Design of a Management Reporting Cockpit

1. Challenge

I am responsible for the Business Intelligence Systems at my company. One major project of the last year  was to create a Top Management Cockpit for the top decision makers. The target was to cover the  requirements of the headquarters as well as those of all the regions. The main divisions of the company  should be covered like Finance, Operations and Market Management. These were defined as the  categories of the reporting cockpit and these divisions were also the basis for the system authorizations.  The biggest discussion was on one hand side which Key Performance Indicators to use for the cockpit and  on the other hand side how to structure the system. Regarding the KPIs we decided every division should  deliver 20 core KPIs. We would provide all of them but show only 5 of them in the Dashboards due to the  reason of overloading with information. The KPIs could be changed every half year due to the reason to  have the flexibility if the markets are changing rapidly and other steering mechanisms for the company  win relevance. The design of the system was the more difficult topic. We decided to sit together and  discuss this with the main stakeholders. The design had technical constraints like the run on notebooks,  tablets and mobile phones and business orientated constraints like user friendliness.

2. Selection

I selected Visualization for the determination of the cockpit design. The main reason was that there are  different people with very different mindset and background and from different departments involved in  the process. The idea was to get a common understanding. The other reason was that this is a new topic  and it gave us space for exploration and imagination. Therefor you need creativity and my idea was to  foster creativity by using Visualization.

3. Application

I organized a one day workshop with all the relevant stakeholders - 15 persons. That means people from  different Business departments, IT departments and alignment functions. We split into 3 groups and  every group had to deliver a slide of the customer and a slide of the user journey. Afterwards we merged  all the outcomes into one big graphic.

Start with the user

We started with the user due to the reason that the user is the central part if you like to develop new  software. We draw a user how he could be. We talked about his background, the possible job title, his  main goals, his needs and pain points and rated his competencies. We created a slide with all this  information with small pictures and the user in the middle. It was a creative and very interactive process.  The people were motivated to work on that slide and everybody draw active on the picture. The outcome  was the following: The user is a Manager, middle-age, responsible for one or more cost centers, not a  power user of IT systems, proactive, works in teams, has team members who deliver KPI information to  him, global focus, more conservative person, likes to work with graphics and diagrams.

How is the user journey?

We went on with another slide and draw what is happening when the user starts to use the system. We  clustered as following: Mindset (What is in the persons mind while taking the action in the journey?)/  Action (What actions does the Person take while going through the journey?) and Touchpoint (What tools  are in use?) and that expanded to the timeline how long the user is using the system. We draw for every  step of the journey a little picture. For example: Mindset � Manager thinks: How are the sales today? /  Actions: Open app on mobile device / Touchpoints: Mobile device. We did this for the complete journey  and developed how the person would potentially use the application.

How should the design be as a as a result of the user and the user journey?

Out of that profiles and the journeys of every group we learned that we would need an easy to use  software, high level information, real time data, a fast system. The person would need the system mainly  on his phone due to the reason that the person travels often. Main points are mobile display and security  due to the reason that he uses often Wi-Fi connections in different countries. If the person wants to know  details he calls one of his employees. The system needs diagrams and concentrates on the most important  KPIs. As a result of this information we developed a prototype of an application design.

4. Insight

The insights focus on two different areas: On the one side to the working together itself and on the other  side on the outcome. The working together is much easier if the people understand the same. Visualization  helps to have the same picture in mind. The process of drawing something is also motivation for the  persons. It’s not only a passive work like listening to somebody, it’s an active work which is also fun. The  outcome of the process is more well-grounded and you find together more relevant details. E.g. if you look  at a person, draw the person, draw his competencies and so on. The participants did extrapolation and  thought about new possibilities.

5. Approach

The use of Visualization was a good choice for the first step of the process. I would use the tool again.  Storytelling would go more in the direction of a discussion. My idea was that the audience was too  different and would lose itself in the discussion. Mind mapping could also be used for that problem,  because it’s also a creative process and it is possible bring different stakeholders together. Learning Launch  could be the next step to go on with a mock up and test that with other stakeholders.

Due to corporate policy I am not able to connect graphics to the submission.

