Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Consulting

The foundation of any dashboard solution is the metrics that drive its charts.  By properly identifying, examining and categorizing your business metrics, ‘one version of the truth’ will be presented throughout your organization.  To accurately tell the story of your data, it is important to break down all KPIs into their core segments; geography, timeframe and product.  iDashboards Consultants have worked with many organizations to move them from an incomplete collection of KPIs to a solid understanding of the measures that are important to their business.

Product Implementation & Testing

iDashboards runs as a J2EE back-end server and an Adobe Flash front-end client.  iDashboards can be installed on any operating system (Windows/UNIX/Linux) that supports a Java Application Server.  If no Java Application Server is present, Apache’s free Tomcat server can be downloaded and used.  iDashboards also requires a relational database to store its metadata.  If an existing database is present, such as SQL Server or Oracle, it can be used.  If no database is present, Microsoft’s free SQL Server Express can be downloaded and used.  The iDashboards consultant will deploy and test the iDashboards application on your network and will ensure all required ODBC/JDBC drivers are present.  One or more data connections will be established between the iDashboards server and data sources that will populate future dashboards. 

User Security Architecture Design

If sensitive data is being presented in a dashboard, it is important to protect this data by ensuring only privileged users can access the dashboard.  To accomplish this, a user security structure should be designed and implemented.  iDashboards is built upon an enterprise-class security architecture that allows for grouping of users and dashboards and setting user permissions (none, view only and save) to the dashboard groups.  Similar to an organization’s network security, dashboard security can be as simple or complex as the data demands.

Dashboard Design & Development

Dashboard and Chart Layout – It is important to design meaningful and esthetically pleasing dashboard and chart layouts.  A dashboard solution will most likely consist of multiple individual dashboards and anywhere from 2 to 10 charts per dashboard.  This is where the ‘art meets the science’ of dashboard design.  With so many dashboards and charts, it is very important to design a logical chart layout and to match meaningful and informative chart types with each KPI.  Only through extensive experience designing dashboards will the ‘art’ be as powerful as the ‘science.’

Drilldown Structure - Most KPIs relate to each other in one way or another and a dashboard solution will become exponentially more informative if its charts and dashboards are linked.  Any chart within iDashboards can link to another chart, another dashboard or a web URL.  Starting at a 10,000 ft. view of your KPIs and drilling down in to more and more detailed information is the cornerstone of any dashboard solution.  Careful consideration and planning is necessary to properly design this functional drilldown structure.

Filters and Pivots - Vast amounts of data will be available to populate a dashboard solution.  Even with the relevant KPIs identified, it is critical to aggregate and filter the data to a level meaningful and easily digestible by the end user.  Filters and pivots (user selected filters) should be utilized to pack a dashboard with as much information as possible while maintaining its focus and esthetically pleasing design.  Combining drilldowns and pivots will take a dashboard to the next level and give the end user the ability to navigate the data in ways previously not possible.

Dashboard Development – After all KPIs have been identified, the dashboards have been designed and the data has been prepared, it is time to build your dashboards using the iDashboards user interface.  New dashboard creation is accomplished through iDashboards’ intuitive right-click functionality.  No programming is necessary at any point during dashboard development.  Due to iDashboards’ focus on ease of use and a quick time to value, you will have your dashboards live within days, not weeks.

Data Preparation

An organization’s data often resides in several disparate data sources and is typically stored in a multitude of formats.  Dashboarding tools need to view data in a uniform, normalized format so that they can consistently represent the data.  Data warehouses and data marts do a great job of organizing data, but many organizations have not yet implemented such solutions.  It is therefore necessary to analyze the KPI data that will be represented in a dashboard and to transpose it in to a format iDashboards can read.  Depending on an organization’s data architecture, database views or stored procedures many need to be written to collect and format the necessary data.

Product Training & Knowledge Transfer

One of the primary goals of an iDashboards consulting engagement is to provide complete product training to the individual(s) that will own dashboard design and development.  The ease of use of the iDashboards application allows for this one-time knowledge transfer with the intention that customers will not need to call on iDashboards for future dashboard development.  Outside of dashboard development, technical support is provided as part of the ongoing maintenance contract.