"ADVANTAGES OF MAKING A DASHBOARD WITH A BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM COMPARE TO OTHER REPORTING SOFTWARE" by Piero Anticona

Abstract: A Business Intelligence (BI) dashboard is a tool that transforms information and displays Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and metrics to assess the organization's performance. Besides, it is a powerful application to elaborate on the dashboard with big data. It is also more useful for the main reports to project managers, project directors, and executive managers.

Can Business Intelligence’s applications provide efficiency of use of resources, the stability of administration of the information, scalability to share spreadsheets or data, and avoid indifference from managers of watching the reports generated?

What other advantages of making a dashboard with Business Intelligence platforms compare to other reporting software? This research is important:

• To determine the advantages of Business Intelligence over other report software
• To define the main attributes to choose a Business Intelligence dashboard tool.
• To decide what challenges executive managers have to overcome to use a Business Intelligence dashboard.

This paper concluded the following:

• BI platform does not offer any advantage compared to other reporting software. The author has not perceived any benefit elaborating on the charts because it was not intuitive to set figures and parameters. Dundas BI online version is the platform that replicates most of the metrics.
• A BI dashboard tool should include attributes, the modification of arrangements, or formats of data source. Online versions do not include this feature. Also, online versions do not include all the charts listed in the manuals and other characteristics as assigning more values to a secondary axis. And the most important is that BI platforms should be more intuitive in setting the parameters of different axis.
• The challenges that executive managers have to overcome to get the full value of BI applications are that not all the information is replicable in BI dashboard tools. Also, as they are not intuitive, a skilled manager with an advanced level of MS Excel might discourage him/her from using BI tools. Another factor that might stop using BI tools is that Data Source uses different formats from different supporting areas. It should be standard. And finally, a good challenge should be to train project team members in using significant amount of data with several dimensions to use charts that are more interactive with users in selecting and in filtering to report specific indicators.

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