Executive Dashboard Synthesis of Best Practices

In this context, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has launched an effort to build its management performance capacity, including strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation, and communicating results. The executive dashboard synthesis of best practices document explores industry standards and best practices for dashboard implementation, including data input and data quality requirements, visualization tools, and deployment options. The document reviews a number of executive dashboards implemented by local, state, and federal agencies, but notes that information about back-end implementation is not available when reading the dashboards over the internet. Market trends indicate that business intelligence (BI) technology is evolving rapidly, with vendors constantly surpassing each other with advanced reporting features. Today, the majority of companies are using BI reporting solutions, and about half of these are still expanding and upgrading their reporting applications. Analytic solutions that slice and dice data from multiple sources and deliver the results as dashboards are currently implemented by almost 40% of all organizations surveyed by Forrester. Data collection is a critical step in the development of executive dashboards, and has consequences on the implementation of all downstream processes and systems. In this context, data input automation is used to extract data from source systems, enforce data quality and consistency standards, conform data so that separate sources can be used together, and deliver data in a presentation-ready format. Data extraction is done via a variety of ways, including using standard connectors to databases, proprietary code, or creating flat files. After extraction, the data is transformed or modified, depending on the specific business logic involved, so that it can be sent to the target repository. The building blocks of a system that gathers data from multiple sources and makes it available for the presentation layer can be described as follows: ETL Workflow, Source, Extract, Transform, and Load. The Extract step involves writing raw data from source systems directly to disk with minimal restructuring, but before significant content transformation takes place. Data from structured source systems, such as databases or XML data sets, is often written to flat files or relational tables in this step. The Transform step involves applying business logic to the data to conform it to the target repository or application. The Load step involves loading the transformed data into the target repository or application. Overall, the development of executive dashboards requires careful consideration of data input and data quality requirements, visualization tools, and deployment options. By following industry standards and best practices, organizations can create effective executive dashboards that enable them to monitor and analyze KPIs in real-time, and make informed decisions to drive business performance.