Portal Dashboards

Executive information systems (EIS) that provide key statistical data to important people within an organization have been around for years. Recently, conventional wisdom has evolved to suggest that EIS would allow users the additional flexibility of drilling down into their key data areas, to perform analysis not based on a predetermined set of reports, but based on questions they could ask "on the fly." So, in addition to early visions of alerting and informing executives, we have elaborated our goals to include empowering executives to take action as a result of the data presented.

After several technology iterations and a few steps forward in realizing these goals, EIS has surfaced again in the Web environment. We refer to Web-based portals that will deliver personalized, role-based data to important users as Portal Dashboards.

The key goal of portal dashboards is to provide intelligent and relevant data to a specific user in an increasingly interactive dialogue in which the user is in control and the dashboard has insight into the user's needs. The result is a more informed, capable user who considers action based on a well-informed decision.

To realize this vision, portal dashboards must support the following business requirements:

• Dashboards need to be active and actionable. A good dashboard design presents key metrics that govern areas of accountability for the user and provides tools (appropriate to a user's experience and interest level) to conduct related analysis. This knowledge or opinion can then be acted upon with resources available in the portal — essentially creating a closed cycle of alerting, probing, understanding, acting, and assessing outcome.
• The definition of "users" needs to expand. What business functions are most benefited by better and more timely information and, if that information were available, how valuable would more informed decisions be? The more we can use dashboards to support our business processes — and the people who are accountable for those results — the more likely we are to realize the goal of performance management across the business.
• Dashboards should provide visual representations of information. Dashboards provide "sound bytes" of critical information that can be quickly, and accurately digested. While the visual display of dashboards is an important element, there has to be a balance with the robust, data intensive, and interpretive environment that sits right behind the graphics.
• Dashboards have the most significant impact when they are closely aligned to business processes. The concept is simple — put dashboards in the hands of more users across the business, align them to the metrics associated with the business processes they manage, and help them make better, faster decisions associated with those specific processes.

As these business requirements are met, the executive-version of the dashboard will better track and report on business process activity at large and the managers within those organizations will be more able to impact the underlying processes and their outcomes.

Find out more about how LDS makes portal dashboards work.