SAS ® : The Ultimate Dashboard Machine

Leaders want to align their organizations around strategic goals and metrics. Knowledge workers need ready access to data about what is happening right now. IT seeks to make information available and useful to the business, and yet observe appropriate security policies. For many organizations, all of these goals are coming together in a single focal point: Dashboards. SAS is known for its advanced analytics tools and broad suite of business intelligence offerings, so it should be no surprise that there is more than one way to implement a Dashboard initiative using SAS technologies. This paper will begin by categorizing the objectives that organizations normally have in creating dashboards. Next, several best practices for effective visual display of information on dashboards will be presented. Finally, the paper will describe a variety of techniques for creating dashboards using SAS, including the new BI Dashboard tool, SAS/GRAPH, custom web development, and the SAS Portal. INTRODUCTION One recurring theme in business intelligence (BI) projects over the last five years has been dashboards. Leaders want to align their organizations around strategic goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Knowledge workers need ready access to data about what is happening right now. IT seeks to make information available and useful to the business, and yet observe appropriate security policies. Everybody wants dashboards. In his book Information Dashboard Design, Stephen Few defines a dashboard as follows: A dashboard is a visual display of the most information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance [Few2006] This definition does a good job of not only describing what a dashboard is, but also pointing the way towards dashboards that are valuable to the organizations that develop them. This paper will describe and compare four distinct techniques of creating dashboards with SAS. But before getting to that, let's first examine the objectives for creating dashboards, and some principles for effective dashboards. OBJECTIVES BEHIND DASHBOARDS In October 2007, ThotWave conducted a survey of over 200 people involved with using SAS to create dashboards. We asked them to choose one or more of the following were reasons for interest in dashboards within their organization: • Implement performance management based on metrics/KPIs • Monitor strategic health/opportunities in the business • Guide tactical execution of business operations • Want to increase usage/relevance of a BI tool • Everybody is talking about dashboards The ranking of these reasons is illustrated in Figure 1: