For example a balance scorecard has a very rigid, very well defined framework of how you need to manage your organization. So to me that is in some ways too much of a limitation. The advantage is that it already has a certain scorecard framework built into it. On the other hand if you look at a good dashboard solution, it should also allow you to pretty much build any kind of scorecard framework on top of it, because a dashboard is a platform, and you can deliver a scorecard system on that.How do you see the demand for data on mobile workers changing? Do you see a trend emerging such as ubiquitous BI from smart phones for all workers? Is that something that you can address with a real time Java server? Will other makers of executive dashboard software or enterprise dashboard customized software have to address this?A common way to address this is through the business activity monitoring capability. And what it really means is that if certain thresholds are met or exceeded, that information needs to be given back to the user in terms of alerts, most commonly via an automatic email, which could be delivered on any platform, and emails could be sent to your PDA or any mobile devices.
So that’s the most common way of tying the mobility aspect into dashboard. What is possible now is delivering dashboards on the mobile device itself.Besides the automatically generated email, what about leveraging RSS for the creation of feeds that other workers or organizations or affiliates can subscribe to?Absolutely, yes, that’s just one data source in terms of a dashboards system. So the Java dashboard is able to tap into different data sources, and the various RSS feeds are just one more data source.There is a choice to build or buy dashboard software. Why use a third party product?I think it just goes back to the very fundamental premise that you do what you do best. You outsource things that are not your prime business. Now I don’t think most companies are in the business of developing dashboard software. From that point of view I would suggest that any company that is considering buy vs. build should first look around for existing software available and see if that software very well meets their needs.
Can you explain more about why data visualization is important?Actually it’s not only important, it’s critical to an effective dashboard because one of the last mistakes that you want to do is just make a dashboard nothing but a collection of many reports. Then it really loses the very purpose of dashboard. You just overwhelm people with a lot of data. It’s not enabling insights anymore. It’s just data overload. Good and effective data visualization is critical, and the key objective of that is that if there are any issues or trends in the data, that should actually jump out at the users instead of the user having to try to dig it out, as they say, “finding a needle in a haystack.”With data visualization, you’re talking about changing metrics that might be numerically represented into graphics, whether the graph is on the x and y axis or three dimensional axes or pie chart or a bar graph or whatever it is making that graphical representation more meaningful by creating trend lines and that sort of thing. And it goes beyond trend lines now.
You know people are coming up with the widgets whether it is traffic lights, speedometers, thermometers, you name it, it’s as creative as you can get.iPhones and Vista have got what they call gadgets. Do you see widgets or gadgets, whatever you want to call them, offering more executive intelligence?That goes back sometimes to the design philosophy. Sometimes less is more, and the job of the widget is not to give you lots of data, but just give you two or three key indicators at a quick glance so you can see where the trouble is.Why should companies consider getting an executive dashboard or enterprise dashboard or information dashboard now?I think this is a natural revolution in information management.
Almost all companies of all sizes, they have growing collection of data and information over the past years because database technology and the hybrid technology have been much more accessible, affordable and affords us lots more data. So this is a natural evolution process that you want to leverage all those investments you have done in building those data marts and all the data infrastructure.This is a very natural progression, and the need for management to leverage all that wealth of data that they have amassed over the years and help them get much more value and insight out of that. So dashboard to me is just a natural next step. It’s just a matter of when.
The sooner the better because then you can leverage more and more of your data investments.Is it potentially dangerous to rely too much on a dashboard in case the system goes down, or if you lose connectivity? What kinds of backup processes do you typically recommend that your clients implement?That’s a very good point, because actually what I’ve seen is once the company gets accustomed to dashboard, it really becomes an integral part of their everyday work and decision making. And soon as the dashboard goes down we really have seen panic calls where they say, hey, we really need that back. So just like any other mission critical infrastructure, all the backups and the recovery process have to be considered when it comes to deploying a good and effective enterprise dashboard system.