Building BI Dashboards with SAS Gauges and SAS

About this Presentation • Designed for a group of BAs that were gathering requirements for a enterprise BI system • Focus on gathering precise requirements for information dashboard design using SAS BI tools M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 2

Objectives • • • What are BI Dashboards? How are they related to SAS scorecards? How are they managed in SAS? List Gauge Types Give Report Specification Developers a Single Reference Card M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 3

Dashboard Benefits • • Visual presentation of performance measures Ability to identify and correct negative trends Measure efficiencies/inefficiencies Ability to generate detailed reports showing new trends • Ability to make more informed decisions based on collected business intelligence • Align strategies and organizational goals • Save time over running multiple reports M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 4

The Auto Dashboard • The auto reference model • Dummy lights “check engine” •

Gas Gauge and Warning Range F • The arrow is the “current value” • The gauge has a “warning range” • In cars you can not customized the range to your risk preference – (1/4, 1/8, 1/16 of a tank) E • Indicators can be customized to the preferences of a department, group, team or individual M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 6

Terms • Dashboard – a collection of “portlets” • Portlet – a region of a portal page • JSR-168 – a standard for displaying portlets in any vendors portal • Indicator – a way to describe a metric with a set of known values • Gauge Type – a specific type of indicator such as a dial or bar M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 7

Sample SAS BI Architecture Operational Source Systems Staging Nightly Replication OLAP Cubes Presentation Web Portal Fact Tables Semantic Security Conformed Dimensions SAS Information Maps Portlet Excel Flash Dashboard HTML Metadata Web Services M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates Metadata Registry 8

Data Freshness • 95% of the time a user can do analysis from data created from aggregates in the OLTP cube • Aggregates are created each night • Make sure your users understand that real-time data on the operational source systems will need special processing • Add an appropriate budgeting factor for any realtime requirements (see Dan for ROI spreadsheet) M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 9

Sample Dashboard M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 10

SAS Graph as a Portlet Generator M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary &

Steven Few Example with SAS Graph M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary &

About SAS 9. 2 • SAS 9. 2 does not have native support for JSR-168 portlets • SAS 9. 3 (due January 2009) will have better JSR-168 compliance • For this 2008 our goals will be to use the SAS portal tools within the SAS portal alone • 2009 will focus on Portlet portability M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 13

Scorecard Standards • Note that there are three data values and four ranges Threshold

Warning on the Semantics of the Word “Target” • Most systems define the word “target” as a specific numeric value that a metric should be aspiring to or the goal value of an organization for a metric • Some non-standard systems (eg Thrivent) define “target” define target as a point between the yellow and the green areas of an indicator • Use precise words in your requirements – Target Goal Value – Yellow/Green Separation Value M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 15

SAS BI Range Registry M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 16

Creating a New Range Item M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates

SAS Gauge Types • • • Button Curved Slider Cylinders Fancy Arrows Gauge Simple Tachometer Dynamic Bullet Bar Dynamic Dial Dynamic Slider Dynamic Speedometer Dynamic Traffic Light • • • Marked Dial Pointers Reversed Tachometer Simple Arrows Simple Dial Slider Solid Tachometer Traffic Light Stylized Slider Stylized Tachometer Arrows Vertical Slider M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 18

Dynamic Bullet Bar Current Value Target Value • Actual value is the horizontal black

Dynamic Dial Meter Current Value Target Value M • The color of center of

Dynamic Slider Current Value Target Value • Color of triangle reflect the current value

Dynamic Speedometer Current Value Target Value • Great for people that like car gauges

Dynamic Stoplight • Display a simple color to indicate the status of a metric • Sometimes a simple design is the best • Note that some people are color-blind and will need more than color to show a value M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 23

Logical Model for BI Dashboards Dashboard Portlets 1. . N 1. . 1 Metric • • M 1. . 1 Indicator 1. . 1 Range Gauge Type • • Portals have many dashboards Dashboards have many portlets Some portlets are associated with an indicator Indicators display some metric that the user wants to measure and compares that metric with expected values Some indicator use SAS Gauges can reference a library of colors from a range item D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 24

Agility • The business determines the metric to measure and the expected values: – target – threshold – stretch • Use range values from the range value registry M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 25

Process M • Gather business requirements about what values are relevant for your group • Read up on dashboard design and dashboard presentation concepts • Create prototypes for users • Review with usability team for “sanity check” • Build system on test environment • Migrate to production D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 26

Other to Build Rapid Prototypes • Use Prototypes to gauge users reactions and to do basic dashboard layouts • Use Microsoft Excel and charts • Use Google Charts (REST) M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 27

Resources • Books – How to display (Steven Few) – What to measure (Wayne Eckerson) • Blogs – Dan Mc. Creary on Bullet Bars with Google Charts – http: //broadcast. oreilly. com/2008/11/creating-bulletbars-with-goog. html • SAS Training – SAS BI Portal M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 28

Information Dashboard Design • Steven Few • O’Reilly 2006 • Excellent guide for the dashboard designer • Focus on usability • Based on actual studies of pattern recognition M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 29

Performance Dashboards • Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business. • Wayne W

Wikipedia References • Dashboards (management information systems) • Business Intelligence • Balanced scorecard M

Questions? Dan Mc. Creary President Dan Mc. Creary & Associates dan@danmccreary. com (952) 931

Thank You! Please contact me for more information: • • Enterprise Data Architecture Business Intelligence Data Warehouse Metadata Management Metadata Registries Service Oriented Architectures Semantic Web Dan Mc. Creary, President Dan Mc. Creary & Associates Metadata Strategy Development dan@danmccreary. com (952) 931 -9198 M D Copyright 2008 Dan Mc. Creary & Associates 33