The War Room of the Future – a giant physical dashboard for battle planning

Ever feel that while you're in the trenches sweating it out with the actual workers in your company, your management is up in a comfy room somewhere just pointing and clicking while enjoying the gourmet coffee? Well, this war room of the future does its share in keeping the nitty gritty an arm's length away. Actually, I shouldn't joke, as the better the view from the top, the better off the ground troops are. Ordnance provider, BAE Systems, has posted this video about their war room of the future. The link brings you to a graphic of a dashboard and a link to the video. It's really big (over 60 megs) so I thought I'd grab out a bunch of screenshots for you. The basic idea is that the whole room acts as a big enterprise dashboard.

This first screenshot shows you the "before" – a hand drawn whiteboard with various KPIs.

This series of screenshots shows the "after". Here is the door to the war room:

The bird's-eye view. Note the various monitors. Some are large screen monitors and others are smart screens with touch interactivity.

This one shows more of the screens. On the left side you can see a video conferencing screen with a camera on top of the screen.

Some are TV feeds. Now it's confirmed that our war leaders get their breaking news from the same place we do – broadcast news!

Other screens monitor live action. Here is a video feed of a missile launching:

Some more screenshots of dashboard systems:

Look down and you'll see the controller tablet. It controls the entire room:

Take a closer look. You'll be relieved to know that Microsoft is the wartime OS of choice:

This next series of shots reveals some details of the dashboard featured in this room. I'd like to see what the icons on the last screenshot mean – but I suppose that it's top secret or something. Actually, I guess I shouldn't kid around about spies and screenshots when it comes to systems like these.

Homework: The tools of warfare will never be the same. Information is what wins wars. Start with these books on using technology to manage battefields.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.

Medical Practice Enterprise Dashboard Screenshots – physicians tracking financial and clinical KPIs

This physician dashboard is in use at the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates in Washington, D.C. Thank you to the Dashboard Spy who sent me the screenshots and project documents. This multi-specialty medical practice with $215 Million in annual revenue has 275 doctors and about 1,000 employees including 16 in the IT department. The dashboard project was started in early 2005 and took about a month or so using 2 IT resources plus an external consultant. The applications that contribute data to the medical practice enterprise dashboard include:

• IDX Flowcast billing and scheduling
• Allscripts TouchWorks Electronic Health Record
• Great Plains Financial Management System
• ADP payroll system – Oracle
• Multiple Excel spreadsheets

It is planned that physician compensation will be tied to the performance metrics tracked by this dashboard. The KPIs in this enterprise dashboard include financial measures such as

• Gross Charges
• Payments Received
• Contractual Adjustment
• A/R Days
• Collection Rate
• Missing Charges

Clinical measures include items such as:

• Booked Hours vs. Scheduled Hours
• "No Show" Rate
• Number of New Patients
• Number of Prescriptions
• Tasks Completed

"Tasks Completed" is a customer service measure that tracks physician activities such as reviewing lab results or responding to email inquiries and referral requests from patients. The organization's goal is to turnaround all such requests from patients within 24 hours.

This first screen is what the doctors see upon logging on. Looks to be an Xcelsius dashboard, judging from the graphics. I think that the use of the dial controls in the middle of the dashboard is wrong. The labels seem to indicate values that are calculated? If so, then why have the ability to turn them via the control? A case of "too much of a good thing"?

This second dashboard screenshot shows the financial measures.

This third screenshot shows the clinical measures.

Homework: Need a crash course on the KPIs necessary in this space? Browse the sample pages of these books on medical practice management.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy's favorite books.