Performance Dashboards:
Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing
Your Business by Wayne W.
Eckerson
How To Use Information To Energize Your Goals And Strategy.
Tips, techniques, and trends on how to use dashboard technology to
optimize business performance
Business performance management is a hot new management
discipline that delivers tremendous value when supported by information
technology. Through case studies and industry research, this book shows
how leading companies are using performance dashboards to execute
strategy, optimize business processes, and improve performance.

Wayne W. Eckerson (Hingham, MA) is the Director of Research for The
Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), the leading association of business
intelligence and data warehousing professionals worldwide that provide
high-quality, in-depth education, training, and research. He is a columnist
for SearchCIO.com, DM Review, Application Development Trends, the
Business Intelligence Journal, and TDWI Case Studies & Solution.
Personal Review: Performance Dashboards: Measuring,
Monitoring, and Managing Your Business by Wayne W.
Eckerson
For purposes of discussion, pretend that your organization is a vehicle
within which you and your associates travel en route to a series of
destinations; for example, various stages of progressively improved
operational efficiency and progressively increased profitability. One key
question arises: How well is your vehicle performing?
The three "dashboards" (i.e. operational, tactical, and strategic) that
Wayne Eckerson offers in this volume can help to answer that question.
"The monitoring application conveys critical information at a glance using
timely and relevant data, usually with graphical elements; the analysis
application lets users analyze and explore performance data across
multiple dimensions and at different levels of detail to get at the root cause
of problems and issues; the management application fosters
communication among executives, managers, and staff and gives
executives continuous feedback across a range of critical activities,
enabling them to `steer' their organizations in the right direction."
The ultimate success of the cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective
system which Eckerson discusses in this book depends on several factors:
sufficient leadership and resources at all levels of implementation, correct
and consistent application of the right metrics, a compelling graphical user
interface, and contingency planning which ensures user adoption while
driving the organizational changes.
I especially appreciate Eckerson's provision of three mini case studies that
illustrate how -- in real-world situations - the three performance
"dashboards" can achieve the desired objectives. Specifically, those that
are operational (Quicken Loans, Inc., pages 127-141), those which are
tactical (International Truck and Engine Corp., pages 143-158), and those
which are strategic (Hewlett Packard Co., pages 159-177). I also
appreciate the material provided in Part Three (Critical Success Factors:
Tips from the Trenches) as Eckerson correlates various multilayered
applications built on business intelligence and data integration
infrastructure that enables any organization (regardless of size or nature)
to measure, monitor, and manage business performance more effectively.

All executives recognize the importance of accurate and consistent
measurement of what really matters. Obviously, the "what" varies
(sometimes significantly) from one organization to another. In my opinion,
the three performance "dashboards" that Eckerson recommends can be of
substantial benefit, whatever the given "what" may be but if - and only if -
the aforementioned success factors are present. To repeat, they are:
sufficient leadership and resources at all levels of implementation, correct
and consistent application of the right metrics, a compelling graphical user
interface, and contingency planning which ensures user adoption while
driving the organizational changes.
This book is by no means an "easy read" but it will generously reward
those who absorb and digest its material with appropriate care. Then
what? He fully understands how difficult it is to ensure adoption by others,
and, to manage performance effectively throughout the given enterprise. In
the final chapter, Eckerson notes that performance dashboards can easily
backfire and cause performance to decline or stall instead of climb. He
then identifies what he characterizes as eight cardinal sins " that can turn a
performance dashboard into a performance quagmire." How to avoid
them? Eckerson offers nine strategies to ensure adoption and eight
strategies to manage performance.
I highly recommend this brilliant book as well as Dean Spitzer's
Transforming Performance Measurement. Both are eminently worthy of
thoughtful and rigorous consideration. However, that said, I also offer a
caveat expressed by Peter Drucker in 1963: "There is surely nothing quite
so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."
Invoking again the "vehicle" metaphor introduced in the first paragraph of
this brief commentary, I presume to suggest that if you and your
companions don't know where you are going, "any road will get you there."
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