Telesales Dashboard – Tracking Outbound Call Activity for a Call Center with SAS/GRAPH

Once again, the award winning Dr. Robert Allison has sent us the results of his SAS/GRAPH experiments (you didn’t know you can get awards for dashboarding, did you? Check here.) He decided to implement another of the dashboards from the Stephen Few dashboard book,Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

“Hello Dashboard Spy. Here is another dashboard you might consider putting on your website. Previously I submitted the SAS/Graph version of the dashboard from p. 177 of Stephen Few’s new dashboard book.  Thanks for the nice write-up! This time, I’m submitting the SAS/Graph version of the Telesales dashboard from p. 199 (with a few small changes – hopefully improvements. Same as before, this is created dynamically from the data (if the data changes, the dashboard will change when it’s re-run).  My sas “ods html” version has html charttips and drilldowns, and a “SAS/Intrnet” version could even auto-refresh the graph every few seconds, and let the user click the Freeze/Unfreeze button to start & stop the auto-refreshing. This is all very do-able in SAS.”

Update: “Some people have asked about the sas code – you can find the sas code, and a “live” version of this dashboard (showing that it can support chart tips & drilldowns) on the following page:http://robslink.com/SAS/democd22/aaaindex.htm“.

Homework: Last time we featured Dr. Allison’s work with SAS/GRAPH, we got some feedback asking some questions, Here is a pointer to how Dr. Allison’s approach with another dashboard using SAS/GRAPH. See the section titled “How SAS/GRAPH Was Used to Create the Winning Dashboard”. If you are not sure of how to start with SAS/GRAPH is, check out these books on SAS/GRAPH.

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 on enterprise dashboards.

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Pharmaceutical Facility Management Dashboard Screenshot – Excel Dashboards showing Utility Usage KPIs

A well-placed Dashboard Spy at one of the world’s largest pharma companies sent me these censored enterprise dashboard screenshots. The first screenshot shows the menu of dashboards used to monitor facilities management and engineering KPIs. This Metrics section is only one part of the larger portal. The sections of the overall application include Home, Information, Metrics, Continuous Improvement, Energy Efficiency Initiative and Feedback. The screenshots below show 2 drilldowns of the enterprise dashboards. As you can see, those are excel dashboards.

Homework: Facilities Management is a whole discipline with lots of subtleties. If you need an introduction, start with these general books on facilities management. Pharmaceutical Facilities Management is a real specialty. There is actual a book that focuses on this area: Pharmaceutical Facility Management.

Tags: Enterprise Dashboard, Dashboard

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 on business dashboards.

Supply Chain Management Dashboard Screenshot – Key Performance Indicators & Metrics for Forecast, Inventory, Orders

Supply Chain Dashboard: Logistics systems and processes can create quite a bit of complexity and confusion. Supply Chain Dashboards provide clarity and tracking.

Thanks goes to the Dashboard Spy who sent me these enterprise dashboard screenshots for a supply chain management system. Lots of interesting KPIs to study here. The application is divided into the following tabs: Home, Alerts, Forecast, Inventory, Reports and KPIs. The first dashboard screenshot shows the home page of the system. The left side acts as both navigation and summary by including the number of each item. For example, in the Tasks portlet, we see that there are 4 Orders to Ship. I presume that clicking on that link will bring up those orders. Likewise, the KPIs section shows the status (red/green/yellow), the KPI name (which is hyperlink to the KPI detail), and the actual value. On the right side are 2 KPI charts. The first is a graph of the Perfect Order Rate (more on how to calculate this KPI later below in this post). The second is the Back Order Rate.

Here is the orders screen:

This is the sales order drill-down:

And here is the KPI Dashboard. Forecast KPIs include: Forecast Accuracy, Supply Plan Variation, Ship to Commit Percent. Inventory KPIs include Inventory Turns, Stock Out Rate, Inventory Aging, Average Days on Hand, Inventory Dollars, Target Inventory Rate, Excess Inventory Average. The Order KPIs include: Perfect Order Rate, Delayed Shipment Rate, Open Returns, Order Fill Rate, Backorder Rate, Closed Returns and Exceptions per Item.

Homework: Do you know what is meant by “Perfect Order”? This supply chain metric calculates the error-free rate of each stage of an order. Here is an explaination from http://www.supplychainmetric.com/perfect.htm

“This measure should capture every step in the life of an order. It measures the errors per order line. An example: your warehouse picks and ships the wrong item. Once the customer receives the order and notices the error, they contact the manufacturer and notify them of the mistake. The manufacturer then enters a credit for the item not shipped and an invoice for the item shipped in its place. For almost all errors that occur, a corrective credit is issued. It is through an analysis of these credits that you derive your metric. Most systems require a “reason code” to be used when entering a credit. Tracking these reason codes and assigning them to a category allow you to group them for the Perfect Order Measure. Sample calculation:

Order Entry Accuracy: 99.95% Correct (5 errors per 1000 order lines)
Warehouse Pick Accuracy: 99.2%
Delivered on Time: 96%
Shipped without Damage: 99%
Invoiced Correctly: 99.8%

Therefore, the Perfect Order Measure is 99.95% * 99.2% * 96% * 99% * 99.8% =   94.04%”

If you want to learn more about the calculations behind supply chain management, start with these books on supply chain metrics.

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 on business dashboards.

Project Management Dashboards – using Notes to track project status, time, resources, clients

Here are a series of enterprise dashboard screenshots from a Project Tracking Suite that uses Lotus Notes to track project management issues such as scheduling, status reporting, document management, customer interaction and team member control. The project dashboard is from http://www.trackersuite.com.

This is the IT Project Tracker screen. There seems to be 2 different levels of red/green/yellow indicators going on. I understand the rightmost columns where you see if the project is within scope, adequately staffed, and on time, but what is the colored ball in the first column?

This screenshot of the enterprise dashboard shows the contact information of the project team members. This team member dashboard has information like phone numbers, addresses, department and cost center.

The project dashboard also leads to the time management portion of the system. The timesheet module looks like this.

Even client information is reachable via the dashboard. Here is a look at a customer’s information:

Homework: Of course project management dashboards get complicated because project managment is complicated. If you are starting out, learn the basics by perusing this list of books on project management. Also, the book The Project Management Scorecard: Measuring the Success of Project Management Solutionsspecifically examines project management dashboarding.

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 on business dashboards.

Sales Pipeline Viewer Dashboard Screenshot – Tracking KPIs visually through size, color, height

When certain enterprise dashboards get submitted to the Dashboard Spy dashboard screenshot collection, I know right away that it's a big winner. For us executive dashboard enthusiasts, a digital dashboard sample is worth returning to again and again for study when the following characteristics are evident: there is a working demo online, there is clearly an understanding of the underlying business processes, the user interface is professionally and wonderfully designed, and there are interesting visual solutions used to solve the puzzle of how to visually impart the business intelligence contained in the data to the business user.

Here is a truly wonderful enterprise dashboard that focuses on tracking the sales pipeline. It's from visual-io.com and available to try out as a Business Week Interactive Graphic. There is a nice write up in this BW article, Picturing a Better Business.

Take a look at this dashboard screenshot and you'll see that there are several things going on. The size, color and positioning of the dots represent the sales pipeline KPIs. The Sales Pipeline Viewer lets you track the progress of each sales executive's potential deals through the sales cycle – from qualification to close. The visual aspects of each dot (representing each potential deal) represent certain facts about the deal. In this screenshot, the size of the dot gives the priority, the color of the dot shows the closing probability and the height of the dot relative to the box it sits in shows the expected revenue. The background is important too. There is the concept of a "heat map" – the more deals in any box, the darker its background. This lets the manager instantly comprehend who is "hot" and who is not (always a challenge in a sales management situation).

Homework: Lots to study here. Let this sample dashboard inspire you to learn the underlying disciplines. If you need to brush up on visual design and User Interface issues, this is a great summary for IT and business-side project members – The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type. If you need an understanding of the sales process and how to measure it, take a look at these books on measuring sales performance.

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 on business dashboards.

COCOMO Dashboard – Estimating software development costs with the Constructive Cost Model

Yes, I know it sounds like a Beach Boys song, but there is a software costing methodology called COCOMO. It stands for Constructive Cost Model and was developed at TRW/Northrop-Grumman in 2002.

Here is an enterprise dashboard which provides a COCOMO methodology interface. It is a live Xcelsius dashboard demo that can be tried here.  You can use the interactive components in this xcelsius dashboard to change the factors in the model and instantly see the impact. KPIs fall into Product, Computer, Personnel and Project categories. Lines of code and cost per line are typical measures.

COCOMO comes in 3 flavors. Each is increasingly detailed and offers higher degrees of accuracy. Basic COCOMO computes software development effort (cost) as a function of program size. Estimated lines of code is how program size is measured. Intermediate COCOMO computes software development effort as function of program size and a set of cost drivers that include subjective assessment of product, hardware, personnel and project attributes. Detailed COCOMO incorporates all characteristics of the previous versions with an assessment of the cost driver's impact on each step  of the software development process (SDLC).

Here is the dashboard:

Homework: There are 2 areas of follow up for you enterprise dashboard project members. First, if you are not familiar with Xcelsius as a dashboarding product, start with the Crystal Xcelsius for Dummies book. It's quite a good introduction to this visually exciting dashboard technology. In a nut shell, Xcelsius lets you present Excel data in a flash-based presentation. It is geared toward business users and lets them create a polished interface. The power of the flash components is that you can interact with them. You can literally turn dials and read the effects of your what-if changes on the guages. The second area of study is the COCOMO methodology of software costing. Start with these books on COCOMO and software estimation.

Tags: Enterprise Dashboard, Xcelsius Dashboard, COCOMO Dashboard

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 on business dashboards.

Executive Analytics Dashboard for Manufacturing Orders and Sales – real time, projection and trend KPIs

While it is very instructive to study screenshots of other people's enterprise dashboards for their designs and layouts, it is the Key Performance Indicator set that you should really pay attention to. Especially valuable to companies that are still forming their own KPIs, this "content" of the dashboard is what is most instructive. I was reading an article on Executive Analytics Dashboards for medical device companies at http://www.devicelink.com/mx/archive/03/01/informationtech.html and came across these very valuable graphics. They explain the KPIs chosen for a manufacturing order and sales enterprise dashboard and list the types of possible data sources to choose from.

The actual dashboard is difficult to make out, but the emphasis is on the explanation of the dashboard KPIs through the call outs.

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 on business dashboards.

Spy Vs. Spy Helicopter Ad – Enterprise Dashboard Spy getting too serious

Just in case this blog about enterprise dashboards is getting too serious, here's a little break for you from your KPI selections, ROI justifications, project timelines, dashboard designs and user handholding.

Remember those great Spy vs. Spy cartoons from Mad Magazine? There is actually a great book that collects these Spy vs. Spy comics: Spy Vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook. The review on amazon: "Antonio Prohias's wordless, Cold War-inspired spoof of the agents of international intrigue portrays the twin enemies outdoing each other in elaborately stupid plots to achieve the other's demise. Assembled after Prohias's death, the volume commemorates the cartoon's 40th birthday as well as Prohias's compelling personal story (in 1960 he fled Castro's new regime in Cuba after being unofficially blacklisted for his political cartoons). Comic book fans, especially of the MAD variety, will love this intelligent tribute to an artist. 70 color and 300 b&w illustrations"

And back in 2004, the Spy vs. Spy duo came to life in the world of TV advertisement. Here's a clip of one of the commercials. Just press the play button to start the video. Then, you have to get right back to thinking about enterprise dashboards, balanced scorecards, digital dashboards, business dashboards, dashboard this and dashboard that. Just kidding! Enjoy your 30 second respite.

For those real hardcore fans among you, here is some metadata about this ad:

Product: MOUNTAIN DEW
Title: SPY VS SPY: HELICOPTER
Summary: WHITE SPY IN COPTER BOOBY TRAPS MOUNTAIN DEW MACHINE 
Description: BLACK & WHITE, WHITE SPY FROM SPY VS. SPY PUSHES MOUTAIN DEW SODA MACHINE ALONG WALL, [SPY], BLACK SPY DRIVES BY IN CAR AND NOTICES SODA MACHINE, [VS SPY], BLACK SPY APPROACHES MACHINE, WHITE SPY HOVERS OVERHEAD IN HELICOPTER, WHITE SPY IMAGINES DROPPING BOMB ON BLACK SPY`S HEAD, PULLS LEVER, BOXING GLOVE DROPS OUT OF BOTTOM OF HELICOPTER AND BONKS BLACK SPY ON THE HEAD, BLACK SPY HAS SPRING HIDDEN IN HAT, GLOVE RICOCHETS AND PUNCHES WHITE SPY IN THE CHIN, BLACK SPY SMIRKS AND PRESSES BUTTON ON MOUNTAIN DEW MACHINE, SPRING LOADED SIDEWALK PROPELS BLACK SPY INTO WALL, [TO BE CONTINUED…], MOUNTAIN DEW CAN SLIDES INTO SLOT ON MACHINE, BLACK SPY FALLS FROM WALL, HELICOPTER SPINS AROUND IN THE AIR, [DO THE DEW], FP. INDUSTRY TITLE IS HELICOPTER
Tagline: DO THE DEW
Category: BEVERAGE
Subcategory: SODA
Media: Television-Network
Language: English
Region: North America
Country: USA
Capture Source: TNT
Program NBA PLAYOFFS
Date: May 29 2004 9:02PM 
Length: 30.00 seconds 
Company: PEPSICO INC

Homework: Working on an enterprise dashboard project is hard! Don't forget to take a break now and then.

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 on business dashboards.