For the last several months I’ve been developing an online application for a local small business that, up until recently, could best be described as a “control panel” for its day-to-day operations. As the first review meeting approached, I realized I needed to come up with a friendlier name… no longer would “internal online application” do, as it had been called up to that point. I settled on “The Dashboard”.
So it was with pleasure that I came across Jeremy Lattimore’s recent tweet about his blog post discussing “digital dashboards” and “executive dashboards” for small business. He has posted two articles (here and here) regarding this topic recently, and they have motivated me to crystallize my thinking on this emerging application trend.
It’s an exciting time for online application developers (like me!) and small businesses who hire them to create custom solutions for their unique needs:
- Hosting and database services are extremely affordable and feature-rich.
- Open source programming technology like PHP and MySQL are free and robust.
- Supporting technology like Ajax and jQuery are giving web applications features that previously existed only in desktop client software.
In the hands of the programmer who has a vision and an eagerness to keep up with the evolving demands of the ever-changing face of online user interfaces, this set of circumstances can result in applications which can add to a company’s bottom line.
What is a business dashboard?
An online business dashboard (digital dashboard, or executive dashboard) is a web based monitoring interface providing at-a-glance information, status alerts, warnings (based upon preset triggers), and often visual representations of data. The purpose of the dashboard is to facilitate rapid decision-making and to focus attention on the vital few actionable items that drive your business and/or daily operations. Whereas in the traditional model managers would generate reports from stored data (as Jeremy points out in his post), a true business dashboard facilitates rapid decision-making by focusing attention on the most important data and activity trends.
An example of dashboard implementation
The application possibilities of the dashboard concept is limited only by the imagination, and possibly the developers ability to program the system. Industries where lots of data are processed in a repetitive format are the obvious benefactors of dashboard technology, since it would be easy to track information that follows a precise pattern time after time. A more challenging environment is in the setting in which the data is more abstract. Even then, a creative system integrator can often find a “pattern in the chaos”.
Although the work that I’m currently doing is for a private company and their own internal processes, I can say that the dashboard is primarily for the use of the management to oversee the following for an office full of employees that must conform to certain industry regulations:
- Schedules
- Employee attendance
- Client appointments
- Project management notes and “alerts”
- Global and employee-specific task lists
- Event items
- … and more.
How much would a dashboard system cost?
It’s difficult to create a formula for pricing the development of such a system due to the custom nature of each client. Although there are off-the-shelf business intelligence and digital dashboard rapid development technologies available in the marketplace, I do specialize in custom solutions based upon my own code libraries and development strategy. The exciting aspect of all of this for small businesses is that that there’s never been a time when this type of custom development has been more affordable. The barriers to entry have become so low that these solutions are viable for even small mom-and-pop shops who typically wouldn’t entertain the idea of a custom software solution.
A quick note about Ajax and jQuery
From a developer’s point of view, these two programming technologies bring features to dashboard apps that were once seen only in desktop applications. From a user’s perspective, these technologies provide a smoother and more responsive interface experience. Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) reduces and/or eliminates the need for page refreshes. Ajax-enabled applications can send and retrieve information from a Web server without reloading the entire page, and can update areas of the page independently, or asynchronously, similar to desktop applications. jQuery is a JavaScript library that facilitates the use and implementation of Ajax, ease of document traversing, event handling, and document element effects like animation. Both of these technologies help turn online applications to what are known as “Web 2.0 apps”.
Conclusion
In today’s economic climate, small businesses are looking for cost-effective ways to improve the efficiency of day-to-day business operations. A business performance dashboard is one way to streamline the decision-making process, leading to quicker and smarter actions. Now you know a little more about this technology, would you benefit from a business dashboard?