Business Intelligence and Dashboard

Five years ago, many of the salespeople at Fridley-based medical device maker Medtronic felt like they were flying blind. In order to get access to sales performance data crucial to decision making, the sales force in the Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management (CRDM) unit had to request reports from the company’s finance analysts, who often were busy with other tasks and couldn’t always supply data in a timely fashion. Salespeople couldn’t apply resources in optimal ways and take effective corrective actions.

That’s when Medtronic decided to work with Eagan-based BI Consulting Group to implement business intelligence technology. The team introduced performance “dashboards” to give CRDM salespeople greater access to key trend and sales numbers. Dashboards are computer displays that use gauges, dials, maps, charts, and other graphic elements to give users an at-a-glance view of how their businesses are faring against key performance indicators. Linked to a company’s data warehouses, the dashboards are continually refreshed with the latest sales number, inventory levels, manufacturing times compared to benchmarks, customer service figures, or performance against strategic initiatives. They typically combine data from a variety of sources into a single view.

As word spread among the CRDM sales force about advantages of the dashboards, demand quickly grew. “We went from about five users to some 2,000 software licenses almost overnight,” says Rose Woo, senior principal business lead for the CRDM field organization.

Think Globally

As the amount of performance data that businesses generate proliferates and more vendors roll out new dashboard tools, their use has grown rapidly over the past five years. Even the federal government is getting into the act, introducing its Federal IT Portfolio Dashboard (it.usaspending.gov), which allows the general public and federal agencies to monitor federal information technology spending. The latest dashboard incarnations feature ever-more compelling data visualizations.

But adopting dashboards isn’t as simple as putting charts and graphs on line. Achieving that level of adoption first requires some careful design; a pipeline that can reliably feed accurate, fresh data into the system; and management-level sponsorship.