BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 1

Business Intelligence
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Introduction
A dashboard in business intelligence is a tool used to visualize data. It is a very useful tool as
it provides crucial data necessary for a particular purpose (Sherif, 2016). The dashboard displays the
metrics and current business data status and the overall company performance. Additionally, it shows
the consolidation of the company and organizes the numbers in on a single window. Sometimes the
business dashboard is referred to as enterprise dashboard. Dashboards can be categorized into three
general groups: strategic, tactical, and operational dashboards (Spruit and de Boer, 2014, p. 37).
Operational dashboards are used by for the activities of the various departments within a company
such as finance, marketing, manufacturing, and so on. Tactical dashboards are designed to be used by
the company managers who need better understanding of the company processes. Strategic
dashboards are designed to be used by the top management to monitor how the company is doing in
achieving its strategic objectives. This report has been prepared for the managing director of Tesla,
Inc. which is a company that build electric cars, storage products, and produce clean energy.

Dashboard Users
A business dashboard is designed to be used by different users within a company. There
are several categories of dashboard users, they include:

The executive and the Board

The CEO and the board of management are the top decision makers within Tesla, Inc. It the
decisions made at this level that will determine the success of the business the company is running.
As such, the top level users can use the dashboard in order to get insights of the operational analytics.
This increases efficiency in the company operations and reduces the cost of running the business
because the dashboard can be able to provide in-depth analysis of both internal and external data
(Bera, 2016, p. 54). Business dashboards gives an overview of the company business status and
allows the top management to identify market trends across the whole business structure. Dashboard
can further help the top management make important decisions that relates to innovation, business
growth, and operational efficiency. Recommended dashboard for this group of users is strategic
dashboard.

Departmental Managers
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Managers greatly depend on the business dashboards to make informed conclusions and
provide market trends and the business performance using the data available. They use business
dashboard to generate information that can be used to develop new and fresh business strategies
(Eder and Koch, 2018, p.31). Managers have the responsibility of identifying business and
market patterns, generating, and documenting all the business data that will support better and
informed decision making within the company. This group uses tactical dashboards to carry out
their role.

The business user

There exist two types of business users; power users and casual users. The difference is
that the casual user employs the use of a business dashboard to examine predefined data sets
while the power users have the ability to operate on complex data sets (Sharda, Delen and
Turban, 2017). Both these users require the use of a dashboard in order to get better insights
from the data available. These are the users that interact directly with the customers and thus
require an operational dashboard that can be easily interpreted.

IT Personnel

Information technology personnel plays a key role when it comes to the use of
dashboards. This is the team that makes sure that the other users get correct, accurate, and
complete information from the data analytics. Additionally, they are responsible for ensuring that
the infrastructure required by the dashboard is running and all the tools required by the users are
available. They also enforce business intelligence security. As such, the IT personnel have been
designed with a dashboard that will aid them perform all the tasks.

Benefits of Dashboard
Implementing business dashboard can be of great benefit to the Tesla, Inc. to identify
potential opportunities and monitor possible threats to the company. Recently, attention have
shifted to business dashboards because of the great benefits that it brings to an organization or
business.

Business dashboards creates an environment where a business can identify and make use of
the opportunities available for the company. Dashboards offer a centralized access and retrieval of
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up-to-date information for users. Therefore, users can be able to analyze and interact with the
information in order to make data-driven, better, and smarter decisions (Calof and Richards, 2013, p.
42). It facilitates real time monitoring performance of the various business aspects. One can be able to
analyze and visualize data and concentrate on KPIs (key performance indicators) across the business.
Thus, a business can be able to get valuable insights of business performance and drive faster and
more accurate decisions.
Dashboards increase the speed and efficiency of accessing the business intelligence. Data can
be access quickly and acted upon. Tesla, Inc. can be able to monitor how the various business sectors
are doing using business metrics in real time (Babu, 2014). The company managers can quickly
generate reports and make important decisions that will improve company performance. For instance,
a particular car model is doing well in a particular region and not in another region. Data can be
collected from the two regions and compared and conclusions can be drawn on what to be done in
order to do better in regions with low sales. Apart from analyzing and reporting on the company,
dashboards enables organizations to further analyze the data in order to identify new insights (Zheng,
Fader and Padmanabhan, 2015).
Furthermore, has enhanced and made better the decision making process for the
company. A well designed dashboard facilitates thorough and quick analysis of the key data thus
increasing performance of every functional department within the company. Rich interactive
visualizations offered by the dashboard simplifies performance observation and makes the
analysis task more intuitive. In-depth analysis and more solutions can be derived by employing
visualization interactivity because it is an effective tool in handling the large amount of data
facing many businesses every day. Animations within the dashboards make it easy to point out
data impact and improve data discovery.

Integrating an effecting dashboard allows for flexibility as the company grows.

Dashboards can be iterated to meet all the basic business intelligence needs to support the
changing requirements of the business as it grows such as data preparation, administration, data
connectivity, and self-service analytics. A good dashboard should be customizable, can be
integrated, and extended. Dashboards should have the capacity to adapt to the work flows and
business systems that change in order to positively impact on the users and ensure greater
adoption (Pranoto, 2015, p.1).
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Dashboards improve communications and enhance collaboration among workmates to

share crucial insights and KPIs in order to make informed business decisions and ensure that
everybody is working towards similar company objectives (Intelligence, 2016). Dashboards
keeps users up-to-date on the latest data effortlessly. With schedule reports, in-built tools such as
notes, ease of use, notifications, intuitive, and slideshows, users have the power to share key
business metrics and monitor performance status with minimal assistance from the IT personnel.

Dashboards can be a great tool to monitor threats facing the business. The aspects of
decision making is very crucial for any company and does not need any explanation. Modern
business intelligence dashboards can be used monitor several threats including,

Identifying negative trends, correcting, and monitoring them-business management that is

efficient should be made up of two-fold aspects, that is, stimulating and activating trends that
bring more benefits to the business and minimizing the negative influence. Managers should try
eliminate the negative trends that poses a threat to the company before thinking about the
positive trends. After identifying the negative trends, locate and analyze them then correct (Olsen
and Dupin-Bryant, 2017, p. 139). Dashboards can be a great tool to monitor and ensure that such
negative trends and threats do not reappear in the future. Dashboards can be used to monitor
company performance and parameters. Companies are under constant internal and external
attacks and many at times it is difficult to identify such threats. Dashboards can be a great tool to
identify any potential threats as it would be easy to recognize any unusual trend within the
business.

Data Sources
The current technology has allowed companies and business to store vast amount of data
and thus requires wide-open means between sources of data (Kekwaletswe and Lesole, 2016, p.
9). There are numerous sources that Tesla can generate data both internally and externally.
Internally the company can generate data from:

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)-Tesla have implemented ERP throughout the

company in modules that address the specific needs of the various departments such as finance,
human resources, and so on. A lot of transactional data is collected and stored by the ERP and
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used in business intelligence environment (Jamalpur and Sharma, 2015, p. 42). The company can
analyze the data to get new insights and identify the various trends within the company.

Another source of data internally is the customer relationship management package.

CRM collects and stores customer personal data and behavior information such as purchase
behaviors, most preferred product among others. Such information is very crucial for the
business because it would be easier to identify the target markets and know what customers like
the most and why (McBride, 2015). Having such information will help Tesla serve its customers
better and retain them while attracting more.

Databases are the main internal data sources for business intelligence. There exist many
kinds of databases and vendors with different feature and architecture. Databases contains all the
information regarding the company and its daily operations. The data can be examined to
identify the trends and how the business is doing.

E-commerce web applications can also be used to collect important information for
business intelligence. Information like the most viewed product, most rated product, underrated
products and so on can be obtained and used to make important decisions within the company
(Bose, 2016, p. 12). The company can focus more on the products that are preferred by many
customers and try improve on the products that are not doing well in the market.

Third-party sources- the company can collect data from third party companies that have
carried a survey about a particular phenomenon that may be of use to the company. Such third-
party data may not make sense at the first time but in-depth analysis can bring out great insights
that may boost the company. For instance, information like preferred car model, energy vendor,
product colors, and so on can be obtained.

Challenges of dashboard implementation

Business intelligence dashboards faces several challenges during implementation. Some
of the challenges may be from the business owner but some may be due to data quality and
availability.

Data quality- its quit difficult to get quality and relevant data for business intelligence.
This challenge often comes up when the company is implementing a new system like a new
dashboard. It is the data that ensures that the company takes advantage of business intelligence
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effects. To enjoy the benefits, the data collected should be of high quality. Getting a business
intelligence dashboard that gives top-tier data is difficult and the company must spend time and
money to identify the best solution. The quality of data determines the quality of decisions that
the company will make and eventually performance. If the data used was irrelevant and of low
quality, the company may make decisions that may cost them resources and not achieve the
objective set. As such, having high quality data is critical for any business intelligence solution.
This is one of the key challenge that faces implementation of the business dashboard.

Data availability-the company may have the knowledge of where to get the data but accessing
it may be a challenge. It can be difficult to get the data when you need them the most. BI dashboards
cannot operate without data and thus it is necessary to unlock data that has been buried in system and
are not accessible (Lans, 2017). Company may heavily fund the data collection process but may not
meet the target in time to be used. Businesses are shifting to imaginative business intelligence
solution in order to address this challenge. Without the data then even such solution may not work.
Dashboards uses data that has been entered to generate reports on various aspects within the company
for the purposes of decision making.
It is expensive to implement business dashboards- the cost of implementing a business
dashboard is high and raises primary concern among the various companies and businesses.
Additionally, the cost of putting in place IT infrastructure, hiring professionals, and acquiring the
right software is high. In order to ensure that the company does not spend a lot of cash, it is
necessary to carry out research on the best solution and train the current employees on the new
system rather than hiring new ones to use the system (Yermish et al., 2018, p. 61). The company
should enjoy the benefits that are brought by the BI solution and not spend more resources on it.

Method of implementing the Dashboard

Project planning- this is the first stage of the business intelligence life cycle and this entails
planning for the business project. Planning ensures that proper checklist has been developed and
describes the roles and responsibilities of every member of the project team (Ali and Miah, 2018, p.
51). Planning also prioritizes project task according to order of volatility.
Business requirement definition- this is the second phase in the implementation of the
dashboard. The key project members develop appropriate estimates of the project. Also the team
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should clearly determine the business requirements of the company by conducting interviews in
order to collect data for the purpose of documentation.

Data analysis- after conducting the interviews and collecting sufficient data, the next step
is to analyze the data in order to get deeper insights of the stakeholders’ opinions regarding the
project (Vitt, Luckevich and Misner, 2018). Data analysts plays a vital role in this stage.

Dashboard application design- this is the fourth stage where the development team will
be tasked and designing the dashboards on paper before actual development. Designers are
needed in this stage.

Front-end development- upon approval of the dashboard design, the development team
now embarks on the process of developing the dashboard. The front end should meet all the
requirements set out in the second stage of identifying business requirements.

Testing and management release- upon completion of the development process, the dashboard
is subjected to various levels of testing like user tests, functional tests, integrity tests, and so on to
ensure that all the functionalities have been captured (Wenger, 2017, p. 715). Upon approval, then the
dashboard is released for use by the company.

Conclusion
A well-discipline is required to implement a dashboard system. This ensures that tangible
outcome is attained from implementation. Business intelligence dashboards improve alignment
and focus in order to gain competitive advantage. Dashboards gives full access to the company
data and this allows the team streamlining business operations to identify the important KPIs and
align the company activities with the set objectives. Dashboards enhances the work habits and
drive behavior of the users. Furthermore, users can access and connect to the company data
easily with similar capabilities and experience across all the sources of data, that is, OLAP, data
files, big data, and operational databases. Dashboards increases competitive advantage of the
company through analysis and visualization of actionable data and consolidated company
information.
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