In many ways, business intelligence (BI) is a saturated market. Many organizations have implemented business intelligence; and enterprise organizations, in particular, use some form of business intelligence, data warehousing, or advanced analytics as part of their strategic and tactical efforts. Whether the applications of business intelligence within these organizations are effective is external to the fact that most large organizations have a BI presence. This perceived saturation is one of the many reasons that solution providers began to make a play for smaller and mid-sized organizations. And even though many solutions that target mid-market companies exist, organizations may still find the idea of implementing a full scale BI solution overwhelming.

Luckily alternatives exist – whether they are looking at a software-as-a-service model, using spreadsheets (the most common form of business intelligence currently used), or using dashboards as a first step toward gaining additional business insights. This article looks at the proliferation of dashboard use and the concept of using dashboards as a bridge between operational solutions and insight into business practices and data.

General Use of Dashboards

Although dashboards have existed for several years, until more recently the common way organizations visualized or analyzed information was through reports and/or the use of OLAP. This enabled end users to slice and dice information using multidimensional analysis. As dashboards become the de facto way of visualizing and identifying key business metrics, dashboard offerings have expanded to become more visually appealing and highly interactive, giving employees that might not otherwise have the technical skill to develop their own reports or OLAP cube views the ability to drill through information to see how performance is matching up to overall plans. This, in addition to low price points, enables dashboards to become an easy way for organizations to dabble in analytics and to use dashboards as a starting point toward a larger BI implementation.

In addition, the market has seen an expansion of dashboard use due to the ability to apply dashboards more broadly than just through business intelligence. For instance, some organizations use dashboards as a way to monitor their operational environment on a constant basis. Whether within a manufacturing environment or in a call center, dashboards can visually measure performance and progress. And this can be done in a way that meets the needs of various requirements, by using charts, gauges, maps and the like.

With advancements in technology and increased market penetration, organizations are becoming more demanding with the types of solutions they choose to deploy. Add to this the difficult economic times and a demand for lower cost and higher return initiatives and dashboards become even more important. Organizations are no longer stuck with an all-or-nothing approach to business intelligence. Nor are they required to look toward static reports or multidimensional analysis to gain business insights. In essence, dashboards provide organizations with two key advantages in regards to data visibility:

1. They provide a low cost way to gain BI insight without having to implement a full BI infrastructure, and
   
   
2. They enable business users to share information and use data more broadly across the organization, in part due to ease of use.
   

Dashboards as a First Step to Business Intelligence

Dashboards provide a good first step into the world of business intelligence. With lower price points, shorter implementation times in many cases, and easy to decipher user interfaces, dashboards remove BI’s “difficult” stigma. Consequently, for small and mid-sized organizations, and for organizations looking for a low risk entry point to analytics and increased business visibility, dashboards can provide the first step to larger BI deployments.

Many solution providers offer dashboards as a best-of-breed offering, meaning that they can be deployed as a stand-alone solution. These include solutions that can be developed by the solution provider and deployed across the organization, developed in-house, or offered as a service using an on-demand model. All of these ways let organizations choose the data they want to view and manage, develop metrics, and visualize that information to help them meet and exceed defined goals. In addition, organizations can choose to look at information on an ongoing basis. For trend-based information, however, organizations may be required to house their own information depending upon the solution choice. Even though a data warehouse per se might not be required, the organization might have to keep their information in a spreadsheet or other database to be able to analyze time-based data.

Organizations choosing to start with dashboards can choose from a plethora of solutions, giving them freedom to choose the best solution for their organization. In addition, the role of dashboards within the organization is expanding toward collaborative initiatives to enable business users across the organization and across geographic regions to collaborate and share data.

Dashboards for the Masses

The maturity of business intelligence within organizations precipitates the demand to be able to share data more broadly across the organization. It is no longer all right to have one report or OLAP developer who creates individualized analyses for super users. In order to get the most out of data and to be able to plan and act effectively, all decision makers require access to information. This includes the ability to analyze information at will. Dashboards give organizations the tools necessary to do just this. Users can share information, develop metrics for team members, or compare performance to colleagues, and the list goes on. In today’s society, with the evolution of Web 2.0 and the expansion of social networking, the ability to see the right information at the right time, and to share that information and collaborate on projects, is an essential aspect of a person’s day-to-day tasks. Using dashboards to enable these acts actually makes work easier because of the ability to sift through data and transform that data into valuable information and insights.

The Bigger Picture

Dashboards represent one aspect of a larger business intelligence platform or initiative. However, for organizations looking at business intelligence for the first time, or those that only require a front-end tool to gain visibility into their business, the use of dashboards provides the first step to obtaining a broader sense of how an organization is performing. Because of the multitude of solutions that exist, organizations can pick and choose what works best for them. This includes features, design, interoperability, deployment method, etc. The overall flexibility can be seen as an extra bonus to the overall ease of use and ability to gain insight into the business without large budgetary requirements.

Recent articles by Lyndsay Wise

• The Role of Business Intelligence as a Business Enabler
• The Promise of Free Business Intelligence
• Expanding Business Intelligence Accessibility Through Dashboards
• Business Intelligence Cost of Deployment