Business Intelligence software such as dashboards were developed to help the executives of large organisations interpret the masses of data generated by their operations on a near constant basis. The better and more effective the dashboard, the more informed the users and therefore the better placed they were to make judgement-based decisions.

At the current time, dashboards are graphic and integrated representations of the various figures and performance indicators of a given enterprise. They can be grouped into two categories, data-based and model-based. Data-based dashboards are directed more towards relaying and interpreting data from databases, data warehouses and OLAP programs, while model-based dashboards are designed to analyse using a set of rules, algorithms, forecasting, decision trees and simulations.

In the current business climate, it is more important than ever for decision makers to be as informed as possible when it comes to the performance and status of each aspect of a large organisation. In order to make an informed decision elements such as forecasts, performance metrics and current trends need to be taken into consideration. A competent and well developed dashboard application can provide all of these features.

The first Dashboards begin to be used for the purposes of business intelligence in the mid 1980s. However these programs had limited capabilities, and were often limited to executives within an organisation. Since then dashboards have developed and become wide spread.

Dashboards currently fall under the category of Business Intelligence Systems, with multiple layers that are tailored to various users within a company.  They are designed to integrate data from multiple sources, such as documents, communication programs and data files in order to create reports and highlight potential problems.

As business intelligence software developed, programs were able to create basic reports from data files. However these reports were limited to certain areas, and the applications were not capable of creating comparative analyses. Nowadays one of the key features of business intelligence and dashboard technologies is the ability to perform comparative analysis. These multi-layered reports are presented visually. The two key aspects of dashboard technologies are now visualization and integration. In each dashboard key performance indicators are highlighted and displayed, and any changes or complications are immediately visible.

If you are running a business, large or small, your focus and the focus of your business intelligence software will always be directed towards your key performance indicators.  Your key performance indicators may reflect two or more aspects of your business. For example, you will always need to know how successful your enterprise is. You may also have laid down some long term goals. Key performance indicators can show you how you are progressing towards fulfilling those aims.

Excel Dashboard can track your business’ performance, and specifically focus on any Key Performance Indicators you specify. For example you can direct your dashboard to focus on sales results or market share.

It is especially important to be able to compare the performance of your company against that of other groups in the same industry. This sort of comparative analysis can take a long time, however Excel Dashboard can do it for you in minutes.

You can also use Excel Dashboard to compare data and figures from various sales quarters to each other. This helps you to see your overall performance over a longer period of time and indicates how you are progressing towards certain performance aims you may have established.

In short, any decisions that are made by the highest levels of management within a company should be as informed as possible. With Excel Dashboard Key Performance Indicators are instantly visible, and detailed but clear overviews of any aspect of business performance can be generated instantly.

When you are managing a company of any size, your business intelligence software is one of your greatest tools. If a crisis suddenly occurs, you need to have a concise, precise but detailed overview of your business’ status so as to make the best decisions. The same applies if an unmissable opportunity arises. You need to know exactly how your business is performing before you can confidently expand or invest in any other enterprises.

With Excel Dashboard you are always completely up-to-date. You can preset this performance management software to provide you with daily reports. This report can contain whatever information you require, and can consist of gauges, charts, maps and tables.

You can choose to highlight any particular areas of your business that you believe require particular attention, but presetting the graph or chart generator. For example, if you wanted to draw immediate attention to any profits that dipped below a certain point, you could instruct Excel Dashboard to colour these data points differently to the rest of the chart.

If you need to determine financial risk or investment performance, Excel Dashboard will quickly generate a detailed and accurate overview of the determining factors. You may need to get an idea of a customer demographic for a particular product, and key information points associated with it. Again, Excel Dashboard can transform your market research data into a clear and concise business report. Whatever your business intelligence needs, Excel Dashboard can provide the solution.

During the day to day running of your business endless lists of figures are generated, that need to be collected an analyzed in order for you to get an overview of overall performance. Business intelligence software is essential. For example, it is of little use to you to know how much you have expended on insurance for employees during a given period, without also knowing how this fits into the overall picture.

Dashboard software is the best way to combine all of the data that emerges from your business and organise it in a way that is meaningful to you. Excel Dashboard will take in a typical excel sheet and generate charts, graphs and maps that tell you how your business is performing in an instant.

You can also add formatting so that certain figures stand out more than others. You can display more than one chart or graph on a page, allowing easy graphical comparison of key factors that affect your operation.

Some of the many output options that are available to you with Excel Dashboard are:

• Charts – Thermometer, Gauges, Dials and Speedometer charts can be generated in order to display your data in a useful and informative manner.
• Additional Charts – Bubble, Waterfall, Bar, Stacked Bar, Pie, Line, Scatter and Polar charts are also available as standard.
• Dashboard Mockups – You can quickly and easily create quick prototypes and mockups of dashboards, so you can see what your graph will look like before you enter data.

Dashboards present information in two broad ways. First, some of the data presented is averaged or summarized. To get to the details of performance, the user must click repeatedly to access detailed information. This is know as “drilling down” and the user might need to drill down through several layers in order to discover the culprit transaction or data that was skewing the averaged summary statistic on the dashboard.

The second way many dashboards present data is by visual status –- most often using the stop lights colors of red, yellow and green to signal status. Once again, the details are missing and the user must drill down to uncover the underlying issues.

With Excel Dashboards, you connect to your raw data which may be residing in multiple excel files or any other database such as Access or SQL database. Information can be averaged or summarized in the dashboard. So it provides a natural path to the detailed information for drililng straight to the raw transactions.

We are releasing the web component for Excel dashboards in few days and it is going to solve a lot of pain.

You have your data in Excel, you build a dashboard in Excel Dashboard designer and you can share and distribute the dashboard as PDF or live dynamic dashboard using the “Dashboard Viewer”. This is all fine and perfect.

But how about this scenario, what if you could hit a button and publish the dashboard on your website or intranet or your local webserver?

This web based Excel dashboard is not just a static html page but a real dynamic dashboard. You can access the dashboard using a URL on your browser (Internet Explorer,Chrome, Firefox etc) and view it from any part of the world. It would be as dynamic as you see it when you are designing it in Excel Dashboard Software.

Sounds interesting? so watch out for our web based dashboarding solution for Excel which should be out in few days.

So why bother buying an ebook or a pdf tutorial which tells you how to build a dashboard in Excel when you can get the leading Dashboard software just for the same price and you easily deploy it on your website.

Data governance is a set of processes that ensures that important data assets are formally managed throughout the enterprise. Data governance ensures that data can be trusted and that people can be made accountable for any adverse event that happens because of low data quality. It is about putting people in charge of fixing and preventing issues with data so that the enterprise can become more efficient.

Data governance also describes an evolutionary process for a company, altering the company’s way of thinking and setting up the processes to handle information so that it may be utilized by the entire organization. It’s about using technology when necessary in many forms to help aid the process. When companies desire, or are required, to gain control of their data, they empower their people, set up processes and get help from technology to do it

In general, most organizations have proliferated Excel use. When looking at business intelligence, many people use Excel to manage information and to analyze data. The issue arises when people use Excel as the key entry point of information access, meaning that individuals control, edit, and make changes to data used to plan and identify business performance and/or opportunities.

Because of the lack of validation within Excel, the ability to develop analyses based on incorrect assumptions and data manipulation are quite large. Consequently, organizations require the ability to use Excel and to interact with data, while still being able to validate the data being used to ensure proper data governance and overall compliance.

Excel Dashboard allows users to drill through to the original information without having to access a database or have an understanding of where the data resides. The overall ability to access and validate original data provides an asset to business users by allowing them to understand the context of information and how it interrelates with overall business information. When looking at compliance specifically, the ability to meet regulations and to maintain data integrity can have legal implications. Therefore, organizations require ways they can correlate Excel based analyses with original operational data to confirm that information has not been changed or compromised.

What would you see on a Hospital Quality Dashboard?

New online measurements show how consistently hospitals took recommended steps to keep patients from acquiring infections.

To combat surgical infections, for example, one best practice recommends that patients be given an antibiotic within one hour before surgery. The new data show the percentage of time that each hospital did so.

It is worth noting that a hospital’s quality is more than just the sum of these particular measures. Hospitals provide care for many other illnesses and conditions not addressed on this Web site. The information provided here can help you start a conversation with your health care providers about getting the care you, your family or friends need.

One key aspect important for effective Quality measurement is the capture of data. Once you have a single source of truth as your data source then it is the matter of choosing the right tool to translate that information into Quality Metrics on a report or Dashboard.

You can either export the raw data into Excel and point Excel Dashboard Designer to build your custom Dashboard