By: Nicky Oliver and Dan Rusert
Building effective dashboards for your organization is an art form. Properly designed KPIs should convey useful information and insights to key managers and executives, and drive business decisions and overall strategy. According to market leader Tableau, “The hallmark of a data-driven dashboard is the ability to see and understand data at the speed of thought. Well-planned dashboards will allow both business leaders and knowledge workers alike to ask and answer questions in real-time, turn insight into action and inspire true innovation.”
For this particular article, we’ll use JAMIS Prime ERP dashboard design as our primary platform for providing guidance. With that being said, let’s start with the basics.
A dashboard is a communication tool that identifies key information for a target audience. For example, they might include:
- Performance metrics
- Important action items
- Links to company documents, websites, or other pertinent information
- Embedded external data sources (e.g.: Power BI, Social Media feeds, etc.)
When creating dashboards in Prime, here are some key considerations:
- Identify target audience (Employees, Project Managers, Executives, etc.)
- Identify key metrics and goals. What metrics matter most to your target audience? Does each component contribute to their overall objectives? Properly designed analytical components should help leaders answer key questions.
- Identify which report/inquiry contains the desired information
- If you’re using an integrated system like Prime, consider using data from across different modules and different business areas that your end user will want to see.
What different options are available when building a dashboard in Prime?
- Data Table – A table is an arrangement of numerical data in rows and columns; it is designed to show a set of related facts in a compact, comprehensive form. Generic inquiries are used as data tables in Prime.
- Power BI Tile – Charts, scorecards, and other analytical information that is represented on Power BI dashboards designed by your organization.
- Scorecard KPI – Parameters that are important for the business processes of your organization and that should be monitored on a daily basis. Scorecards are useful when you need to monitor single parameters that are critical for particular business processes in your organization.
- Trend Card KPI – Parameters whose dynamic change is important for business processes of your organization. A trend card KPI widget is useful when you want to display a trend of metrics that change over time.
- Wiki Page – Reference articles, procedures, business plans, and other content that is frequently referenced.
- Chart Widgets – Graphical representations of data.
What are the different chart options? And how do we decide what option to use?
- Line Chart – Typically used to show trends/chart changes over a period of time (i.e.,. Revenue by Period).
- Column – Compare several items in a specific range of values. Single category of data between individual sub-items (Ex. Revenue by Org).
- Stacked Column – Illustrates the relationship of the parts to the whole. The columns in a stacked column chart are divided into legend categories, and each column represents a total.
- Bar Chart – Compare several categories of data.
- Stacked Bar – Inverted stacked column chart in which the horizontal and vertical axes are reversed. A stacked bar chart also illustrates the relationship of the parts to the whole, and its bars are divided into legend categories, with each bar representing a total.
- Doughnut – Works best when you want to show how the parts relate to the whole at a fixed point in time.
- Funnel – Chart with no axes that shows sectors or slices of data in a funnel shape. Each slice represents a portion of the whole, or the slices may represent a process flow, with each slice (or part of the process) having data filtered out from the previous slice.
So, now you have a basis for beginning your dashboard journey. But there is much more to learn! We’ll revisit this topic on the Prime Insights Blog again this summer. Until then, if you’d like more information on how JAMIS Prime ERP can help your organization accelerate performance and drive growth, sign up for a personal demo of the application HERE. If you’re already a JAMIS customer, you can sign up for one of our web-based training courses on the JAMIS Learning & Development site HERE. Thanks and good luck!
