“Why do I need a dashboard? I’m a college department head, not a cab driver!” This is a response we commonly receive when we bring up the topic of the digital dashboard. However, we’re not talking about an automobile dashboard, of course, but a digital dashboard for Higher Education.

A digital dashboard is a Business Intelligence system designed along the lines of an automobile dashboard display system. However, digital dashboard is enhanced with sophisticated features that display real-time data in a more interactive and presentable way with color-coded visual effects – graphical representations of gauges and depictions that summarize institutional performance. While an automobile dashboard displays a speedometer, fuel gauge, temperature gauge, etc., the digital dashboard displays a Higher Education institution’s performance indicators with multiple gauges—in this case Key Performance Indicators, such as Retention Rate, Enrollment, Student Graduation Rate, Transfer Rate, etc. Much as a driver does with the automobile, college and university executives take appropriate actions based on alerts provided by the indicators.

In our next entry, we will share some thoughts on the digital dashboard as a Business Intelligence tool.

Tags: BI, business intelligence, Data Warehousing, digital dashboard, Higher Education, Key Performance Indicators, universities, university

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 12:40 pm and is filed under business intelligence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.