The idea of dashboards isn’t really new. Back in the 80s, IT consultants worked on implementing “executive information systems” that would give the executive team snapshots of critical areas at a glance. Turns out it sounded better on paper than it worked out to be in the real world, though. For instance, too often those snapshots aged and became stale and out-of-date before they were refreshed, and the data needed to drive the dashboards often was too widely dispersed to be efficiently utilized. Unfortunately, these older dashboards were only on the desktops of chief executives of very large organizations. Plus, because of limitations of technology at the time, changes, customizations and updating were normally cumbersome, slow, difficult, and expensive. Dashboards ended up gaining a reputation as fun, sexy-looking – but basically worthless – baubles for the super-executive.
What is relatively new are the ways today’s dashboards – such as those in Cloud-based ERP applications such as Intacct and NetSuite – operate. They’re no longer expensive, complicated toys for the CEO, they’re now streamlined, integrated, and efficient tools that are distributed throughout the enterprise. They’ve become so indispensable and elegantly integrated, they’re the primary way users engage with the software.
Basically, these dashboards serve the same function as their namesake – the automotive dashboard. The dashboard in your car gives you key, real-time data about how the machine you’re in charge of operating is running. For instance, you have the speedometer, fuel gauge, odometer, tachometer, temperature gauge – and lights that alert you to dangerous emergency situations. And that’s what the new breed of intelligent business dashboards serve up: relevant, key data regarding that manager’s responsibilities in real time.
Like a car’s dashboard, your ERP dashboard should not only display vital data, but the right vital data, in ways that make the most sense. As you drive down the road, you don’t need to know details about every rivet and screw in your car, or the exact number of milliliters of fuel you’ve got left. Just as in your business, you could be overwhelmed with details if you had displays of every scrap of available data. Effective dashboards are one more tool that executives can use to both access and filter data. By selecting meaningful report snapshots and summary graphs, you can track key metrics on project progress, sales, top-selling products, resource utilization, top-performing consultants, highest-revenue clients and more.
Your ERP dashboard offers instantaneous, automatic access to key performance indicators (KPIs), eliminating the kind of manually-intensive, time-consuming, and error-prone work that has been required to develop these kinds of reports. Armed with KPI metrics, managers throughout your organization can see which projects are on track and how efficiently your resources are allocated. You can see what sales opportunities are in the pipeline. You can track how current your accounts receivable are, and which client’s are late. You can see what revenue has been recognized on current contracts, and how much will be recognized by when. And in a fluid, dynamic business environment, real-time up-to-date views of your KPIs can be invaluable to maximizing your business.
Actually, the metaphor of a car’s dashboard doesn’t capture all the strengths of an Intacct or NetSuite dashboard. Three of these strengths: in another advance over the first iteration of dashboards in the 80s, you can click on virtually any of the displays on your ERP dashboards to drill down and examine the data driving that display; the ability to link all of the dashboards in your organization together; and the ability for users to fairly easily customize their particular dashboard display.
You want to deliver a just-right solution for each of your customers, and these ERP solutions want to provide your employees the same kind of goldilocks experience with ERP software. Within the guidelines of their role in your organization, your employees can drag-and-drop to customize and adjust their dashboards to reflect their specific domain expertise and to design the best solution for themselves, and so it can also aid in wider buy-in and deeper engagement with the product, leading to even more robust and quicker return on investment.
To make the most of your ERP investment, you need to maximize your dashboards. And to maximize what your dashboards can tell you, you need someone who understands your ERP solution AND your business – you need a company like InnoVergent. InnoVergent understands the software and services industry, and provides critical guidance and assistance in building the best and most efficient dashboards.
