Introduction xix
Part I Foundations of Dashboards and Balanced Scorecards 1
Chapter 1 Introduction to Balanced Scorecards 3
Origins of Strategic Management Systems 3
Tools of Today's Management 4
Balanced Scorecards 4
Strategy Maps 5
Dashboards 7
Benefits of Today's Scorecards 7
Team Strategy 8
Information Technology Alignment 8
Data Strategy 8
Organizational Alignment 8
Strategy to Action Conversion 9
Choosing the Right Technology for the Task 9
Designing for Audience Usability 10
Executives 10
Sales and Marketing 10
Field and Global Workforce 11
Operations and Production 11
Organizing Your Balanced Scorecard 11
Defining Your Strategic Function 12
Why is the Strategy Map so Important? 17
How Do You Know It's Working? 19
Moving Forward with your Scorecard Initiative 19
Summary 19
Chapter 2 Planning Your Dashboard and Scorecard Initiative 21
Defining Scope and Gathering Requirements 22
Executive Involvement 22
Defining Measures 25
Selecting the Right Performance Metrics 28
Planning Development and Implementation 29
Managing Expectations and Scope 30
Summary 31
Part II Building and Extending Dashboards and Balanced Scorecards 33
Chapter 3 Building Your First Dashboard and Balanced Scorecard 35
Anatomy of a Reporting Services Project 36
Introduction to Data Sources, Datasets, and Controls 37
Design and Preview 41
Building Your First Dashboard 46
Scoping and Requirements for Your Dashboard 46
Considerations Before You Get Started 47
Identifying Metrics and Gathering Data 47
Working with Metrics and KPIs 48
Designing the Dashboard 49
Summary 50
Chapter 4 Enhancing Your Dashboard and Balanced Scorecard 51
Organizing and Achieving Visual Consistency 51
Placement and Layouts 52
Dashboard Headers and Footers 53
Reports, Subreports, and Paging 54
Formatting Dashboard Elements 55
Fonts and Text Boxes 55
Borders, Lines, Color, and Images 56
Text, Numbers, and Dates 58
Conditional Formatting 60
Expressions 60
Conditional Formatting Step-by-step 61
Custom and Data-driven Labels and Titles 62
Creating Custom Labels 63
Working with Dates and Times 64
Summary 66
Chapter 5 Interactive Dashboards and Balanced Scorecards 67
Common Interactive Features 67
Drillthrough 68
Expand / Collapse Groups 69
Interactive Sorting 71
Bookmarks 72
Parameterization 74
Introduction to Reporting Services Parameters 75
Data-driven Parameters 79
Working with Cascading Parameters 82
Step-by-step Drillthrough Report 83
Summary 88
Chapter 6 Visual Dashboards and Balanced Scorecards 89
General Guidelines for Data Visualizations 89
Know your Audience 90
Select the Right Medium 90
Kill Cute 90
Use Colors Carefully 91
Working with Charts and Graphs 92
Getting Started with Charts 93
Extending the Reporting Services Chart 102
Working with Sparklines and Data Bars 107
Sparklines 107
Data Bars 109
Working with Gauges and Bullet Graphs 110
Gauges 110
Bullet Graphs 112
Working with Indicators 115
Working with Maps 118
Summary 123
Chapter 7 Mobile Dashboards and Balanced Scorecards 125
Planning for the Right Audience 125
Browser or Native? 126
Choosing a Mobile Platform 127
The Pros and Cons of Reporting Services 127
The Pros and Cons of PerformancePoint 128
General Considerations for Mobile Dashboards 134
Performance 135
Security 136
Design Considerations 137
Summary 137
Chapter 8 Extending Dashboards and Balanced Scorecards with Custom Code 139
Choosing to Embed Custom Code 140
Direct Inputting Code 141
Writing a Function 142
Creating Assemblies for Reusability 146
Building a .NET Assembly 147
Deploying an Assembly 150
Using an Assembly in a Report 151
Summary 153
Chapter 9 Publishing Dashboards and Balanced Scorecards 155
Choosing a Deployment Location 155
Configuring and Publishing to a Native Report Server 156
Setting Up and Configuring Reporting Services 156
Planning for Growth and Scalability 158
Deploying to SQL Server Reporting Services 161
Managing Security 162
Configuring and Publishing to SharePoint 165
Configuring Reporting Services for SharePoint 166
Deploying to SharePoint 170
Data Alerts 170
Summary 172
Part III Dashboards and Balanced Scorecards in Action 173
Chapter 10 Dashboards 175
Case Study: Adventure Works 175
What to Measure and When 176
Developing the Dashboard 176
Summary 194
Chapter 11 Strategy and Process Maps 195
Strategy Maps 195
Perspectives 197
Strategic Themes 198
Objectives and Casual Links 200
Designing a Strategy Map 201
Process Maps 202
Process Flow Map 202
SIPOC Map 206
Value Stream Map 207
Case Study: Contoso Plastics 210
Background 211
The Situation 211
Process Improvement 212
Design Sessions 212
Anecdotal Results 213
Implementing Strategy and Process Maps 214
Working in Microsoft Visio 214
Alternative Implementation Options 217
Summary 218
Chapter 12 Balanced Scorecards Case Study 219
Designing a Balanced Scorecard for a Marketing Firm 220
Defining Objectives 220
Selecting Metrics 222
Choosing Appropriate Targets 223
Bringing the Balanced Scorecard Together 225
Wrangling the Data 226
Building the Balanced Scorecard 226
Summary 231
Chapter 13 Decision-making Charts 233
Box-and-whisker Charts 233
Box-and-whisker by Example 234
Building a Box-and-whisker Chart 235
Pareto Charts 240
80-20 Rule 240
Pareto Chart 240
Building a Pareto Chart 241
Variance Charts 244
Gantt Charts 248
Summary 251
Chapter 14 Forecasting Trends and Data Smoothing 253
Smoothing Data 253
Simple Moving Average 254
Weighted Moving Average 256
Exponential Weighted Moving Average 257
Forecasting with Moving Averages 259
Forecasting 259
Forecasting with Microsoft Excel 259
Forecasting with SQL Server Analysis Services 262
Case Study: Health Care Forecasting 273
Gathering and Preparing the Data 273
Building the Time Series Model 274
Making the Forecast 276
Summary 276
Index 277
