This is a business management tool used to provide a quick and concise visual overview of the status of a business enterprise through the elaboration of a more or less continuous stream of data from disparate in-house systems, interpreted as key business indicators. A dashboard can, for example, provide action information, alerts and warnings, next steps, and summaries of business conditions.
Published in Chapter:
Dashboards for Management
Werner Beuschel (Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-843-7.ch014
Abstract
Dashboard system applications have been known in companies for several years. As the growing body of references shows, dashboards are now about to become more widespread, not only in numbers but also in terms of application areas (e.g., Eckerson, 2006; Few, 2006; Malik, 2005). The fact that almost every company is equipped with a great number of information systems, their infrastructure being largely dependent on software, supports the interest in high-level and condensed information representation. Originally, user interfaces and data representations of operational and administrative systems are not always designed for management-level use, so a need to bridge this gap develops. Based on information technology infrastructure and forced to act in a complex and contingent environment, most organizations feel the need to create high-level overviews for managing tasks. The idea of dashboards is aimed at helping to visualize large amounts of data in a condensed representation, providing a quick overview of organizational processes and supporting managers in their decision-making tasks.