digital dashboard info?

September 11, 2008 5:09 PM

Looking for some good information on digital dashboards.

Specifically, as they are used in marketing research/market intelligence. Looking for articles, software reviews, company recommendations, the works. Who makes the best products, etc? This is an example of what I'm talking about (though I don't know anything about it).

posted by AceRock to technology (2 comments total)

Can you be more specific about why you're asking this question? Are you tasked with creating this? Do you need someone else to create one for you? What do you want to monitor?

Generally, I've created dozens of these kinds of things in Excel pulling from either other Excel spreadsheets or databases via ODBC, then using whatever graphs are suitable.
posted by odinsdream at 5:40 PM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

My company tends to develop for medium-to-large scale enterprises, so perhaps I can give you some advice. Topics you would want to look are : Performance Measurement, and Business Intelligence. It is also useful to understand the concepts of Balanced Scorecards, Business Process Mapping and the specific goals and requirements of your organization.

Key aspects of dashboard tools are:

The capacity to provide different information to different users.

The capability to plot and analyze progress towards specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely goals that are meaningful to your organization.

Also, if you already made a decision about the database, you should definitely use that as a guiding light.

Many business systems contain modules for performance measurement. I would recommend researching vendors that you have already implemented to see what kind of functionality they may be able to provide for a relatively small incremental amount.

I know that there are dozens of different platforms to choose from, with a wide array of functionality. I think that you would be wise to look for the market leader in your particular industry to get an idea of what your competitors may use.

As for software, I have experience with Lotus ActiveInsight for developing scorecard and WebSphere Portal for dashboards, including charts and tables. ActiveInsight is a great, mature product that comes in any number of suites tailored to specific industries.

Hope that helps!

posted by dobie at 6:03 PM on September 11, 2008