The concept of performance dashboards, a cockpit from which to view the performance of a business is rapidly gaining ground. Since the earliest days of EIS Executive Information Systems, people have tried to harness the power of technology to more effectively monitor, analyse and manage performance. In the early days these endeavours were hindered by enormity of the technical challenge and the cost of implementing a viable solution. Despite vast improvements in technology, gathering appropriate data and presenting in a dashboard is still a formidable exercise.
But at last Performance dashboards have arrived, swept along on improvements in technology and an increasing awareness of business performance management. So Eckerson's book is timely, addressing many of the fundamental questions that beset a performance dashboard initiative in its early days. To Eckerson, a performance dashboard is like an “organisational magnifying glass” that allows all employees to focus on critical business activities and promotes organisational alignment with strategy.
Step by step, Eckerson's book leads the reader through the components of a dashboard that promote the monitoring of critical business activities, the analysis of problem areas and steer people to make better business decisions. However, Eckerson's approach has a practical edge, taking the reader beyond the theoretical niceties of what KPI's to measure to design concepts to take into consideration when building a dashboard. For example, Eckerson develops a three layer model that describes how information can be revealed through a dashboard from summarised graphical views that monitor KPIs through to multidimensional views in charts or tables and detailed reporting views. But he also usefully draws a distinction between operational, tactical and strategic dashboards showing how each of these can be delivered employing different tools and techniques.
Performance Dashboards is a unique text dealing exclusively with the intricacies of dashboard design as well as the theoretical framework that should ideally guide their use. It is a specialist volume with considerable depth and is a valuable read for anyone concerned with the establishment of a performance management environment. It is very readable and long on good advice and for the most part geared to the needs of the business manager rather than the IT professional. Well worth a read.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK BY WILEY - THE PUBLISHER
By helping business people keep a pulse on their business and chart progress towards meeting strategic and tactical objectives, performance dashboards are becoming powerful agents of organizational change.
In Performance Dashboards , author Wayne Eckerson shows how performance dashboards focus business people on the right things to do and doing things right. A framework for understanding performance dashboards is provided as well as strategies and techniques (gleaned through case studies and real world examples) for delivering successful solutions.
As Director of Research and Services for The Data Warehousing Institute, a worldwide association of business intelligence professionals, Eckerson interviewed dozens of organizations that have built various types of performance dashboards in different industries and lines of business. His practical insights provide a road map to help readers turbo-charge performance-management initiatives with dashboard technology to optimize performance and accelerate results.
