlying tools
have become more complex and capable, but the purpose is the same. Dashboards and
scorecards are similar, with the "balanced scorecard" concept trying to take the
bias out of business management by having
some KPIs
from all components of a business.
Simplistically, the major purpose of a dashboard is to display important information
for the operation of a business.
Ideally the data displayed should be well defined so that any person within the
business would interpret the numbers in the same way. The display should also be
unambiguous in terms of the format, colouring, scaling and style of graphs. Remember
that the intention is to convey information. Often the simplest dashboards are the
most effective and are ideally displayed on one screen (or page). They show the
most important information to the business that will enable it to be successful.
See a sample dashboard
here.
Sample Microsoft Business Manager Scorecard
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