Projects:KPI Dashboard/Functional Specification
Contents |
Overview
Classical Enterprise Resource Planning software allows organizations to preserve their transactional data, but the decisive increase in efficiency is based on the ability to quickly and easily analyze the financial data in the corporate databases in order to be able to make more intelligent decisions about the future.
This is a real challenge for the next version of Openbravo ERP: Keeping track of what is happening in an organization is good, finding out why things are happening or predicting future performance is much better. Supplement of information:
The KPI Dashboard is all about taking a holistic approach for managing business performance to achieve a single view of the company. It will provide an opportunity to meet the business goals emphasizing aligning strategic and operational objectives in addition to monitoring and managing business measurements.
These Key Performance Indicators should therefore provide the "missing link" that bridges the necessary access and integration to information and aligns operational execution with strategic objectives in today’s business world. As a result, these tools transform large data repositories from the static state into a dynamic, strategic resource. These implications are relevant throughout the organization and benefit the entire value chain.
Scope
The desired outcome of BI projects is the continuous improvement of the organization through timely information that enhances decision making. These systems enable the organization to become proactive and "information agile" by delivering information used to:
- Support internal enterprise users in the assessment, enhancement and optimization of organizational performance & operation.
- Deliver critical business information to end-users about value chain constituencies such as customers and supply-chain partners.
- Creating a vision for financial leadership.
- Coaching the organization to set realistic goals.
- Supporting optimal decision making.
Too much information can kill the information. If too many measures are chosen, the amount of time necessary to capture the data may outweigh the value of the information. The dashboard should confine its display to a single screen, with no need for scrolling or switching between multiple screens.
The Openbravo KPI Dashboards will monitor information at a glance. A special effort has been brought to transform transactional data into consumable information, in the clearest and most direct way possible. Dashboards can provide a unique and powerful means to present information, but they rarely live up to their potential. Most of them fail to communicate efficiently and effectively, not because of inadequate technology or relevant information, but because of poorly designed implementations.
There's a fair degree of diversity in the products that go by the name "dashboard." One of the few characteristics that most vendors seem to agree on is that for something to be called a dashboard it must include graphical display mechanisms such as traffic lights and a variety of gauges and meters, many similar to the fuel gauges and speedometers found in automobiles.
We decided to turn our dashboards toward their vocation, with a minimum of colors or attractive design.
Reference
- O'Reilly - Information Dashboard Design The Effective Visual Communication of Data - Stephen Few
- John Wiley & Sons, Inc. - Business Ratios and Formulas - Steven M. Bragg
- Alpha Books - Complete Idiot's Guide to Finance and Accounting - Michael Muckian
- Wiley - Market Data Mining Techniques For Marketing, Sales, and Customer Relationship Management - Michael J.A Berry and Gordon S. Linoff
Dependencies
- Business Intelligence PENTAHO.
The Challenge: A Well-Designed Dashboard
Elaboration of the enterprise strategy
The KPI Dashboards will offer to the decision-makers a web-based project support for developing strategies, regarding on objectives results.
Reduce Go to Action
The dashboards should help the senior management keeping connected to the action without analysis of heterogeneous source of data.
The rolling analysis will allow them to have sufficient time during the analysis to anticipate and prepare the action.
A Well-Designed Dashboard
The fundamental challenge of the KPI Dashboards design is the need to squeeze a great deal of information into a small amount of space, resulting in a display that is easily and immediately understandable. The Dashboards must display a dense array of information in a small amount of space in a manner that communicates clearly and immediately.
This can be achieved only when the visual design of dashboards is central to the development process and is informed by a solid understanding of visual perception what works, what doesn't, and why.
Categorization
| Variable | Values | Importance | Status |
|
Role |
Strategic Analytical Operational |
Must have Must have Nice to have |
Completed Completed Not started |
|
Data domain |
Sales Financial |
Must have |
Completed |
|
Type of measures |
Balanced Scorecard Non-performance |
Must have Must have (Top 5 lists) |
Completed |
|
Span of data |
Enterprise-wide (Client) Organization Individual |
Must have |
Completed Completed Completed |
|
Update frequency |
ETL Configuration |
Must have |
Completed |
- Strategic Perspective: High-level measures of performance that allow a quick overview that decision makers need to monitor the health and opportunities of the business.
- Analytical Perspective: Analytical dashboards should support interactions with the data, such as drilling down into the underlying details. They allow to see what is going on but also to examine the causes.
- Operational Perspective: Operational dashboards must have the means to grab your attention immediately if an operation falls outside the acceptable threshold of performance, you must maintain awareness of activities and events that are constantly changing and might require attention and response at a moment's notice.
Business perspective
For business users, the right reporting software is simply the solution that lets them work with information the way they want to. It means accessing relevant information has to be fast and easy.
This single-screen display of the most important information people need to do a job, presented in a way that allows them to monitor what's going on in an instant, is a powerful new medium of communication.
The KPI dashboard is based on the exploration and analysis of large quantities of data in order to discover meaningful patterns and rules. Its goal is to allow a corporation to improve its marketing, sales, and support operations through a better understanding of its customers.
KPI Analysis
An analysis of the current periods is insufficient to draw a realistic picture of the immediate future, the sales results must be presented simultaneously with the last fiscal year, the fiscal year forecast and the rolling forecast.
Forecast
The KPI Dashboards will provide both forecasts with strict reference to fiscal years and rolling forecasts, the system will provide broad support for both of these approaches:
- Annual forecast: The result you expect to realize at the end of your fiscal year.
- Rolling forecast: The analysis of variances between plan and actual is made on a regular basis within performance management to identify the significant variances. The rolling forecast is particularly important as a result in predicting whether the targets specified are achievable based on the feedback given and can be frequently modified. The periods open for planning for the annual forecast decrease over time, whereas for the rolling forecast the number of forecast periods remains the same.
| Forecast | Importance | Status |
|
Annual Rolling |
Must have Nice to have |
Completed Completed |
Important note: The setup page must be defined for Forecasts. |
Quantitative Data
- The same day last year.
- Forecast of where we expecte to be at the end of the year.
- Realized end of last year.
Non-Quantitative Data
The critical information needed to do a job cannot always be expressed numerically, some types of non-quantitative data are fairly common as well. For example the KPI dashboard will present green and red lights to inform the managers of the top five increases or decreases.
- Top 5 Customers.
- Top 5 Product categories.
- Top 5 Warehouses.
- Top 5 Sales people.
- Global evolution during the 12 last months.
- Poor/Satisfactory/Good area results.
- Alerts: Configurable Percentage of increase or decrease as regard the last year to date (same day last year).
| Axis | Importance | Status |
|
Areas % Decrease % Increase |
Must have Must have Must have |
Completed Completed Completed |
Important note: The setup page must be defined for areas and Decrease/Increase Percentage. |
The one-size-fits-all won't apply since different departments and profiles have different reporting needs, the KPI dashboard provides the possibility to choose a x-number of analysis axis.
User Interface
Improvements
- Multi currency Management
- Quarter To Date Management
- Localization
- Pentaho integration
- Complete accounting KPI (ratios)
- Integration KPI Forecast and budget