This document discusses dashboards and scorecards and how IBM Cognos solutions address them. It describes the three types of dashboards - operational, tactical, and strategic scorecards - and their purposes. Operational dashboards focus on monitoring, tactical on analysis, and scorecards on managing strategy. IBM Cognos offers solutions for all three types, including IBM Cognos Now! for operational dashboards, IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence for tactical dashboards, and IBM Cognos 8 BI for building scorecards. These solutions provide integrated, accurate data across the different dashboard types.
Developing and Implementing Scorecards and DashboardsVictor Holman
Find out how to transform your organization's performance in 120 days. For free templates, frameworks, guides and the first turnkey enterprise performance management system go to www.lifecycle-performance-pros.com
Get an Organizational Performance and Best Practice Analysis
Watch video presentation at http://www.lifecycle-performance-pros.com
Developing and Implementing Scorecards and DashboardsVictor Holman
Find out how to transform your organization's performance in 120 days. For free templates, frameworks, guides and the first turnkey enterprise performance management system go to www.lifecycle-performance-pros.com
Get an Organizational Performance and Best Practice Analysis
Watch video presentation at http://www.lifecycle-performance-pros.com
The Enterprise Management Portal (EMP) is a gateway to the Management System that helps an organization work.
To enable the entire organization to align with its core context and to collaborate at all levels
NetSuite CRM+ delivers powerful customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities, including
sales force automation (SFA), marketing automation, customer support and service, and flexible
customization, all in single cloud CRM solution. And unlike typical CRM solutions, NetSuite CRM+
includes powerful sales performance management, order management, partner management and
marketing effectiveness capabilities as standard
Are you looking for ways to propel your organization or department to the next level? This webinar will reveal the secrets to creating your own strategic planning roadmap to success. Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson will lead you to understand the components of a strategic plan and the role they play. He’ll then discuss choosing the right strategic planning process. By having the right process in place you’ll gain buy in from the group to help you put the plan into action. And finally we’ll show you how to choose the right facilitator – the plusses and minuses of having an internal person or a professional facilitator lead the session.
BearingPoint helps clients develop a Customer Relationship Management platform to orchestrate and enhance sales, customer and activity management with the help of a comprehensive transparent and user-friendly UI design.
Take Control Of Your Business PerformanceJohn Hall
Taking control of business performance by implementing a performance management framework using a set of tools that systematically enable the improvements. Regular performance evaluation using industry benchmarking is unique to the PA offering.
What is the relationship between Accounting and an Accounting inform.pdfannikasarees
What is the relationship between Accounting and an Accounting information system? (2.5
Marks)
Accounting-Methods, procedures, and standards followed in accumulating, classifying,
recording, and reporting business events and transactions. The accounting system includes the
formal records and original source data. Regulatory requirements may exist on how a particular
accounting system is to be maintained (e.g., insurance company).
Accounting Information System-Subsystem of a Management Information System (MIS) that
processes financial transactions to provide (1) internal reporting to managers for use in planning
and controlling current and future operations and for nonroutine decision making; (2) external
reporting to outside parties such as to stockholders, creditors, and government agencies.
• What has happened to the relationship over the years? (2.5 Marks)
Accounting and Information technology are two terms which are the used in every business .
Because both are needed for effective working of a corporate or company. It is the need of time
that we should understand the relationship between Accounting and Information Technology .
Accounting is related recording and utilisation of recorded data . Information technology is
scientific , technological , engineering disciplines and management technique used in
information handling and processing , their application , computers and their interaction with
men and machines and associated , economical and cultural matters . In Simple wording IT is
that technique which and get and utilize the information with effective and efficient way.
Now , we are ready for giving the relationship between Accounting And Information
technology.
Both are related to get information and utilization of that information . So both are
interconnected with each other . If our specialize of both area merge both system with scientific
and technical way , then they easily overcome the different problems due to lack of correct and
adequate information related to business.
• What is accounting information? (1 marks)
Accounting information can be classified into two categories: financial accounting or public
information and managerial accounting or private information. Financial accounting includes
information disseminated to parties that are not part of the enterprise proper—stockholders,
creditors, customers, suppliers, regulatory commissions, financial analysts, and trade
associations—although the information is also of interest to the company\'s officers and
managers. Such information relates to the financial position, liquidity (that is, ability to convert
to cash), and profitability of an enterprise.
Managerial accounting deals with cost-profit-volume relationships, efficiency and productivity,
planning and control, pricing decisions, capital budgeting, and similar matters. This information
is not generally disseminated outside the company. Whereas the general-purpose financial
statements of financial accounting are assumed.
The Enterprise Management Portal (EMP) is a gateway to the Management System that helps an organization work.
To enable the entire organization to align with its core context and to collaborate at all levels
NetSuite CRM+ delivers powerful customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities, including
sales force automation (SFA), marketing automation, customer support and service, and flexible
customization, all in single cloud CRM solution. And unlike typical CRM solutions, NetSuite CRM+
includes powerful sales performance management, order management, partner management and
marketing effectiveness capabilities as standard
Are you looking for ways to propel your organization or department to the next level? This webinar will reveal the secrets to creating your own strategic planning roadmap to success. Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson will lead you to understand the components of a strategic plan and the role they play. He’ll then discuss choosing the right strategic planning process. By having the right process in place you’ll gain buy in from the group to help you put the plan into action. And finally we’ll show you how to choose the right facilitator – the plusses and minuses of having an internal person or a professional facilitator lead the session.
BearingPoint helps clients develop a Customer Relationship Management platform to orchestrate and enhance sales, customer and activity management with the help of a comprehensive transparent and user-friendly UI design.
Take Control Of Your Business PerformanceJohn Hall
Taking control of business performance by implementing a performance management framework using a set of tools that systematically enable the improvements. Regular performance evaluation using industry benchmarking is unique to the PA offering.
What is the relationship between Accounting and an Accounting inform.pdfannikasarees
What is the relationship between Accounting and an Accounting information system? (2.5
Marks)
Accounting-Methods, procedures, and standards followed in accumulating, classifying,
recording, and reporting business events and transactions. The accounting system includes the
formal records and original source data. Regulatory requirements may exist on how a particular
accounting system is to be maintained (e.g., insurance company).
Accounting Information System-Subsystem of a Management Information System (MIS) that
processes financial transactions to provide (1) internal reporting to managers for use in planning
and controlling current and future operations and for nonroutine decision making; (2) external
reporting to outside parties such as to stockholders, creditors, and government agencies.
• What has happened to the relationship over the years? (2.5 Marks)
Accounting and Information technology are two terms which are the used in every business .
Because both are needed for effective working of a corporate or company. It is the need of time
that we should understand the relationship between Accounting and Information Technology .
Accounting is related recording and utilisation of recorded data . Information technology is
scientific , technological , engineering disciplines and management technique used in
information handling and processing , their application , computers and their interaction with
men and machines and associated , economical and cultural matters . In Simple wording IT is
that technique which and get and utilize the information with effective and efficient way.
Now , we are ready for giving the relationship between Accounting And Information
technology.
Both are related to get information and utilization of that information . So both are
interconnected with each other . If our specialize of both area merge both system with scientific
and technical way , then they easily overcome the different problems due to lack of correct and
adequate information related to business.
• What is accounting information? (1 marks)
Accounting information can be classified into two categories: financial accounting or public
information and managerial accounting or private information. Financial accounting includes
information disseminated to parties that are not part of the enterprise proper—stockholders,
creditors, customers, suppliers, regulatory commissions, financial analysts, and trade
associations—although the information is also of interest to the company\'s officers and
managers. Such information relates to the financial position, liquidity (that is, ability to convert
to cash), and profitability of an enterprise.
Managerial accounting deals with cost-profit-volume relationships, efficiency and productivity,
planning and control, pricing decisions, capital budgeting, and similar matters. This information
is not generally disseminated outside the company. Whereas the general-purpose financial
statements of financial accounting are assumed.
Chapter 3 • Nature of Data, Statistical Modeling, and Visuali.docxpoulterbarbara
Chapter 3 • Nature of Data, Statistical Modeling, and Visualization 185
of thousands of BI dashboards, scorecards, and BI interfaces used by businesses of all
sizes and industries, nonprofits, and government agencies.
According to Eckerson (2006), a well-known expert on BI in general and dash-
boards in particular, the most distinctive feature of a dashboard is its three layers of
information:
1. Monitoring: Graphical, abstracted data to monitor key performance metrics.
2. Analysis: Summarized dimensional data to analyze the root cause of problems.
3. Management: Detailed operational data that identify what actions to take to re-
solve a problem.
Because of these layers, dashboards pack a large amount of information into a sin-
gle screen. According to Few (2005), “The fundamental challenge of dashboard design is
to display all the required information on a single screen, clearly and without distraction,
in a manner that can be assimilated quickly.” To speed assimilation of the numbers, they
need to be placed in context. This can be done by comparing the numbers of interest to
other baseline or target numbers, by indicating whether the numbers are good or bad,
by denoting whether a trend is better or worse, and by using specialized display widgets
or components to set the comparative and evaluative context. Some of the common
comparisons that are typically made in BI systems include comparisons against past val-
ues, forecasted values, targeted values, benchmark or average values, multiple instances
of the same measure, and the values of other measures (e.g., revenues versus costs).
Even with comparative measures, it is important to specifically point out whether a
particular number is good or bad and whether it is trending in the right direction. Without
these types of evaluative designations, it can be time consuming to determine the status
of a particular number or result. Typically, either specialized visual objects (e.g., traffic
lights, dials, and gauges) or visual attributes (e.g., color coding) are used to set the evalu-
ative context. An interactive dashboard-driven reporting data exploration solution built by
an energy company is featured in Application Case 3.8.
Energy markets all around the world are going
through a significant change and transformation,
creating ample opportunities along with significant
challenges. As is the case in any industry, oppor-
tunities are attracting more players in the market-
place, increasing the competition, and reducing the
tolerances for less-than-optimal business decision
making. Success requires creating and disseminat-
ing accurate and timely information to whomever
whenever it is needed. For instance, if you need to
easily track marketing budgets, balance employee
workloads, and target customers with tailored mar-
keting messages, you would need three different
reporting solutions. Electrabel GDF SUEZ is doing
all of that for its marketing and sales business .
The business case for software analysis & measurementCAST
As software becomes more integrated into our daily lives, companies are finding that visibility into the systems that run their business has many benefits: reduces business risks, increases revenue, and improves IT spending.
This whitepaper provides a framework for capturing the impact of software analytics on your business and a worksheet to help you create your own business case. Leaders that can clearly articulate this value are more successful than their peers in obtaining strategic support and funding for software analytics.
ImpactECS and SAP for Manufacturing eBook3C Software
For manufacturing companies, the ability to calculate and analyze the cost of the products you build and sell is the key to understanding your company's profitability. Learn how we help companies leverage the information they have in SAP to build accurate and detailed cost and profitability models that expose true profits.
SAP & ImpactECS for Manufacturers - Costing and ProfitabilityMichele Self
For manufacturing companies like yours, the ability to calculate and analyze the cost of the products you build and sell is the key to understanding your company’s profitability. If your company has complicated manufacturing processes, large product catalogs, or multiple production facilities, the ability to calculate costs can be a challenging proposition.
What is Business intelligence
Core Capabilities of Business Intelligence
Elements of Business Intelligence
Why Companies opt for Business Intelligence
Benefits of Business Intelligence
User of Business Intelligence
Reports of Business Intelligence
Business Application in Extended Enterprise
Business Analytics
Golden Rules for Business Intelligence
5 Stages of Business Intelligence
Emerging Trends in Accounting 08 Digital Transformation of Accounting-Big Data Analytics in Accounting-Cloud Computing in accounting- - Green Accounting-Human Resource Accounting, Inflation Accounting, Database Accounting
Continuous auditing and monitoring (“continuous reviews”) has been discussed for decades but implemented in moderation based on recent surveys. It comes down to how much are data analytics integrated into our audit processes initially to then become continuous. If a high degree of integration exists, then there is probably a good amount of continuous reviews happening in the organization already.
However, most companies fall into the other camp and have not integrated analytics well enough or considered how to take full advantage of continuous reviews.
This course will explain culturally what audit departments must do to embrace continuous reviews and how that can be integrated with ACL Desktop software techniques. Sample files and scripts will be provided to get you started down the road to continuous reviews.
As regulatory changes sweep the globe, auditors, risk management, and compliance professionals are using more sophisticated tools, and methods.
Using a live/video training library approach, we help companies of all sizes use audit and assurance software to improve business intelligence, increase efficiencies, identify fraud, test controls, and bottom line savings.
AuditNet and Cash Recovery Partners Webinar recording available at auditsoftwarevideos.com and AuditNet.tv (registration required) Recording free to view.
Sample Data Files for All Courses are available for $49
To purchase access to all sample data files, Excel macros and ACL scripts associated with the free training visit AuditSoftwareVideos.
Bizview Performance Management for Qlikview UsersTridant
Bizview is a mid-market performance management product that enables customers to increase operational efficiency, improve staff productivity and generate more revenue
Leveraging Telecom Network Data with AlteryxTridant
Alteryx allows you to blend massive volumes of business and engineering data from your Business Support Systems (BSS) and Operational Support Systems (OSS) with third-party demographic, firmographic, and geospatial data in a single, intuitive workflow.
Powerful analytics transform disparate data into actionable insight with geographic significance, so you can make strategic decisions about network expansion, customer acquisition and retention, proactive maintenance, and other critical improvements. Plus, results can be easily shared across your company to enable agile decisions that improve network performance, increase customer satisfaction, and drive new revenue opportunities.
The Alteryx Designer solves this by delivering an intuitive workflow for data blending and advanced analytics that leads to deeper insights in hours, not the weeks typical of traditional approaches! The Alteryx Designer empowers data analysts by combining data blending, predictive analytics, spatial analytics, and reporting, visualization and analytic apps into one workflow.
Turn network and customer data into actionable insight
Whether you are a wireless, wireline, or cable network operator, the customer is king. From retaining existing customers to acquiring new subscribers from your competitors, competitive advantage in the fast-moving communications market is all about customer satisfaction and network modernization.
Alteryx Strategic Analytics allows you to combine massive volumes of business and engineering data from your Business Support Systems (BSS) and Operational Support Systems (OSS) with third-party demographic, firmagraphic, and industry-specific data in single, integrated environment. Powerful analytics transform disparate data into actionable insight with geographic significance, so you can make strategic decisions about network expansion, customer acquisition and retention, proactive maintenance, and other critical improvements.
Plus, results can be easily shared across your company to enable agile decisions that improve network performance, increase customer satisfaction, and drive new revenue opportunities.
Tridant - IBM Solutions Partner of the YearTridant
Tridant is one of Asia's most experienced analytics and performance management companies. With over 300 projects last year and a highly experienced and skilled team, we provide exceptional business value to clients
The Building Blocks of QuestDB, a Time Series Databasejavier ramirez
Talk Delivered at Valencia Codes Meetup 2024-06.
Traditionally, databases have treated timestamps just as another data type. However, when performing real-time analytics, timestamps should be first class citizens and we need rich time semantics to get the most out of our data. We also need to deal with ever growing datasets while keeping performant, which is as fun as it sounds.
It is no wonder time-series databases are now more popular than ever before. Join me in this session to learn about the internal architecture and building blocks of QuestDB, an open source time-series database designed for speed. We will also review a history of some of the changes we have gone over the past two years to deal with late and unordered data, non-blocking writes, read-replicas, or faster batch ingestion.
Techniques to optimize the pagerank algorithm usually fall in two categories. One is to try reducing the work per iteration, and the other is to try reducing the number of iterations. These goals are often at odds with one another. Skipping computation on vertices which have already converged has the potential to save iteration time. Skipping in-identical vertices, with the same in-links, helps reduce duplicate computations and thus could help reduce iteration time. Road networks often have chains which can be short-circuited before pagerank computation to improve performance. Final ranks of chain nodes can be easily calculated. This could reduce both the iteration time, and the number of iterations. If a graph has no dangling nodes, pagerank of each strongly connected component can be computed in topological order. This could help reduce the iteration time, no. of iterations, and also enable multi-iteration concurrency in pagerank computation. The combination of all of the above methods is the STICD algorithm. [sticd] For dynamic graphs, unchanged components whose ranks are unaffected can be skipped altogether.
Data Centers - Striving Within A Narrow Range - Research Report - MCG - May 2...pchutichetpong
M Capital Group (“MCG”) expects to see demand and the changing evolution of supply, facilitated through institutional investment rotation out of offices and into work from home (“WFH”), while the ever-expanding need for data storage as global internet usage expands, with experts predicting 5.3 billion users by 2023. These market factors will be underpinned by technological changes, such as progressing cloud services and edge sites, allowing the industry to see strong expected annual growth of 13% over the next 4 years.
Whilst competitive headwinds remain, represented through the recent second bankruptcy filing of Sungard, which blames “COVID-19 and other macroeconomic trends including delayed customer spending decisions, insourcing and reductions in IT spending, energy inflation and reduction in demand for certain services”, the industry has seen key adjustments, where MCG believes that engineering cost management and technological innovation will be paramount to success.
MCG reports that the more favorable market conditions expected over the next few years, helped by the winding down of pandemic restrictions and a hybrid working environment will be driving market momentum forward. The continuous injection of capital by alternative investment firms, as well as the growing infrastructural investment from cloud service providers and social media companies, whose revenues are expected to grow over 3.6x larger by value in 2026, will likely help propel center provision and innovation. These factors paint a promising picture for the industry players that offset rising input costs and adapt to new technologies.
According to M Capital Group: “Specifically, the long-term cost-saving opportunities available from the rise of remote managing will likely aid value growth for the industry. Through margin optimization and further availability of capital for reinvestment, strong players will maintain their competitive foothold, while weaker players exit the market to balance supply and demand.”
Adjusting primitives for graph : SHORT REPORT / NOTESSubhajit Sahu
Graph algorithms, like PageRank Compressed Sparse Row (CSR) is an adjacency-list based graph representation that is
Multiply with different modes (map)
1. Performance of sequential execution based vs OpenMP based vector multiply.
2. Comparing various launch configs for CUDA based vector multiply.
Sum with different storage types (reduce)
1. Performance of vector element sum using float vs bfloat16 as the storage type.
Sum with different modes (reduce)
1. Performance of sequential execution based vs OpenMP based vector element sum.
2. Performance of memcpy vs in-place based CUDA based vector element sum.
3. Comparing various launch configs for CUDA based vector element sum (memcpy).
4. Comparing various launch configs for CUDA based vector element sum (in-place).
Sum with in-place strategies of CUDA mode (reduce)
1. Comparing various launch configs for CUDA based vector element sum (in-place).
Levelwise PageRank with Loop-Based Dead End Handling Strategy : SHORT REPORT ...Subhajit Sahu
Abstract — Levelwise PageRank is an alternative method of PageRank computation which decomposes the input graph into a directed acyclic block-graph of strongly connected components, and processes them in topological order, one level at a time. This enables calculation for ranks in a distributed fashion without per-iteration communication, unlike the standard method where all vertices are processed in each iteration. It however comes with a precondition of the absence of dead ends in the input graph. Here, the native non-distributed performance of Levelwise PageRank was compared against Monolithic PageRank on a CPU as well as a GPU. To ensure a fair comparison, Monolithic PageRank was also performed on a graph where vertices were split by components. Results indicate that Levelwise PageRank is about as fast as Monolithic PageRank on the CPU, but quite a bit slower on the GPU. Slowdown on the GPU is likely caused by a large submission of small workloads, and expected to be non-issue when the computation is performed on massive graphs.
2. Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
2
Contents
5 Business problems
5 Business drivers
8 The solution
Dashboarding and scorecarding
with IBM
Dashboards, scorecards, and
performance management
Software, services and best practices
Five things to consider
23 Conclusion
Learn more
Abstract
Organizations are increasingly using dashboards to provide at-a-glance views
of current business performance and decision-making. But not all dashboards
are the same, so companies must be careful to adopt dashboard strategies that
provide each user group with information that is appropriate to their role, gets
updated on a schedule that meets their needs, and is shared consistently across
the entire enterprise. A series of disconnected dashboards is of no value, so IT
must accommodate these factors, and others, to ensure a successful dashboard
deployment.
Overview
In his TDWI Best Practices Report Deploying Dashboards and Scorecards (July
2006), Wayne Eckerson provides a helpful definition of an oft-misunderstood term:
“Dashboards and scorecards are multilayered performance management systems,
built on a business intelligence and data integration infrastructure, that enable
organizations to measure, monitor, and manage business activity using both
financial and non-financial measures.”1
Dashboards and scorecards share three basic characteristics, or, what Eckerson
calls “The three threes.” These characteristics are: applications, layers, and types.
Let’s look at these in more detail:
Three Applications: Every dashboard contains these three applications:
monitoring, analysis, and reporting, Eckerson writes. These sets of related
functionalities are woven together seamlessly and built on an information
infrastructure designed to fulfill user needs. (see Figure 1)
3. Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
3
Three Layers: The most distinctive feature of a dashboard, writes Eckerson, is its
three layers of information:
1. Graphical, abstracted data to monitor key performance metrics.
2. Summarized dimensional data to analyze the root cause of problems.
3. Detailed operational data that identifies what actions to take to resolve a
problem.
Much like peeling the layers of an onion, he writes, a performance management
system lets users peel back layers of information to get to the root cause of a
problem. Each layer provides additional details, views, and perspectives that enable
users to understand a problem and identify the steps they must take to address it.
Three Types: Finally, writes Eckerson, dashboards come in three types:
operational, tactical, and strategic. Each type features the three applications and
layers, albeit in different ways.
Figure 1: Three dashboard applications
Monitoring Analysis Management
Purpose Convey information at
a glance
Analyze exception
conditions
Improve coordination
and collaboration
Components • Multi-paned screens
w/visual elements
• Graphs (dials,
thermometers, etc.)
• Symbols, alerts
• Charts, tables
with conditional
formatting
• Alerts
• Analytics (i.e.,
dimensional, time-
series,segmentation)
• Forecasting,
modeling, and
predictive statistics
• Visual analysis
Reporting
• Annotations
• Thread discussions
• Meetings
• Strategy maps
• Workflows
Source: Performance Dashboards: Measuring, monitoring, and managing your business by Wayne
Eckerson (John Wiley Sons, 2005).
4. Operational dashboards track core operational processes and often display
real-time data. These dashboards emphasize monitoring more than analysis or
management.
Tactical dashboards track departmental processes and projects and emphasize
analysis more than monitoring or management. They are often implemented using
portals and run against data marts or data warehouses.
Strategic dashboards (or Scorecards) monitor the execution of corporate strategic
objectives at each level of the organization and emphasize management more
than monitoring or analysis. They are often implemented to support a Balanced
Scorecard methodology.
Any organization can and should deploy multiple versions of each type of
dashboard, writes Eckerson, as each employee is responsible for different aspects
of corporate performance. The critical aspect to remember is that companies build
each dashboard on a single data infrastructure and application platform to deliver
consistent information to every user.
Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
4
5. Why do you use a dashboard or scorecard?
For the same reason that car companies build cars with fuel gauges and
speedometers, companies deploy dashboards to give their employees an easy-to-
understand view of the numbers that matter most, so they can make decisions to
keep their businesses running smoothly and at peak performance.
In the automotive industry, dashboarding has always been a simple and necessary
component: low fuel = buy fuel; high speed = slow down or get speeding ticket.
In business, however, dashboards have repeatedly fallen in and out of favor,
their successes and failures as much attributable to immature technologies as to
uncertainties about the goals they were meant to achieve. To help you decide the
right dashboard deployment for you, let’s look further into Eckerson’s categories.
Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
5
Business problems
Business drivers
Operational dashboards: Focus on monitoring
Operational dashboards enable front-line workers and supervisors to track core
operational processes (see Figure 2). Monitoring is their key capability. These
dashboards provide operational managers and staff immediate visibility into KPI
performance, allowing them to make quick decisions or take corrective action as
soon as a problem or opportunity arises. Typically, operational dashboards also
generate alerts that notify users of exception conditions in the processes being
monitored.
6. Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
6
Figure 2: Common use cases for operational dashboards, by selected industries
Financial services Manufacturing Retail
General Check clearing
Customer
notification
Portfolio
optimization
Fraud detection
Quality
management
Yield
Production vs.
schedule
Repair and returns
DPPM
Inventory/
Supply
management
Critical
component
receiving
Supplier VMI
execution
In-transit
movements
Credit risk Counter party risk
exposure
Credit limit
exposures
Portfolio exposure
Plant visibility Asset utilization/
uptime
Labor utilization
Production cycle
times
Yield/scrap
tracking
Demand
management
Forecast
consumption
tracking
Channel
inventory/POS
activity
Promotions
activity tracking
Market risk Real-time value-at-
risk (VaR)
VaR trend
Market risk limit
Market stress test
Operational
efficiency
Equipment use
Case per labor
hour
Financial -
performance
management
Intra-day PL
market crosses
PL limit violation
Risk metrics by
division
Divisional market
value
Fulfillment/
Logistics
Order fill rate
On-time delivery
Perfect order
tracking
Pick/pack/ship
efficiency
Transportation
cost/efficiency
Figure 3: Common operational dashboard applications, by selected departments
Finance Supply Chain Customer Support Sales
SOX alerts
Shipping/Billing
Track/monitor order to cash
Demand to supply balancing
Transportation status
Support center scheduling
Spike in complaints
Multiple channel requests
Account rep alerts
Changes in rep behavior
Competition watch
7. Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
7
Tactical Dashboards: Emphasis on analysis
Tactical dashboards help managers and analysts track and analyze departmental
activities, processes and projects. Analysis is their key strength. They display
at-a-glance results in a BI portal or professionally authored report format that
contains charts and tables that users need to monitor the projects or processes
for which they are accountable. Users can drill down or through the data using
multidimensional (OLAP) analysis and advanced reporting to pinpoint the causes
of trends or issues.
Scorecards: Managing strategy
Scorecards let executives and senior staff chart their progress against strategic
objectives. A Scorecard is a strategy management application that helps
organizations measure and align the strategic and tactical aspects of their
businesses, processes and individuals via goals and targets. Because of their role in
executive decision-making, Scorecards demand a more structured approach and
framework than operational and tactical dashboards and as such, often make use a
methodology such as The Balanced Scorecard, TQM, or Six Sigma.
Dashboard demos: Beware these “quickie” sins
“Most dashboards that are used in business today fail, writes data visualization
educator and expert Stephen Few in his 2007 article, Why Most Dashboards Fail. “At
best they deliver only a fraction of the insight that is needed to monitor the business .
. .Beyond the hype and sizzle lives a unique and effective solution to a very real need
for information. This is the dashboard that deserves to live on your screen.”
In his report, Deploying Dashboards and Scorecards, Wayne Eckerson also warns
against what he calls “quickie” dashboards that may look good in a demo but quickly
reveal their limitations. These sins include being:
Too flat: limited drill-down capability or interactivity with source data.
Too manual: require intensive IT expertise and time to maintain and modify.
Too isolated: quickie dashboards constitute data silos that undermine a company’s
ability to create single view of performance across units, products, and customers.
Too inaccurate: merging data from disparate systems requires the combined
expertise of IT and business users. Don’t underestimate this task or assume
technology can easily solve it.
Too cool: attractive displays that are perceptually ineffective. Beware of 3-D look
and feel, chrome-plated gizmos, and so on. The dashboard must show the data
dimensions necessary to make a decision, clearly and accurately.
8. Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
8
IBM offers the full range of dashboards— operational, tactical, and strategic— to
help organizations monitor, measure, and manage their performance. IBM Cognos®
dashboards provide an at-a-glance view of all important operational, tactical, and
strategic information to meet the needs of the complete range of business users
within an organization. What’s more, you can pursue a dashboard deployment with
IBM knowing that the data, metrics, and thresholds are all integrated and share a
common data source.
For example: if a manufacturer bases its competitive strategy on providing higher-
quality goods, the CEO can monitor overall quality as easily as can the plant
managers and those on the assembly line or in the factory, with data feeding all
three kinds of dashboards simultaneously, with each user seeing the data at the
right level of granularity and refreshed at user-appropriate intervals.
The result of all this integration? Simple: business users at every level receive
precisely the information they need to make better decisions that improve business
performance. Let’s look at how IBM Cognos solutions address these issues.
IBM Cognos Now! operational dashboards
Delivered as a hardware appliance or through the software-as-a-service (SaaS)
model, IBM Cognos Now! operational dashboards provide continuous monitoring
for business operations. They enable operations managers and/or teams to
proactively respond to continually changing business conditions or processes with
patent-pending streaming technology that ensures continually up-to-date metrics.
The solution
Dashboarding and scorecarding with IBM
IBM Cognos Now! operational dashboards feature:
• Intra-day/hour updates
• Continuous monitoring of operational processes
• Self-service creating and editing capabilities
• User-defined alerts
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9
Flexibility for business users: IBM Cognos Now! operational dashboards provide
the flexibility business users need to build, modify, and personalize their own
dashboards without IT intervention. Each user can personalize their dashboard
to most effectively present the information they need; charts and graphs can be
customized, thresholds and alerts can be set, and new dashboards can be created
using a simple point-and-click interface. Personalized alerts can be created
right from the dashboard for exception-based management. Finally, Flash-based
components provide rich visualization and interactivity.
Cost-effective deployment for IT: IBM Cognos Now! lets IT provide users with
unlimited access dashboards and data sources for a low total cost of ownership
(TCO). At the same time, though, role-based, data-level security ensures that users
see only the data that’s relevant to their tasks. Also, a preconfigured hardware
appliance means minimal IT effort and resources are needed to get the system up
and running. IBM Cognos Now! is built on a Web Services-based services-oriented
architecture (SOA) that integrates with IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. It is
immediately interoperable with your existing portal applications or can be run as
a standalone deployment. With IBM Cognos Now!, IT can build an operational
dashboard solution in days.
Figure 4: Sample operational dashboards using IBM Cognos Now!
“ Quickie dashboard products
that demo great are
tempting, but they must be
thoroughly evaluated on
their ability to support your
organization’s long-term
requirements.”
Wayne Eckerson, Deploying Dashboards
and Scorecards, TDWI, July 2006
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10
Tactical dashboards with IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence
IBM Cognos tactical dashboards provide managers with daily, weekly, or monthly
performance updates. They are not updated as frequently as operational
dashboards, nor do they need be; rather, they provide managers with access to
the full complement of related performance management capabilities through
interactive charts and tables.
With tactical dashboards, managers can drill into or through related reports and
other data sources (for example, OLAP cubes), to explore and understand the
trends and issues affecting performance at the operational level. If, for example,
if the manager’s operations team reports that quality is falling out of acceptable
range, or if sales in a quarter are higher than usual, managers can click into the
data to understand why. In the first case, for example, it may be that a key supplier
has missed its last few shipments; in the second, the cause could be aggressive
discounting or more effective marketing. In both of these cases, data from the
operational dashboard prompts a frontline manager to act, and spurs a higher-level
manager to explore a broader data set identify the root causes and make the needed
adjustments.
Figure 5: Sample tactical dashboards using IBM Cognos 8 BI
11. Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
11
Further, managers can also access IBM Cognos tactical dashboards on their
BlackBerry devices using the IBM Cognos 8 Go! Mobile feature. This provides
managers access to the same dashboards they would access through their browser,
without the need for IT to create and maintain a duplicate environment. Managers
can also make full use of IBM Cognos 8 Go! Office, which enables them to display
their dashboards in Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentations.
Figure 6: Sample tactical dashboards using IBM Cognos 8 Go! Mobile
IBM Cognos tactical dashboards enable:
• Daily, monthly, and quarterly performance updates
• Analysis of departmental activities and performance
• One-click to related performance management capabilities (forecasts, budgets, etc.)
• Single, accurate data source
• Support for IBM Cognos 8 Go! Mobile
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Scorecards with IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence
A scorecard includes a collection of all your important metrics, each with an
associated target, thresholds for good and poor performance, and a clearly
identified owner. However, a proper scorecard must provide more than red, green,
or yellow status indicators. To enable executives to manage strategy effectively,
scorecards must reveal the relationships among and between each metric, as well as
the ways in which performance in one area (for example, RD) affects outcomes in
another (for example, Sales). This is often done through a strategy map.
Figure 7: Scorecards built with IBM Cognos 8 BI
In addition, scorecards must enable executives to drill into supporting details in
related reports, or conduct multidimensional analysis to determine why a metric is
performing a certain way. When executives change targets, forecasts, or resource
allocations, these changes must also be simultaneously reflected in the tactical and
operational dashboards (as well as their related forecasts, HR and marketing plans,
etc.) throughout the organization. In this way, scorecards perform a vital role in a
performance management system.
“ Dashboards and scorecards
are critical elements
in supporting business
performance management
processes, which enable
executives to more
effectively communicate,
monitor, and adjust business
strategy and plans..”
Wayne Eckerson, Deploying Dashboards
and Scorecards, TDWI, July 2006
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13
Dashboards provide such critical information in a single display (often a single
computer screen). Therein lies their appeal, and the reason why companies
often deploy them as a “front door” to their performance management initiatives.
A successful performance management solution, however, comprises other
management functions—analysis, reporting, budgeting, forecasting, decision-
making— operating as part of a dynamic, fluid and integrated whole. Therein lies
the value of the IBM Cognos solution.
The value and components of a full PM system offered by IBM
Many factors influence your company’s performance. But few areas under your
management are more important than your organization’s decision-making ability.
Getting answers and acting on them means integrating reporting and analysis,
planning, and measuring and monitoring— across your organization. This
integrated approach is the IBM Cognos performance management system.
By integrating information, technology, and people, your decision-makers can
become performance managers. Performance managers look at metrics, plans, and
reports in their functional area to make the best possible decisions. They also use
this same approach to connect with others. For example, if Marketing decisions
improve demand, then Sales and Operations needs to know to ensure the supply is
ready. In this way, your good decisions cause other good decisions. The end result is
better alignment, accountability, and performance.
Dashboards, scorecards, and performance
management
IBM Cognos scorecards enable:
• Monthly and quarterly performance updates
• Performance against pre-set targets and thresholds
• One-click to related performance management capabilities (forecasts, budgets, etc.)
• Strategy maps impact diagrams
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Figure 8: The IBM Cognos Performance Management Framework
The performance management system from IBM integrates software, services, best
practices, and partners. The result—a common understanding and accountable
actions based on answers to your performance management questions:
• How are we doing? Measuring and monitoring performance with scorecards and dashboards
tracks your key metrics.
• Why? Reporting and analysis let you see data, gain context, understand trends, and spot anomalies.
• What should we be doing? Planning, budgets, and forecasts let you set and share a reliable view
of the future.
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Software for performance management
IBM provides an integrated performance management software platform—reporting
and analysis, planning, or measuring and monitoring—for any area of your
organization. Our software capabilities include:
Reporting and analysis
Integrated reporting and analysis software delivers user-friendly information from
all of your data sources so you can:
• Align the organization with a shared, single version of the truth.
• Place information in context, find trends, and spot variations, risks, and opportunities.
• Understand the why? behind your results and trends
Planning and consolidation
Finance and other department managers with cost or revenue generation
responsibilities use integrated planning, budgeting, and forecasting software to:
• Create plans and budgets that connect, unlike spreadsheet-based systems.
• Adapt plans organization-wide as business conditions change.
• Engage departments outside of Finance in the planning process for greater accuracy and buy-in.
Measuring and monitoring
Integrated software for scorecards, dashboards, and financial consolidation draws
on information from all of your data sources so you can:
• Measure how you perform against targets and hold people accountable for them.
• See trends and changes in operational and financial metrics.
• Comply with regulations such as IFRS and Sarbanes-Oxley.
Software, services and best practices
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IBM Cognos Software Services: Consulting, education and support
Software is only part of a performance management solution. Many dashboard
projects fail if companies fail to understand what they want the dashboards to do.
This is where companies can benefit from a strong team of consultants to bridge
the gap between the IT and business user.
IBM Cognos Software Services brings the full range of our personnel, resources,
and expertise to your deployment to help you achieve the next level of performance.
Whether you are new to IBM Cognos solutions or a longtime customer, IBM
Cognos education and consulting services has the resources and a proven, results-
based methodology to help you ensure successful deployment.
IBM Cognos Software Services can:
• Build a best-practices-based deployment through our IBM Cognos Solutions Implementation
Methodology (SIM).
• Build your organizational knowledge and internal capacity to use the IBM Cognos solution.
• Expand your deployment with new capabilities or an expanded user base.
• Provide solutions and resolve issues quickly with our award-winning online support.
• Design and deploy a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC).
• Accelerate your deployment and promote user adoption.
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Best practices for performance management: Accelerate your return and value
Adapting industry best practices for your organization delivers
more value, faster for your performance management system.
IBM offers several best practices sources for prospects and
customers, including:
The Performance Manager decision areas: Based on
extensive and wide-ranging research of the most successful
performance management deployments, IBM has identified 42 information sweet
spots, or decision areas, where applying reports, metrics, and plans can make a
tremendous difference to your organization’s performance.
IBM Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management: The IBM
Cognos Innovation Center brings together technology experts, finance professionals,
and industry thought leaders to share techniques, technologies and best practices in
performance management. Its resources include:
• IBM Cognos Performance Blueprints: pre-defined data, process and policy models that help organi-
zations speed their software deployments and drive faster ROI. Organized by industry and function.
• Resources publications: On-demand Web seminars, white papers, exclusive roundtable discussion
events, and newsletters.
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IBM and Stephen Few: Report design white paper series
In these original white papers written for the IBM Cognos Innovation Center, data
visualization expert Stephen Few explores the rules of visual perception, how they
affect our understanding of what we see, and the practical repercussions they bring
about for performance management professionals. The series features:
Visual Communication: Core Design Principles for Displaying
Quantitative Information
Looking at research into the link between visual perception
and understanding, and translating the findings into practical
techniques that you can use to communicate more clearly with
your data.
Visual Pattern Recognition: Meaningful Patterns in Quantitative
Business Information
Examining the data patterns and relationships common in most
business reports (rank, part-to-whole, deviation, correlation,
etc.) and providing practical guidelines for communicating these
relationships effectively using points, lines, and bars. A richly
illustrated and detailed work.
Data Visualization: Past, Present, and Future
Spanning more than 2,000 years of recorded human history, this
paper examines the birth and evolution of data visualization, from
early Egyptian tables used to organize astronomical information
through to bar charts, tree maps, and geo-spatial visualization
tools (such as Google Earth).
Stephen Few has worked for over 20 years as an IT innovator, consultant, and
educator. Today, as Principal of the consultancy Perceptual Edge, Stephen focuses on
data visualization for analyzing and communicating quantitative business information.
He provides consulting and training services, writes the monthly Visual Business
Intelligence Newsletter, speaks frequently at conferences, and teaches in the MBA
program at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of two books:
Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten and a new book
entitled Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.
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IBM Cognos TechTalk TechTalk Insider
For customers, our TechTalk Insider portal delivers valuable, practical insights from
IBM Cognos experts through a full library of Proven Practice documents as well as
live and archived Customer Information Series Web seminars.
If you’re still evaluating IBM Cognos solutions, you can access a rich store of
archived, on-demand Web seminars and product demos, as well as attend live
events to hear directly from successful IBM Cognos customers, partners, and
product experts.
Powered by IBM Cognos Software and other partner opportunities
“Powered by IBM Cognos Software” partners offer performance management
solutions that combine IBM Cognos technology with their deep domain expertise.
Get solutions using IBM Cognos technologies and focused on key business areas
and/or industries. The result: faster, predictable results for you.
Our broad range of partnerships help you purchase, deploy, and service your
business intelligence and performance management requirements.
‘Powered by IBM Cognos Software’ partners have extensive expertise in
industries including:
• Banking Insurance • Higher K-12 Education
• Health Care Life Sciences • Retail Wholesale
• Manufacturing • Travel Hospitality
• Federal Civilian Governments • Oil Gas
20. Eckerson concludes his paper with five key considerations for IT teams to apply to
their dashboarding initiatives. Let’s look at how IBM Cognos solutions meet these
considerations:
1. You get what you pay for: You can deploy an inexpensive dashboard today,
writes Eckerson; however, you will eventually need to replace them as word
spreads about the success of your solution and you need to scale it up without
compromising performance and response times.
The IBM Cognos view: IBM offers dashboards that feature both low total cost of
ownership (TCO) and scalability to large user and data volumes. IBM Cognos Now!
includes a license for unlimited users, data sources, and dashboards per appliance.
You can deploy a single, integrated operational dashboard quickly, with minimal
ongoing maintenance. Tactical and strategic dashboards are built using IBM Cognos
8 BI, enterprise software proven to scale to the largest and most complex IT
infrastructures.
2. Plan for the long haul: Word about successful dashboard solutions spreads like
wildfire. If you’ve delivered a successful solution, you’ll be bombarded with requests
to deliver them to other departments. The number of users may grow rapidly,
placing undue burden on your IT infrastructure. If you’re not careful, response
times will plummet, along with your reputation.
The IBM Cognos view: All IBM Cognos dashboards are proven to scale to
thousands of users accessing large and constantly changing data stores. IBM
Cognos Now! streams operational data from disparate sources into a patent-
pending 64-bit memory-based streaming data flow engine that caches data and
analytical information in memory, ensuring uniform query response times as
more users are added. Tactical and strategic dashboards are built using IBM
Cognos 8 BI, enterprise software proven to scale to the largest and most complex
IT infrastructures. Further, IBM Cognos Software Services can help you plan your
dashboard deployment in a way that ensures a smooth and gradual roll-out to your
user base.
Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
20
Five things to consider
21. Picturing performance: IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards
21
3. Plan for real time: A performance management system populated with more
timely data lets executives and managers proactively optimize performance. So
even if your users don’t ask for more than daily updates, be prepared to deliver
them. Select dashboard solutions that support event-driven processing and can
prove their scalability across users, sources, and data volumes.
The IBM Cognos view: IBM Cognos Now! features an event-driven architecture
that enables a continuous stream of business data, providing fresh views of key
metrics for constant measuring and monitoring of business operations. The 64-
bit, patent-pending data streaming engine consistently delivers information in a
few seconds, regardless of query volume or number of users.
4. Develop on a single platform: It’s very easy for managers to build or buy their
own solutions independent of each other. These dashboard silos eventually
compete with each other for resources, and undermine an organization’s ability
to get a single picture of performance.
The IBM Cognos view: Building dashboards with IBM means drawing data
from a centralized, integrated and secure data source that everyone can use and
trust. Regardless of the type of dashboard or the capability in use (drilling down,
analysis, IBM Cognos 8 Go! Mobile, etc.), all functions are performed against this
store, ensuring consistent results across divisions and departments. Further, IBM
now offers data quality software from Informatica, further strengthening IT’s
ability to provide consistently clean, accurate data.
5. Develop effective metrics: Among the many best practices in this area,
Eckerson advises companies to avoid cluttering dashboards with more metrics
than a user can understand or act on. If you have more than seven, writes
Eckerson, you should create hierarchies using folders, tabs, or drill-downs to
preserve the clarity and simplicity of the display.
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The IBM Cognos view: In the new business book, The Performance Manager,
IBM identifies 42 “sweet spots” of information—key decision areas— in core
business functions such as Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Customer Service.
Based on extensive research of the most successful performance management
deployments to-date, the book outlines the key metrics that managers need to
monitor on their dashboards. In addition, IBM Cognos dashboards provide the
flexibility users need to build the hierarchy system that Eckerson recommends.
Finally, the IBM Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management
provides a wealth of best practices expertise, IBM Cognos Performance
Blueprints, and professional development opportunities with a host of world
renowned experts in performance management who can help you design and
deploy the metrics you need to monitor most.
Conclusion
High-performing organizations need information that will improve their decision-
making in a way that drives better performance. And more often than not, they
need it in an easy-to-understand, at-a-glance format that leads them to making
those decisions. Increasingly, this format is the dashboard.
However, not all dashboards are created equal; nor are all dashboards the same.
Companies pursuing a dashboard strategy must ensure that each user receives
information that is specific to their role and task, and that is refreshed according to
the frequency of their decisions. Operational managers need information that moves
as quickly as they receive orders from their Web site. Executives, on the other hand,
may only need to see updated results every month.
Dashboards must be easy to use, provide the right level of interactivity, and enable
users to drill down into the results. Also, the dashboards must be integrated across
the organization and share a common data source. Finally— and most important—
dashboards must deployed within the context of a performance management
strategy, with metrics, thresholds, and targets all tied to commonly understood
and shared business goals. To build a successful dashboard deployment, IT must
take into account these and many other considerations in their user base. In a
performance management system, disconnected dashboards that do none of the
above are of little value to anyone.