IBM Cognos Analytics Dashboards BEST PRACTICE Sara Ricketts

Who Am I? Sara Ricketts Lighthouse Computer Services 20+ years in Business Intelligence, 15 of those with Cognos UK/Cognos Canada Strong believer in aligning business intelligence to strategic performance management These are guidelines – it’s not the law! All BI screenshots in this presentation are from content I have built in Cognos Analytics © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

All you need to know in one statement “The main purpose of a dashboard is to enable managers to quickly and routinely comprehend how they are performing against their KPIs, not to provide an environment for complex data analysis. ” – Gartner Malcolm Gladwell stated that it would take 10, 000 hours to become an expert in a given subject. Please repeat the above quote for 10, 000 hours (9, 000 is probably good enough) 3 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Where do we start • Ignore the technology! That’s right – pretend you don’t know any of this cool techie stuff • Understand your user from the perspective of their role, or persona and document their needs, wants and priorities • Understand their journey through information as pertains to their role • Determine whether technology can meet any of their needs • Determine whether enough needs can be met with technology to add value to the organization • Determine which aspects of the technology are best suited to meet their needs • Prototype prototype – with your user giving you feedback along the way • Follow best practice design and think Fisher Price!!! 4 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Who are you and what am I doing here? • Who is the business user? What do they do? How do they think? How do they journey through information? • Take a design-thinking approach • Don’t start with the end design! I wish I had a better Not massively handle on how market The name’s James. You confident in our spend affects our sales can call me Jim. Danger is current reporting my middle name. I’m the Always concerned about VP of Sales the margin – especially for newer brands I am responsible for ensuring the sales team meets their objectives 5 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved Hope our e-Commerce Discount drives more This job is dangerous – customers they need to pay me more

Gather and Document Sales Performance Data Perform Analysis, determine whether targets are being met in relation to organizational and departmental Objectives Thinks We have invested in multiple marketing programs – expecting a decent return We need to maintain our competitive advantage in the consumables Says Wonder if our e-commerce discount initiative will drive more customers I don’t think we have done enough to empower our sales force We need to increase our recruitment in various brands Would like to introduce a couple of new brands for next year, but not sure if we have the funding Prepare Report for Board – Including Course of Action / Next Steps Present To Internal Sales Management team and presents findings to the Board Our delivery to the mobile sales for needs to be more effective We need to keep our promotional costs manageable but at the same time make sure we are exploring marketing effectiveness and opportunities across all key brands We need to better understand how our marketing strategies impact the bottom line Feels I don’t feel 100% confident in the data for the quarterly reporting and board presentation Does Collates and consolidates data from multiple sources Always concerned about the margin – especially for newer brands Performs Analysis Jim B. VP of Sales © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved Worried that surprise costs may impact our margins on the consumables brands Determine whether targets are being met in all areas pertaining to sales and marketing Evaluation of Sales Performance – Staff and Products Presents Recommendations to Board

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a report? Is it a dashboard? • You can build a dashboard in the dashboard tool or in the authoring tool as a report or an active report. It doesn’t matter where you build it as long as it does the job! It’s a dashboard. You can call it Janet if you like, it’s still a dashboard. What do you want? I want to interact I want a high level overview I want it to prompt me before I run it I want to print it I want to drill through to detail I want to work offline I want content on multiple tabs 7 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved Dashboard It! Author It Active report It!

Do not ask your business user to design it • If you are building dashboards for your organization, do not ask your business user what it should look like. Your user is an expert in what he or she does, the dashboard designer is the expert in the technology. You will provide a solution that best meets the dashboard requirements and offers business value But I wanted it to have a picture of a cat 8 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved • Prototyping will iron out the little things (and some big things) • You are aiming for high user adoption – following best practice will help get you there • You are trying to get there as quickly as possible • You have to maintain this dashboard

How easy is thing to use? "Keep it simple, stupid" is a design principle noted by the U. S. Navy in 1960. The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore simplicity should be a key goal in design and unnecessary complexity should be avoided. 9 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

So many ways to display data! • Let’s go back to that Gartner quote for a sec : …. quickly and routinely comprehend how they are performing against their KPIs… Stay focused – there’s a quiz! 10 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Pop Quiz! Can you quickly and routinely tell me how much revenue was generated

Pop Quiz! How about now? 12 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Pop Quiz! Can you quickly and routinely tell me which are three biggest issues

Pop Quiz! How about now? 14 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Colour me bad! • Colour on a dashboard serves two purposes – 1) to make it look nice and / or 2) to catch our attention • Dashboards should not require sunglasses to read them 15 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Make it stop! 16 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Better… 17 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Red is bad - always Outstanding! 18 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Shapes, huh! What Are They Good For? Absolutely loads! • We can use shapes to build other shapes! Wow! • We can also use them to create cohesion, unity and separation in our dashboard 19 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

BYOI! • Upload your own images – add familiarity, enhance the experience • Be

Don’t malignment (ok that was bad, but having stuff jumbled up is way worse ) • Human beings like order and don’t like chaos • Our eyes generally read across information, left to right, not in squiggly, random patterns 21 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Straighten up! Straight lines, alignment, harmony, break it up – you have tabs! 22

What about Scorecards? You can build some great scorecards in IBM Cognos Analytics using the Authoring capability. Adding drill through completes the user’s journey through information and enhances the user experience. 23 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Now What? Use one of your dashboard tabs to communicate to everyone what the next steps are • What, Who, When – simple! • Everyone knows what their job is • Using the dashboard as a look back and a look ahead • Single version of the truth Nothing for me! Yessss! 24 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved

Use the force IBM Analytics is not just for looking backwards at what happened. There are some great capabilities that enable you to leverage your dashboards to help you determine what to do next: 25 © Lighthouse Computer Services, All rights reserved