A whitepaper on the emergence of Business Dashboards as the preferred way to analyze data in the various departments within a company.

1. You + Business
Dashboard
nextCoder
White Paper
Series

2. YO U + B U S I N E S S
D AS H B O ARD S
Imagine seeing your business as an engine
whose performance and condition can be
monitored right in front of your eyes. That is
the sort of power you can have at your
fingertips when you have access to a welldesigned, and well-implemented Business
Dashboard.
A business equipped with Business
Dashboards
empowers
its
personnels from the Executives to
the field operators, to have a better
control over all operations. So they
can be proactive, and never again
be blindsided by unexpected
changes -- which translates into
higher efficiency and quality.
WHAT IS A B USINESS
D ASHBOARD ?
comprehensive data visibility, and if
implemented correctly, it allows you to tweak
your business parameters -- as you have
never experienced before.
A Business Dashboard brings relevant
information, both internal and external,
closer to the minds who have to make crucial
decisions daily.
To put it simply, a set of Business Dashboards
is part of tools and processes which enable
businesses to harness
any accessible data, to
form a solid foundation
and a launchpad for
growth.
"Dashboards
show you
what is going
on both
within and
outside of
your
business"
Let's start with what it is not. It is not simply
a colection of fancy-looking charts, numbers
and tables. It goes beyond by providing more
B UT WE ALREADY
H AVE REPORTS
While reports allow you
to assess the situation,
Business Dashboards brings with it two key
abilities:
‣ TO QUICKLY ANALYZE THE TRENDS
Ab o u t n ex tC o d e r
We h e l p b u s i n e s s e s t u r n t h e i r exi s t i n g b u s i n e s s d a ta i n t o i n c re a s e d p ro f i t s a n d c o s t s a vi n g s .
B y fo c u s i n g o n D a ta Wa re h o u s e c o n s t r u c t i o n , w e b r i d g e IT d e p a r t m e n t s w i t h d e c i s i o n m a k e r s
w i t h i n a n o rg a n i za t i o n .
A re yo u lo o k i n g fo r w a y s t o m a k e eve n b e t te r b u s i n e s s d e c i s i o n s ?
C o n ta c t u s vi a o u r
w e b s i te , fo l low u s o n Tw i t te r : @ n ex tc o d e r w i l l
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3. ‣ TO INTERACT WITH THE BUSINESS VARIABLES
A typical report shows you information from a single data source or
dimension. It will not allow you to draw conclusion from seemingly
unrelated information. A good Dashboard is a report "on steroid"
because it displays multiple data points with which you can see not
only a bigger picture, but a more complete one.
WHO S HOULD U SE A D ASHBOARD ?
There are two broad categories of Business Dashboards:
‣ S TRATEGIC D ASHBOARDS
‣ O PERATIONAL D ASHBOARDS
Questions that Business
Dashboards help you to
answer:
1 . Is my business running as best
as it could?
2. Do my personnels have the
right info to perform optimally?
3. Are there any problems within
my departments?
4. Which customer is more likely
to buy my products?
5. How am I doing against my
competitors?
Dashboards are not only useful for executives or
business owners (Strategic ones), it is also extremely
useful when used at the departmental or field level
(Operational ones). The Strategic Dashboards contain
rules that that are different than Operational ones. And
the closer to the business operation, the more real-time
the Dashboard typically becomes.
Having a Dashboard for each department within the
company give you the ability to not only see your data
better, but also to oversee, forecast, and to some
degree, predict what is going to happen or what you
should plan for, in the near future.
So who should be using Business Dashboards? Everyone
in the company who uses information to make decisions.
H OW M UCH I S THE C OST?
A Business Dashboard used to cost thousands of dollars to implement
and maintain. Not anymore.
With the right personnel who has the experience and knowledge to
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4. choose the right tools, a Business Dashboard
can be built and maintained for way less cost
today, thanks to the billions of dollars spent by
large corporations on R&D that we may
benefit from the results at a much smaller
scale.
H OW TO G ET
S TARTED ?
A typical Business
Dashboard
implementation
starts with a single
spreadsheet, because
every business has
one. A competent BI
consultant, especially
the one who has
experiences across
different
industry
domains, should be
able to build for you
a useful and working
dashboards for you, then for your department
heads.
How would you access the dashboard? Most
dashboards today are accessible online via an
Internet browser. But the minimum
requirement for a dashboard is that it is
protected from access by unauthorized
personnels.
Take a quick look at the dashboard sample at
the center of this page. The dashboard
conveys information in a manner that is simple
© 201 3 nextCoder
and concise, yet makes sense for the business
owner (fictitious company and data, in this
case). This dashboard illustrates how we can
provide a place where the user to run through
what-if scenarios, also analyze the data from
different dimensions and perspective. What
this
screenshot
failed to convey is
the
dashboards's
interactivity.
C ONCLUSION
Without a doubt,
Business
Dashboards are here
to stay. The sheer
time-saving
over
doing the traditional
reports, and the
insight
that
it
provides
give
business
owners
leverage to use their own data to keep the
pulse of their business right under their
fingers. And most importantly, the next
generation dashboards allow you to interact
and tweak your business parameters, bringing
you more than just insight, but also more
control.
If you have been thinking that spreadsheets
are still sufficient for your business, it is time
to have a second look at Business Dashboards.
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