Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business »

WAYNE W. ECKERSON is the Director of Research and Services for The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), a worldwide association of business intelligence and data warehousing professionals that provides education, training, certification, and research. Eckerson has seventeen years of industry experience, most of which has been spent covering business–intelligence issues and technologies. Eckerson is the author of many in-depths reports, a columnist for several business and technology magazines, and a noted speaker and consultant in the business intelligence industry. He can be reached at weckerson@tdwi.org.

Performance dashboards are rapidly becoming the preferred way that business professionals view and analyze information about the performance of their business and the activities they manage. In a nutshell, performance dashboards let busy executives, managers, and staff view the performance of key business metrics at a glance and then move swiftly through successive layers of actionable information in a carefully guided manner, so they get the insight they need to solve problems quickly, efficiently, and effectively. By helping business people keep a pulse on their business and chart progress towards meeting strategic and tactical objectives, performance dashboards are becoming powerful agents of organizational change.

In Performance Dashboards, author Wayne Eckerson shows how performance dashboards focus business people on the right things to do and doing things right. As Director of Research and Services for The Data Warehousing Institute, a worldwide association of business intelligence professionals, Eckerson interviewed dozens of organizations that have built various types of performance dashboards in different industries and lines of business. His practical insights provide a road map to help you turbo-charge performance–management initiatives with dashboard technology to optimize performance and accelerate results.

Performance Dashboards addresses common questions that business professionals ask about performance dashboards, such as: What's the difference between dashboards and scorecards? How do I design performance dashboards to handle operational, tactical, and strategic processes? How do I create effective KPIs that drive organizational change and display them in an optimal fashion? Do I build performance dashboards from the top down or bottom up? What political obstacles will I encounter when launching a performance dashboard project and how do I overcome them?

Performance Dashboards clears up much of the confusion and answers your most critical questions. It starts by laying a conceptual foundation, showing how performance dashboards:

• Fit into the larger context of business performance management (BPM), an emerging discipline for linking strategy and performance
• Represent the "new face" of business intelligence (BI), harnessing reporting and analysis software to unleash the power of information to all types of business users
• Do everything in threes: three types of performance dashboards (i.e., operational, tactical, and strategic) each contain three types of applications (i.e., monitoring, analysis, and management) and three layers of information (i.e., graphical, multidimensional, and transactional)

Moving from concept to reality, Performance Dashboards showcases each type of performance dashboard using a real-world example from Quicken Loans, International Truck and Engine Corporation, and Hewlett–Packard. These and other case studies show you how to build performance dashboards and what benefits they offer. Finally, Performance Dashboards synthesizes the tips and techniques from these case studies and leading practitioners in the field, showing you how to:

• Evaluate your company's organizational and technical readiness to undertake a successful performance dashboard project
• Create effective KPIs that change organizational behavior and improve performance
• Design powerful dashboard screens that communicate relevant facts quickly and concisely
• Integrate existing performance dashboards and metrics using a top-down or bottom-up approach
• Align business and technical teams to deliver a scalable and sustainable solution
• Evangelize a performance dashboard solution and ensure end-user adoption

Whether you are an executive looking to learn more about dashboards or scorecards, an IT professional needing to better understand how to implement dashboards, or a college student preparing for a career armed with the most cutting-edge thinking about how to improve organizational performance, Performance Dashboards is for you.

Foreword.

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

Part I: The Landscape for Performance Dashboards.

Chapter 1: What Are Performance Dashboards?

The Context for Performance Dashboards.

Composition of Performance Dashboards.

Performance Management Architecture.

Summary.

Chapter 2: The Role of Business Performance Management.

The Landscape.

A Framework for BPM.

BPM Trends.

Summary.

Chapter 3: The Role of Business Intelligence.

The Value of Business Intelligence.

Business Intelligence Landscape.

Summary.

Chapter 4: Assessing Your Organizational Readiness.

Readiness Criteria.

Summary.

Chapter 5 Assessing Your Technical Readiness.

Business Intelligence Maturity Model.

Summary.

Part II: Performance Dashboards in Action.

Chapter 6: Types of Performance Dashboards.

Differentiating Performance Dashboards.

Performance Dashboard Trends.

Operational Dashboards.

Tactical Dashboards.

Strategic Dashboards.

Summary.

Chapter 7: Operational Dashboards in Action: Quicken Loans, Inc.

Benefits of Operational Dashboards.

Quicken Loans’ Dashboards.

Quicken Loans’ BI Architecture.

Challenges.

Summary.

Chapter 8: Tactical Dashboards in Action: International Truck and Engine Corp.

Benefits of Tactical Dashboards.

Next-Generation Business Intelligence.

Characteristics of Tactical Dashboards.

Challenges.

Summary.

Chapter 9: Strategic Dashboards in Action: Hewlett Packard Co.

Benefits of Strategic Dashboards.

Balanced Scorecards.

Deploying Strategic Dashboards.

Summary.

Part III: Critical Success Factors: Tips from the Trenches.

Chapter 10: How to Launch the Project.

Selling the Project.

Secure Funding.

Where to Start?

Create a Strong Team.

Summary.

Chapter 11: How to Create Effective Metrics.

Tools of Change.

Understanding Metrics.

KPI Characteristics.

Creating Metrics.

Summary.

Chapter 12: How to Design Effective Dashboard Screens.

General Guidelines for Managing the Design Process.

Specific Guidelines for Creating the Visual Interface.

Sample Techniques.

Navigation Techniques.

Summary.

Chapter 13: How to Link and Integrate Performance Dashboards.

Approaches to Integration.

Centralized Approach.

Federated Approach.

Consolidation Approaches.

Summary.

Chapter 14: How to Align Business and IT.

Pitched Battles.

General Counseling.

Alignment Tactics.

Summary.

Chapter 15: How to Ensure Adoption and Manage Performance.

Two Tasks.

Strategies to Ensure Adoption.

Performance Management Strategies.

Summary.

Appendix: Criteria for Evaluating Performance Dashboards.

Glossary.

Index.