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A Digital Dashboard is a business management tool used by managers to get a " Bird's Eye View " of business health. It is a simple, yet powerful device to visually ascertain the status of a business enterprise. Used to monitor the status of key business indicators, Digital Dashboards use visual, at-a-glance displays of critical data pulled in from disparate business systems to provide warnings, action notices, next steps, and summaries of business conditions.

Based on the metaphor of the instrument panel in a car, the computer, or "digital" version of a dashboard provides a business manager with the input necessary to "drive" the business. Devices such as red/green/yellow lights, alerts, drill-downs, summaries, graphics such as Bar Chart s, Pie Chart s and Gauges are usually set in a portal-like environment that is often role-driven and customizable.

Digital Dashboards can be laid out to track the flows inherent in the business processes that they monitor. Graphically, users can see the high-level processes and then Drill Down into low level data. This level of detail is often buried deep within the corporate enterprise and otherwise unavailable to the senior executives.

Specialized Dashboards can track all corporate functions. Examples include Human Resources , Recruiting , Sales , Operations , Security , Information Technology , Project Management , Customer Relationship Management and many more departmental dashboards. For a collection of Enterprise Dashboard screenshots see The Dashboard Spy , a blog dedicated to monitoring Digital Dashboards.

Digital Dashboard projects involve business units as the driver and the information technology department as the enabler. The success of Digital Dashboard projects often rely on the correct selection of metrics to monitor. Key Performance Indicator s, balanced scorecards, sales performance figures - these are just some of the content appropriate on Business Dashboards.

Historically, the idea of Digital Dashboards follows the work in the 1970s with the study of Decision Support System s. In the late 1990s with the surge of the web, Digital Dashboards as we know them today, began appearing. Many systems were home built as the emphasis on efficiency became a passion. Today, Digital Dashboard technology is available "out-of-the-box" with many software providers on the scene.

Known also as an " Enterprise Dashboard ", or " Executive Dashboard ",


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