On Wired.com, Donald Farmer of QlikTech posted about his opportunity to sit in on a quarterly team leaders’ review with a medium-size manufacturing company. A quote that really stuck out was, “Do not just provide a dashboard of metrics and benchmarks. However accurate the data, however good the visualizations, however well laid out, the dashboard will be incomplete.” So it makes one wonder how this can be true.
The creation of dashboards for end users is a challenge in itself. There are many anomalies based on a variety of situations, industries, user influence or knowledge and purpose. Although developers work hard creating the perfect dashboard, collecting the complete data and customizing the visuals based on end-user and organizational needs, it generally is not enough. For the most part good dashboard construction fosters sound decisions, but there are no pop-up screens to tell you what to do and when to do it , because business intelligence yields are contingent on the intelligence (and perhaps even intuition) of the decision maker.
In manufacturing there is a constant flux of change based on outside factors. These factors may affect the ability to purchase raw materials, schedule manufacturing activities or even workforce availability, to name a few. Capturing data based on these situations can be difficult. Today, collaborative note fields within a BI tool, the organization of unstructured data and the addition of outside and readily available intelligence provides the analyst guidance in her goal to make a decision.
Encouraging end users to embrace data discovery should be the goal. Incorporating discovery in the planning cycle by sharing the finding with others on a team will provide insight to future decisions. In the end, it is not all about the metrics and benchmarks, it is about the ability to discover, open up possibilities and be ahead of the game.
By Cindy Balon Harder, EPM Contributor, from: http://www.visualdatagroup.com/node/175
Throughout her 20+ year career, Cindy Balon Harder has had extensive experience in Marketing, Wholesale & Distribution, Supply Chain, and in developing Sales and Operations Planning processes. She is particularly familiar with the Consumer Products industry where she has participated in all aspects of the supply chain, from demand planning to warehouse distribution. Cindy is a Principal at Visual Data Group. Her main focus is Marketing, PR and Social Media, and Supply Chain consulting.See Cindy’s articles on EPM Channel here.
Leave a Reply