Web Design Applications, Dashboards & Mashboards

If you are a blogger and use wordpress then you might find this plugin very interesting

“DashboardZone is proud to present a brand new plugin to monitor your Blogging goals. This plugin will help you and your readers to keep you on track for reaching your targets. We created this wordpress plugin that monitors the various blog goals and in an effort tries to engage your readers more effectively.”

You can set goals for your blog and measure your progress against them.

This DashboardZone plugin has a set of 5 pre-defined metrics that you can measure against your blog

Total Posts – Overall total number of posts. This is useful if you are starting new and have set a near term goal of reaching say 200 articles in the next 3-4 months. We use this metric on our own site(check the right hand side). Our near term goal is to review 500 dashboards and having a Gauge which lists our target and where we stand. This gives our readers a clear and transparent message => Submit your Dashboards

Average Comments/Post – If you have a popular blog or a site with established readership then this metric can let your users know about how popular is your website and how they can help you reach your growing target. This is total comments divided by total posts on your blog.

Average Posts/Month – This is total posts divided by total number of periods you have been blogging. This will help you remind if you are falling behind your monthly posts.

Current Month Posts – This is the total posts for the current month. If your post frequency is high then this can help you track how much you need to reach the green zone. This is the only metric that is attached to each post upon activation. You can disable this metric by going to Options -> Dashboard Zone and set the “Add to Post” => “No”

Comments for this article – For every post, this will track the total comments.

Here is a live example

If you happen to install Discoverer seeded apps EUL and use the seeded GL workbooks then there are chances that your workbooks may not show any data. (seeded means that comes pre-installed or with a patch from Oracle)

The cause for this no data in workbook issue is incomplete BIS setups

The “FII: GL BIS Discoverer access” profile option was not granted to the custom responsibility or to the Oracle “Applications Administrator” responsibility (used to administer the Discoverer EUL).

If this option is not set, no data will be returned in standard/seeded Discoverer GL workbooks.

How to fix this

1. Login as Sysadmin and System Administrator responsibility

Navigate to Profile => System

Enter ‘Yes’ in the highlighted field under responsibility

Save the settings and repeat the process for all other responsibilities that would access the GL Business area

Refresh the EUL and check if you are able to see the data. You will need to restart Discoverer Plus. Restart Oracle applications if you are launching Discoverer Plus from within Oracle apps.

This assumes that you have followed through all the installation steps in the document

I get lot of emails asking questions about career with ERP. For example, one of our readers asked the question below

“Hi, I have done MBA in Finance and willing to work in ERP, which modules would be better suited for my skillset”

The beauty of any ERP system, is you need both functional and technical people for any kind of ERP projects. Now having an MBA in Finance degree gives you lot of upper hand in the functional knowledge.

Oracle ERP has various modules divided by functions such as Finance, Manufacturing, HR etc.

So having a Finance background you can easily take a stab at General Ledger, Account Receivables, Account Payables, Cash Management, Purchasing, Fixed Assets etc. Once you become familiar with them you can explore other modules in Manufacturing.

Now the question do you want to become technical or remain truly functional? It always helps to know little bit of SQL and the table relationships. Being a Functional consultant means able to do setups, fix setups, maintain them, communicate with direct users, communicate with technical people, writing functional specs and so on.

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.

He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.

He is not an interruption in our work – he is the purpose of it.

We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to serve him.
– Mahatma Gandhi

I stumbled across the above quotation on a company website named ZOHO. I was not aware of this Indian based company until I read this article on how Zoho could challenge both Microsoft and Google

I was surprised at the breadth of product offerings Zoho has and more impressed by its attitude. A company’s attitude is judged by how it treats its customer and if they are truly following what they preach then I salute them.

Mahatma Gandhi’s quote is very relevant in today’s web world.

Let me take the liberty to make slight adjustments and apply it towards my websites.

“You are the most important visitor on my website. You are the reason for the existence of this websites (appsbi.com and infocaptor.com). You are always welcome to comment, email, ping or call me. Your feedback, love and loyalty is the greatest favor you will do on me”

Apart from hiring consultants in your BI and Dashboard project, make an attempt to involve your employees from day one. This will have multiple benefits

• Your employees can share the company standards with the consultant
• Your employees can learn much faster from the consultant’s expertise

Here is a good CIO article on letting your employees involve in the metrics definition process

Let employees help set the metrics. When employees help determine what a dashboard will measure, they’re more likely to think it’s a fair tool for measuring productivity and performance. “If people think the metrics are appropriately set, they’re not going to feel as threatened,”

When you ask your employees to get involved

Stress the benefits of transparency. Tell employees they’ll see the type of data that years ago may have lived only in the office of the CFO. Employees can use the information to stay abreast of the company’s performance. When something substantial happens to the business, they wont feel broadsided.

Explain the performance upside. A boss who’s using dashboards to track employee performance is not hiding a secret spreadsheet that tracks his winners and losers, only to be revealed at the end of the quarter. “You not only know how you’re doing, you know how your competitors are doing in other departments,”

Lot of times, when you work as an employee, as a coder, developer, tester or project manager, the employee is unaware of the competition. Most of the time the employee is concerned with the IT project that he/she is working on, working 9-5 and sometimes late and during weekends. This creates a very divisional view for the employee. Even though the employee shines in its assigned work area, he may be unaware of the company’s actual goals, its competition. What is the company currently struggling with, how is it beating the competion etc.

Involving or atleast sharing some of the corporate dashboards with your employees can give them some perspective on why some of the projects are put on hold due to budget constraints, market conditions etc.

Information sharing can truly benefit an organization and dashboards are the right tool to do that as you don’t have to share detailed information with everyone, just the summary information should be good enough to let the employee feel he/she is equally important.

First Let us understand what is a KPI?

(source DashboardZone)

A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is simply a metric that is tied to a target. Most often, a KPI represents how far a metric is above or below a pre-determined target. KPI’s usually are shown as a ratio of actual to target and are designed to instantly let a business user know if they are on or off their plan without the end user having to consciously focus on the metrics being represented.

SMART is an abbreviation for the five conditions of good KPI’s:

* Specific – It has to be clear what the KPI exactly measures. There has to be one widely-accepted definition of the KPI to make sure the different users interpret it the same way and, as a result, come to the same and right conclusions which they can act on.

* Measurable – The KPI has to be measurable to define a standard, budget or norm, to make it possible to measure the actual value and to make the actual value comparable to the budgeted value.

* Achievable – Every KPI has to be measurable to define a standard value for it. It is really important for the acceptance of KPI’s and Peformance Management in general within the organization that this norm is achievable. Nothing is more discouraging than striving for a goal that you will never obtain.

* Relevant – The KPI must give more insight in the performance of the organization in obtaining its strategy. If a KPI is not measuring a part of the strategy, acting on it doesn’t affect the organizations’ performance. Therefore an irrelevant KPI is useless.

* Time phased – It is important to express the value of the KPI in time. Every KPI only has a meaning if one knows the time dimension in which it is realized. The realization and standardization of the KPI therefore has to be time phased.