Business Intelligence Dashboard

What is a business intelligence dashboard you ask, well let me tell you.

A business intelligence dashboard is a data visualization tool that displays the current status of metrics and key performance indicators for a business. Dashboards consolidate and arrange numbers, metrics and sometimes performance scorecards on a single screen. They may be tailored for a specific role and display metrics targeted for a single point of view or department. The essential features of a BI dashboard product includes a customizable interface and the ability to pull real-time data from multiple source.

Oracle and Microsoft are among the vendors of business intelligence dashboards. BI dashboards can also be created through other business applications, such as Excel. Business intelligence dashboards are sometimes referred to as enterprise dashboards.

The business intelligence dashboard is often confused with the performance scorecard. The main difference between the two, traditionally, is that a business intelligence dashboard, like the dashboard of a car, indicates the status at a specific point in time. A scorecard, on the other hand, displays progress over time towards specific goals. Dashboard and scorecard designs are increasingly converging. For example, some commercial dashboard products also include the ability to track progress towards a goal. A product combining elements of both dashboards and scorecards is sometimes referred to as a scoreboard.