Business Performance: Dashboards on the Go

by Melba-Jean Bernad, 29 March 2010

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It’s the first thing an increasing number of CFOs see on the office computer. Like the instrument panel in a car, the executive dashboard displays critical information about the company’s performance in real or near-real time. A CFO’s dashboard typically pulls all kinds of data from ERP, financial management and other systems to provide a top-level financial view of performance-tracking metrics, monitor profitability goals and performance by product, business and geography, and tracks asset liability metrics.

Now comes a new twist. Executives no longer need the office computer to access the dashboard. Smart phones can abstract the information and display the numbers, too. At U.S. specialty-materials company Rohm and Haas, for example, executives use their BlackBerry to track key performance indicators wherever they are.

“We use SAP ERP to deliver financial data using executive dashboards – a solution we call ‘the Pulse’,” says Anne Wilms, the company’s Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer. “Accurate, detailed information is available to appropriate executives, refreshed twice daily, with key performance indicators.”

According to Wilms, the Pulse has been exceptionally successful. “There is not an executive in the business that does not like the dashboards. They say things like: ‘I don’t know what we did before this’ and ‘the dashboards have been the best investment decision we ever made’.” The primary justifications for having mobile dashboards are to speed up executive decision making, increase operational productivity, streamline business processes, govern business assets, and mitigate risks.

No Longer a Fad

Dashboards have been around for many years, but companies tended to see them as a fad rather than a solution that can actually boost business performance. They are now experiencing a comeback because of more advanced software and telecom services and devices, and perhaps because of the slimmer margin for error in corporate performance in the wake of the global economic crisis.

“What we’ve been seeing with the resurgence of dashboards over the past 12 to 18 months is the second coming of dashboards – for the fourth time,” quips Hung LeHong, vice president of research at Gartner, a U.S. research firm.

LeHong, however, sees dashboards as more than hype this time around and expects an increasing number of mobile devices loaded with executive dashboards in the coming years, driven by better data crunching, real-time operational data, and improved visual displays.

And while the technology itself appears to be maturing, even more critical to its growing popularity is demand. “The reason that dashboards are catching on is because people are overwhelmed with information and they need tools like dashboards to tame that information,” says Stephen Few, author of Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

Martin Prinz, founder and managing director of Quintell Business Intelligence, agrees that their popularity is increasing. Quintell’s application, which converts spreadsheets into dashboards that display on a BlackBerry smart phone, enables the user to identify trends in KPIs, assess performance, and spot red flags in data.

“We are getting very positive feedback from a first set of trial customers,” notes Prinz, “and large telecom carriers have started to knock on our door too.”

He believes that the functionality of the application speaks for itself. “If you have CEOs or CFOs who strongly believe in metrics and have that kind of reporting system implemented in the company, where trends are visible and benchmarks are there,” explains Prinz, “then it’s a no-brainer for them to say, ‘We want to see the results through a mobile channel and not just through the desktop.’”

Very relevant

Submitted by Jaideep Goswami on 10 May 2010 - 1:17pm

Very relevant

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