What is a Dashboard?

Technorati Tags: Dashboard,KPI,KRI,Score Card,Report,Indicator,Differance,example

Overview:

Before we start define Dashboard we need first to explain the following:

• Indicator
• KPI
• KRI
• Score Card
• Report
• Dashboard

Indicator:

Indicator is some visual effects that can give you extra information not included in the original figure.  for example lets say that our profit this month is 10$. as you can see, you can’t judge if this number is good or bad. 10$ so what? if we have another piece of information like target for example or average profit for the last 12 months then we can judge if 10$ is good or bad. there is many type of indicators like

• Traffic light colors: (red, Yellow, green)
• Icons:
  • arrows: Up – side – down
  • Faces: smiley – normal – sad
  • progress bars

Note(s):

• You can use more than one indicator at a time.
• you can use more levels than 3. for example 5 colors (red – orange – yellow – light green – dark green)

 

KPI (Key Performance Indicator):

The main idea of KPI is to measure your actual performance figures against your target. so normal KPI should have at least:

• Actual figure
• Target Figure.
• Indicator
• Mechanism to display (Chart)

KPI used mainly to measure performance and should give immediate impression about your status. we use indicators to indicate if we are meeting our target or not.Please note that KPI can be any chart type, Find below some examples:

KRI (Key Risk Indicator):

KRI is almost same as KPI but only with a few differences:

Feature	KPI	KRI
Measuring	Performance	Risk
Against	Target	threshold

In many cases you need to incorporate an alerting system with KRI to send it immediately by mail or a warning SMS message to risk owner because in most cases you want to act immediately when the risk is triggered.

Score Card:

Score card is a group of related KPIs that will contributes to achieve one big goal. there is 2 types of score cards.

Balanced: this an equal weight score card whish means that every KPI under this goal have the same importance. and when you calculate your achievement % for your goal you Just take the average.

Not Balanced: every KPI under the enterprise goal will have his own weight. the some of all weights should be 100% at the end. and when you calculate your achievement % for your goal you should consider the weights

Report:

Summary or detailed information displayed in tales or charts.

Dashboard:

Dashboard is a container or view that contains any number of the components listed above. typical dashboard should be customized per business user while many customized dashboards may consume the same component. for example you may have KPI used in many dashboards. Dashboard can contains KPI, KRI, Score cards and reports.