Effective Use of Dashboards and KPI’s Presented by: Chris Dennis Date: January 17, 2007

Our Experience. Your Success. Presentation Agenda Introductions Level Setting Basic Dashboarding Good Dashboard Design Common Mistakes in Dashboard Design Steps for Successful Dashboard Project Web Analysis versus Interactive Reporting – Which one to use? Q & A

Our Experience. Your Success. TopDown Consulting, Inc. Create Strategic Vision Define Project Goals Implement Solutions Develop Client Expertise Quantify Success SUCCESS RECOGNITION VALUE ACHIEVEMENT CONFIDENCE At a Glance  Oracle Certified Advantage Partner and Reseller  Proven team of Multi-product Experts  Over 250 successful customers  Located throughout North America Differentiators  Experts in EPM and BI solutions  Proven Project Success Methodology  Depth of Technical Infrastructure Services  Focus on Financial Controls and Compliance  Commitment to making clients self-sufficient  TopDown Migration Manager

Our Experience. Your Success. Why TopDown?  Integrated approach to Performance Management, Business Intelligence, Data Warehouses, ETL, and related technologies  In-depth knowledge of Hyperion EPM and Oracle BI products  Experts in architecting enterprise-wide solutions and leading worldwide implementations  Strong Project Management and Change Management  Complete range of services from strategy through deployment  Technical infrastructure team ensures efficient and scalable solution  Proven track record delivering solutions on time & within budget  Project Success Methodology ensures knowledge transfer and measurable return on investment

Our Experience. Your Success. Partial Client List

Our Experience. Your Success. Financial ServicesManufacturingHealthcare EducationTechnologyBiotech / Pharmaceuticals RetailUtilities / EnergyAutomotive Vertical Industry Expertise

Our Experience. Your Success. Scorecards, Dashboards, and Reports - I am Confused. What Do I Need?  The difference between a scorecard, dashboard, and report can be one of fine distinctions. Each of these tools can combine elements of the other, but at a high level they all target distinct and separate levels of the business decision making process.

Our Experience. Your Success. Level Setting – Metrics / KPI’s  Metrics: Direct numerical measures that represent a piece of business data in the relationship of one or more dimensions  Examples Trucks Loaded Cash flow  Key Performance Indicators (KPI): A KPI is simply a metric that is tied to a target. Most often a KPI represents how far a metric is above or below a pre- determined target.  Examples Percentage of deliveries made on time Gross profit percentage Operating profit as a percentage of income

Our Experience. Your Success. Level Setting – What is a Scorecard?  Scorecards are primarily used to help align operational execution with business strategy. The goal of a scorecard is to keep the business focused on a common strategic plan by monitoring real world execution and mapping the results of that execution back to a specific strategy.

Our Experience. Your Success. Example Scorecard

Our Experience. Your Success. Level Setting – What is a Dashboard?  The purpose of a dashboard is to provide the user with actionable business information in a format that is both intuitive and insightful. Dashboards leverage operational data primarily in the form of metrics and KPIs.  Dashboards primarily display quantitative measures of what's currently going on

Our Experience. Your Success. Example Dashboard

Our Experience. Your Success. Level Setting – What is a Report?  Most prevalent BI tool seen in business today  Best used when the user needs to look at raw data in an easy to read format  Usually pretty static and very little user interaction

Our Experience. Your Success. Example Report

Our Experience. Your Success. Good or Bad Design ? Example 1

Our Experience. Your Success. Good Bad Design? Bad Design  All of the gauges work exactly the same, with the green zone on the left, yellow in the middle, and red on the right, but this doesn’t seem to match the nature of the data. If a high number of people in your company are accessing adult Internet content (the top left gauge), that’s definitely a bad thing (unless your company serves as a pornography watchdog). Low numbers in the green zone and high numbers in the red zone make perfect sense in this case.  These circular gauges use of a great deal of space to say very little. They tell us a number, such as 351 for adult content, and if this is good, satisfactory, or bad, and that’s it. Apparently 351 is as bad as it gets for adult content, because the needle is pegged at the extreme end of the red zone. For a full screen, 10 numbers and ten qualitative judgments (good, satisfactory, or bad), isn’t very much information.  Measures that are in the problem zone (that is, in the red) don’t pop out as clearly as they ought. With so much green, yellow, and red color on this screen, noticing that a needle is pointing to the red zone takes more time than it should, especially for real-time monitoring. This dashboard attempts to assist in the search for trouble by changing the color of the gauge’s title to red when the needle ventures into the red zone, which might be an adequate attention-getter if red were not used so much elsewhere.

Our Experience. Your Success. Good or Bad Design ? Example 2

Our Experience. Your Success.  Users should never have to scroll their screen to see the dashboard. The purpose of a dashboard is to give a quick summary of well defined metrics. Scrolling takes time and is not user friendly. Good Bad Design? Bad Design  Not enough context to give users a quick idea of what the dashboard is displaying.  Fonts in dashboard are different than the rest of the screen. The change in fonts force the user to concentrate more on the fonts than what the dashboard is telling you.

Our Experience. Your Success. Good or Bad Design ? Example 3

Our Experience. Your Success.  Dashboard is cluttered. Design doesn’t allow the eyes to see the charts clearly. User will spend more time trying to focus on the charts than is needed for a quick glance. Good Bad Design? Bad Design  Two charts in center are out of alignment giving the impression to the dashboard consumer that they are more important than the others.  With more attention to detail this dashboard could be good.  Bad color scheme. Multiple colors. By using a lighter color on the pivots the eye is naturally drawn to the difference and might imply level of importance. This is probably not the intent.  More context and exception highlighting would make this dashboard more useable.

Our Experience. Your Success. Common Dashboarding Mistakes  Exceeding the boundaries of a single screen  Supplying inadequate context for the data  Displaying excessive detail or precision  Choosing a deficient measure  Choosing inappropriate display media  Introducing meaningless variety  Using poorly designed display objects

Our Experience. Your Success. Common Mistakes (continued)  Encoding quantitative data inaccurately  Arranging the data poorly  Highlighting important data ineffectively or not at all  Cluttering the display with useless decoration  Misusing or overusing color  Designing an unattractive visual display  Trying to do too much on single dashboard

Our Experience. Your Success. Dashboard Basics  Dashboards are visual displays  Dashboards display the information needed to achieve specific objectives  A dashboard fits on a single computer screen  Dashboards are used to monitor information at a glance  Dashboards have small, concise, clear, and intuitive display mechanisms  Dashboards are customized  Effective Dashboards Communicate

Our Experience. Your Success. 6 Elements of Good Dashboarding 1. Organize objects into meaningful groups 2. Use summaries / exceptions as dashboard objects 3. Support Meaningful Comparisons 4. Discourage Meaningless Comparisons 5. Maintain consistency across all dashboard objects 6. Proper Visual Placement

Our Experience. Your Success. Characteristics of a Good Design  Exceptionally well organized  Condensed, primarily in the form of summaries and exceptions  Specific to and customized for the dashboard's audience and objectives  Displayed using concise / small objects that communicate the data and its message in the clearest and most direct way possible

Our Experience. Your Success. Importance of Concise Objects  Both charts show the exact same information, but by using a clear and concise chart type the comparisons are more clearly made and all the information to be consumed more quickly. OR

Our Experience. Your Success. What Did You See? Power of Object Placement Test Pay Attention

Our Experience. Your Success. Power of Object Placement Most Effective Placement Neutral Placement Good Placement Least Desirable Placement

Our Experience. Your Success. Steps for a Successful Dashboard Project  Gather Requirements  Storyboard  Develop  Educate  Deploy  Follow Up

Our Experience. Your Success. What is the Right Tool? VG = Very Good G =Good L = Limited N = None

Our Experience. Your Success. Deployed Solution - Biotech  Goal – Provide Clinical Data to the company executives, steering committees, and clinical managers in a graphical and easy to interpret format.  Solution – Built a dashboard application utilizing Hyperion Performance Suite (Brio) that served the executives, clinical managers, and steering committees while maintaining data security and provide report surfing and report drilling capabilities.

Our Experience. Your Success. Deployed Solution – BioTech

Our Experience. Your Success. Deployed Solution – Biotech

Our Experience. Your Success. Deployed Solution – COVAD

Our Experience. Your Success. Deployed Solution – WRECO

Our Experience. Your Success. Any Questions? Presenter Name: Chris Dennis Phone: