Business Intelligence - Chapter 3
What are the best practices in dashboard design?
- Benchmark Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with industry standards - Wrap the dashboard metrics with contextual metadata - Validate the dashboard design by a usability specialist - Prioritize and rank alerts/expectations streamed to the dashboard - Enrich dashboard with business-user comments - Present information in three different levels - Pick the right visual construct using dashboard design principles - Provide for guided analytics (Pg. 125-126)
What are the ingredients for an effective performance management system?
- Measure should focus on key factors - Measure should be a mix of past, present, and future - Measure should balance the needs of shareholders, employees, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders - Measures should start at the top and flow down to the bottom - Measures need to have targets that are based on research and reality rather than arbitrary (Pg. 136-137)
What are the common characteristics of dashboards and other information visuals?
- They use visual components to highlight, at a glance, the data and exceptions that require action. - They are transparent to the user, meaning that they require minimal training and are extremely easy to use. - They combine data from a variety of systems into a single, summarized, unified view of the business - They enable drill-down or drill-through to underlying data sources or reports providing more detail about the underlying comparative and evaluative context. - They present a dynamic, real-world view with timely data refreshes, enabling the end user to stay up to date with any recent changes in the business. - They require little, if any, customized coding to implement, deploy, and maintain. (Pg. 124)
What are the three key components of a BPM system?
1. A set of integrated, closed-loop management and analytic processes that addresses financial as well as operational activities 2. Tools for businesses to define strategic goals and then measure and manage performance against those goals 3. A core set of processes, including financial and operational planning, consolidation and reporting, modeling, analysis, and monitoring of key performance indicators (KPIs), linked to organizational strategies. (Pg. 126)
List and briefly define the four most commonly cited operational areas for KPIs.
1. Customer performance - Metrics for customer satisfaction, speed and accuracy of issue resolution, and customer retention 2. Service performance - Metrics for service-call resolution rates, service renewal rates, service level agreements, delivery performance, and return rates. 3. Sales operations - New pipeline accounts, sales meetings secured, conversion of inquiries to leads, and average call closure time 4. Sales plan/forecast - Metrics for price-to-purchase accuracy, purchase order-to-fulfillment ratio, quantity earned, forecast-to-plan ration, and total closed contracts. (Pg. 131)
List and describe the three layers of information portrayed on dashboards.
1. Monitoring - Graphical, abstracted data to monitor key performance metrics 2. Analysis - Summarized dimensional data to analyze the root cause of problems. 3. Management - Detailed operational data that identify what actions to take to resolve a problem. (pg. 122)
What is a report? What are reports used for?
A report is any communication artifact prepared with the specific intention of conveying information in a presentable form to whoever needs it, whenever and wherever they may need it. It is usually a document that contains information (usually driven from data and personal experiences) organized in a narrative, graphic, and/or tabular form, prepared periodically (recurring) or on an as-required (ad hoc) basis, referring to specific time period, events, occurrences, or subjects. Reports can be used to: •Ensure that all departments are functioning properly •Provide information •Provide results •Persuade others to act •Create an organizational memory (Pg. 101-101)
What is business performance management? How does it relate to BI?
Business performance management (BPM) refers to the business processes, methodologies, metrics, and technologies used by enterprises to measure, monitor, and manage business performance. BPM is a BI tool and its practice is strategy focus. BPM encompasses a closed-loop set of processes that link strategy to execution in order to optimize business performance. The loop implies that optimum performance is achieved by setting goals and objectives, establishing initiatives and plans to achieve those goals, monitoring actual performance against the goals and objectives,, and taking corrective action. (Pg. 126)
Why should storytelling be a part of your reporting and data visualization?
Crafting story elements helps define characters, understand the challenge, identify the hurdles, and crystallize the outcome or decision question. By finding the real stories in your data and following the best practices, you can get people to focus on your message - and thus on what's important. (Pg. 117)
What is data visualization? Why is it needed?
Data virtualization is the use of visual representations to explore, make sense of, and communicate data; it is closely related to the fields of information graphics, information visualization, scientific virtualization, and statistical graphics. Since, information is the aggregation, summarization, and contextualization of data (raw facts), what is portrayed in visualization is the information and not the data. Companies and individuals are interested in data; that interest has in turn sparked a need for visual tools that help them understand it. (Pg. 105-106, 108)
What are the differences and commonalities between dashboards and scorecards?
Executives, managers, and staff use: - Scorecards to monitor strategic alignment and success with strategic objectives and targets - Dashboards at the operational and tactical levels •Operational dashboards to monitor detailed operational performance on a weekly daily, or even hourly basis •Operational dashboards to maybe monitor production quality •Tactical dashboards to monitor tactical initiatives •Tactical dashboards to maybe monitor a marketing campaign or sales performance (Pg. 135)
What is the difference between information visualization and visual analytics?
Information visualization is aimed at answering "what happened" and "what is happening" and closely associated with business intelligence, visual analytics is aimed at answering " why is it happening," "what is more likely to happen," and is usually associated with business analytics. (Pg. 116)
What are the main differences among line, bar, and pie charts? When should you use one over the others?
Line Charts - shows the relationship between two variables; used to track changes or trends over time (having one of the variables set across the x-axis); sequentially connect individual data points to help infer changing trends over a period of time; used to show time-dependent changes in the values of some measure. •Use for time series data. Ex: Stock price over 5-years Bar Charts- vertically or horizontally oriented; can be stacked on top of each other to show multiple dimension in a single chart •Effective when you have nominal data or numerical data that splits into different categories. Ex: Compare percent of advertising spending by departments or by product categories Pie Charts - pie-looking chart; most visually attractive •Illustrate proportions of a specific measure. Ex: relative percentage of advertising budget spent on different product lines or they can show relative proportions of majors declared by college students in their sophomore year. (Pg. 110-111)
List and describe the three major categories of business reports.
Metric Management Reports - outcome-oriented metrics. There are enterprise-wide agreed targets to be tracked against a period of time; may be used as part of other management strategies such as Six Sigma or Total Quality Management (TQM). External groups: service-level agreements (SLAs) Internal groups: key performance indicators (KPIs) Dashboard-Type Reports - presents a range of different performance indicators on one page, like a dashboard in a car; provides reports with statistic elements and fixed structure, but also allow for customization of the dashboard widgets, views, and set targets for various metrics Balanced Scorecard-Type Reports - presents an integrated view of success in an organization; balanced scorecard-type reports include customer, business process, and learning and growth perspectives. (pg. 101-102)
What is a performance dashboard? Why are they so popular for BI software tools?
Performance dashboards are common components of most, if not all, performance management systems, performance measurement systems, BPM software suites, and BI platforms. Dashboards provide visual displays of important information that is consolidated and arranged on a single screen so that information can be digested at a single glance and easily drilled in and further explored. (Pg. 119)
Why do you think there are many different types of charts and graphs?
Some charts and/or graphs are better at answering certain types of questions. (P. 110)
Why is strategy the most important part of a BPM implementation?
Strategy is the process of identifying and stating the organization's mission, vision, and objectives, development plans to achieve these objectives. Business strategy provides an overall direction to the enterprise. (Pg. 127)
What were the main business challenges of Travel and Transport, Inc.?
The ability to effectively communicate a value proposition to existing and potential customers Customers find it difficult to analyze costs or instate optimal purchase agreements (Pg. 96)
What is a balanced scorecard? Where did it come from?
The balance scorecard (BSC) is both a performance measurement and a management methodology that helps translate an organization's financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth objectives and targets into a set of actionable initiatives. BSC is designed to overcome the limitations of systems that are financially focused. Kaplan and Norton first articulated this methodology in their Harvard Business Review article "The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That Drive Performance," which appeared in 1992. (Pg. 132)
What are the reasons for the recent emergence of visual analytics?
There is a "growing palate" of data visualization techniques and tools that enable the users of business analytics and business intelligence systems to better "communicate relationships, add historical context, uncover hidden correlations, and tell persuasive stories that clarify and call to action." (Pg. 114)
Based on Question 1 (Section 3.1): What was the solution? How was it implemented?
Travel and Transport wanted to implement an integrating reporting and analysis system to enhance relationships with existing clients, while providing the kinds of value-added services that would attract new prospects. Travel and Transport implemented Information Builders' WebFOCUS business intelligence platform, called eTTek Review, as the foundation of a dynamic customer self-service BI environment. This dashboard-driven expense-management application helps more than 800 external clients to plan, track, analyze, and budget their travel expenses more efficiently and to benchmark them against similar companies, saving them millions of dollars (pg. 96)
Why would you use a geographic map? What other types of charts can be combined with a geographic map?
When data set includes any kind of location data, it is better and more informative to see the data on a map. Large variety of information can be portrayed in a geographic map. Ex: Decide where to open a new restaurant or a new service stations Other types of charts combined with geographic maps: •Pie charts •Bubble charts (Pg. 112-113)
