Dashboard – New Patent Information Collaborative Tool

Dashboard is a term now being used generally to refer to a web-based technology page on which real time information is collated from various sources in the business. The metaphor of dashboard is adopted here to emphasize the nature of the data being displayed on the page; it is a real-time analysis as to how a business is operating, just like on an automobile dashboard real time information is displayed about the performance of that vehicle.

Rapidly rising in popularity as the new "face" of business intelligence is the enterprise dashboard due to the user-centric nature of its visually-based approach.

In many of the earlier "dashboard" applications the emphasis of creating a dashboard was the integration of information, but presently is more on generating actionable intelligence, thus enabling the strategic decision makers for better decisions.

A digital dashboard is a customized solution for knowledge workers that consolidates personal, team, corporate, and external information and provides single-click access to analytical and collaborative tools. It brings an integrated view of a company's knowledge sources to an individual's desktop, enabling better decision making by providing immediate access to key business information.

However, other uses of the term have placed an emphasis on a "dashboard" being an application providing real time data much the same way as a dashboard in an automobile is a real time display of performance or unusual "exceptions".

As the trend changes, from Excel Dashboards to Enterprise Business Intelligence, these dashboards contain KPIs, metrics, charts, trends and data visualizations.

• Business dashboards provide at-a-glance display of enterprise data for rapid decision making
• Track KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
• Deploy in any IT architecture, and view data from multiple sources
• View high-level data, or drill down into dashboard for granularity

Other Features

• Display/analysis integration - View up-to-the-minute information with tight integration between display and analysis.
• Web-based views - See the results of powerful Smarts analysis in a flexible, anytime/anywhere web-based display.
• Role-based privileges- Assign privileges from read-only to total access and configure views for specific users or groups.
• Single sign-on - Keep data secure while streamlining access across multiple applications.
• Security - Protect data integrity with Business Dashboard multilevel authentication.

IT breaks the barriers of traditional business intelligence, reaching beyond data silos to give everyone in the organization all the information they need to make more confident business decisions. Dashboard provides visibility across an organization to drive better decision making. It delivers the power to understand key business drivers by providing the means to drill from high level information to detailed review of root cause analysis.