Topic > Effectiveness of Dashboards for Business Performance Management

Advances in information technology have brought a wave of change in the way companies and businesses function. The enormous amount of data that companies deal with increases the difficulty for decision makers to evaluate the parameters involved in determining business performance. The data required for any organizational process can have multiple dimensions that managers must evaluate before making decisions. The manager's task is greatly facilitated through the use of dashboards that report relevant data in line with the performance parameters defined by the organization. Decisions can be made faster and more effectively based on the data on the dashboard. This results in improved business performance for the organization. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In the early days of the digital revolution, data was mainly produced as PCs were adopted and became ubiquitous, and later in the form of music, movies, TV, and games became digital. Nowadays, believe it or not, there are many more digital consumer goods than human beings, all constantly producing, accessing and sharing data. All of this still leads to more data as more traditional media is converted to digital, as our entertainment libraries grow, and video and audio resolution continues to improve. Please note that almost all of the data we use on these assets also exists or has iterations in corporate data centers and servers on the Internet. Due to continuous advances in information technologies and the fast-paced nature of today's business environment, organizations are generating and processing more and more data. Managers are often overwhelmed with reports and information churned out by a multitude of organizational information systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), performance scorecards and business intelligence (BI) software competing for managers' attention. This phenomenon is generally known as information overload. The problem is further exacerbated when reports are poorly designed with respect to how information is presented, often distracting rather than guiding the attention of decision makers. Performance dashboards could offer a remedy to the problem of information overload by providing a complete package for performance management, incorporating various concepts and applications such as strategy maps, scorecards and BI into a single manageable solution. While promising, the value of a dashboard is inextricably linked to its features and how they are used in organizations. However, there is no agreement on exactly what a dashboard should look like and what it should do. Generally, a dashboard is expected to collect, summarize and present information from multiple sources such as legacy software, ERP and BI so that the user can immediately see how various performance indicators such as order fulfillment rates and returns on sales. . When it comes to data, a dashboard represents the tip of the iceberg – what the user initially sees and, if necessary, analyzes further to uncover the causes of poor performance. The software vendor market reflects the lack of consensus on the concept of dashboards. While some solutions come with “comprehensive” features, i.e. interactive drill-down capabilities, scenario (what-if) analysis, built-in automatic alerts, customization options, etc., others are simpler and static in nature. Thestudy conducted for this paper was carried out with the help of five published articles on the use of dashboards and their impact on the company's business performance. He talks about the key analytics that can be done using dashboards, which translates into business intelligence and data collection on dashboards to improve business analytics processes. Yigitbasioglu and Velcu highlight the correlation between dashboards and performance management. They discuss important design factors for a dashboard. Dashboard design is an essential element in translating recorded data into improved performance. A case study in creating and implementing a dashboard for a SaaS delivery. It discusses in detail the nuances in creating a dashboard for smooth interpretation. Eckerson talks, in depth, about measuring and managing a business through the use of dashboards. A data dashboard is an information management tool that visually tracks, analyzes and displays key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics and key data points to monitor the health of a specific company, department or process. They are customizable to meet the specific needs of a department and company. Behind the scenes, a dashboard connects to your files, attachments, services, and APIs, but on the surface it displays all of this data in the form of tables, line graphs, bar graphs, and indicators. A data dashboard is the most efficient way to track multiple data sources because it provides businesses with a central location to monitor and analyze performance. Real-time monitoring reduces hours of analysis and long lines of communication that previously challenged businesses. In the 1980s, managers tried to find ways to transform the company's strategic objectives into organizational behaviors. Two Harvard researchers, Kaplan and Norton, considered the parents of Dashboards, created a system that transformed strategies into actions, based on the Balanced Scorecards method. After implementing it, some businesses achieved success, while others saw it as generating additional expenses. Over time, the model has developed and matured and is now in its third generation, undergoing significant improvements. Currently the model is used by companies all over the world (Hilton, Infosys, Ingersoll Rand, Kraft Food, Merck, Lockheed Martin, Marriott, Motorola, Ricoh, Saatchi & Saatchi, Siemens, Cisco, Skandia, Statoil, UPS, US Department of Commerce, US Army, FBI, Royal Air Force). Modern dashboards display key performance indicators (KPIs) and key risk indicators (KRIs), in related graphs, maps and scorecards, to help your business focus on the most important performance activities. The purpose of the dashboard is to display information on a single screen clearly, so that it can be understood by everyone. Dashboard is an application or user interface that helps measure enterprise performance, understand organizational units and business processes. Thanks to the development of the web, dashboards began to be used to reflect financial indicators in a way that is understandable to everyone. There are three types of dashboards: operational, tactical and strategic. Executive departments use strategic and tactical dashboards, mid-level management uses all three types of dashboards, while the CEO uses strategic and operational dashboards. When implementing a dashboard you need to consider: the objective, the audience, the impact, the data needed to analyze the problem, whether filters are needed and in what format the dashboard will be used (PC, mobile, iPad, etc.) . are not establishedrules to design the dashboard in a certain way, as needs differ from one organization to another. However, for ease of interpretation of the data by managers and for aesthetic ergonomics, the following lines provide some indications that can be followed. Businesses expect a simple view that presents all the information, shows trends and risky areas, updates users on what has happened – a view that will guide them towards a bright financial future. A dashboard should be designed to offer an at-a-glance preview of the information most crucial to the user at the moment they are looking at it and an easy way to navigate directly to the various areas of the application that require the user's attention. user. The term dashboard is a metaphor for a car's dashboard, also sometimes called the cockpit area, usually near the front of an airplane or spacecraft, from which a pilot controls the aircraft. In essence, performance dashboards are information systems for decision support. Yigitbasioglu and Velcu consider dashboards as data-driven decision support systems. Namely, performance dashboards are enabled by business intelligence (BI), which is a discipline under the umbrella term of decision support system. Business performance management consists of business processes and applications to optimize the development and execution of a strategy. There are two main tasks that performance management aims to accomplish: facilitating the creation of key performance metrics and objectives, and supporting performance management to achieve those objectives. As another buzzword-rich discipline in the industry, business performance management can be referred to as corporate performance management, corporate performance management, operational performance management, or strategic business management. Many refer to business performance management with a more generic term: performance management. Eckerson identifies performance dashboards as an integral part of performance management systems that can assist managers in planning and executing a strategy in all four phases of a performance management cycle: strategy, plan, monitor and act /adjustment. Strategy is a phase in which executives define vision, mission, values, objectives and incentives. Key factors and their measures, called key performance indicators (KPIs), are sometimes mapped onto strategy maps. The planning phase consists of developing plans and allocating resources to support a strategy. After strategy implementation, timely monitoring and analysis should take place with the help of performance dashboards. Finally, in the act/adjust phase, the process of decision, action, prediction, scenario development and strategy adjustment should be performed. Performance measurement systems rely heavily on key performance indicators and balanced scorecards. Key performance indicators are strategic objectives and measures of performance against the objective. They can be laggards (results, such as profitability) or leaders (drivers, such as sales and costs). KPIs have a variety of features. They may include strategic objectives; measures against specific targets; have performance ranges; can be coded into software to allow visual display, have time ranges and benchmarks. Dashboards convey information through a process called visualization. Information visualization refers to the use of interactive visual representations 2012