Business Intelligence
Dashboard
Decision Support
Need
to define business intelligence dashboard requirements for an
information management requirements specification and want practical
timesaving suggestions?
Decision
support projects are a type of information management project. They
involve getting the right data, in the right hands, at the right time,
to make the
right decision.
Are they
different from business intelligence reporting?
Usually they are interactive and allow users to create “what if”
scenarios e.g.
Financial
support scenario
Suppose
you want to apply for a loan and need to see the impact of paying it
off in 5 years, instead of 7 years, or changing the interest rate. An
easy solution would let you input your variables and then present the
results side by side so you can easily see the impact and make a
decision—This type of support can normally be provided by a spreadsheet
program.
Inventory
support scenario
Suppose
a plant manager wants to know the impact of reducing inventory
to
a minimum and needs some help to decide the minimum level. The manager
might need to look at:
- How long it takes to order raw material;
- Shipping costs;
- How long it takes to manufacture the product;
- The cost of inventory;
- How long customers normally will wait for a
product shipment; and
- Sales projections for the next twelve
months.
This
data can then be analyzed in a variety of ways. It might be less
expensive to maintain a minimum inventory level and order raw material
by a faster, and more costly, shipping method, than to maintain higher
inventory levels.
With the right data, business intelligence dashboard and decision
support
tools, the plant manager can try different scenarios and see different
results before making an appropriate decision.
The data
required to satisfy this type of requirement might come from an order
system, inventory system, billing system, customer relationship
management system and work effort reporting system.
Credit
decision scenario
A
financial institution might offer customers the option of applying for
additional credit on-line and need a decision support system to analyze
the application. This decision might be based on a lot of factors such
as:
- Current balances in savings and checking
accounts;
- Credit card transaction history;
- Credit rating;
- Credit history; and
- It might also require looking at results of
granting credit to customers with similar credit histories and credit
ratings.
Based
on all this data, the on-line credit application system will suggest an
appropriate interest rate that is appropriate for the perceived risk.
The
data to support this decision may come from historical data stored in a
data warehouse, from credit rating information purchased from a credit
bureau and from on-line data stored in the customer’s savings, checking
and credit card account.
How do we
determine data requirements?
Business intelligence dashboard requirements are similar to business
intelligence reporting
requirements. A business intelligence analyst, and data analyst, must
work closely with the business team to understand decision-making
objectives. The following suggestions provide some things to consider:
- Review the project objectives stated in the
business case;
- Review the logical data model—This is a
starting point to help determine data requirements;
- Work closely with the business team to gain
understanding of what they are trying to accomplish;
- Review
the enterprise data movement model developed as part of the information
management framework. This will help confirm if the data is available
to meet requirements; and
- Assess data quality to ensure that
information quality is sufficient to support the required
decision-making, if not, look for alternate sources
- User requirements analysis should include a review of
decision support requirements.
Summary…
Business intelligence dashboard and decision support requirements are
similar to business intelligence
reporting requirements—Depending upon the complexity of the decision,
data may be required from historical data storage, such as data
warehouses, and on-line applications. It is essential that an
experienced business intelligence analyst, data analyst, and the
business team develop requirements early in the project.
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