Topic 5/6 - Information Dashboard Design

Even though the lectures are from 2 weeks, i'll combine them as they are the same topic. In this topic, we learnt about the types of dashboards and what makes a good dashboard. Firstly, dashboards are visual representation of data and are supposed to deliver a clear message to the user at a glance. Therefore it is important to understand the power of visual perception. The Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception is important as it is useful in designing a dashboard. The 6 principles are Principle of proximity, closure, similarity continuity, enclosure and connection. This websites shows good examples of the various principles. http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm

To create a good dashboard, we should reduce the non-data pixels by eliminating all unnecessary non-data pixels and de-emphasize and regularize the non-data pixels that remain, and enchance the data pixels by eliminating all unncessary data pixels and highlight the most important data pixels that remain. Non-data pixels would include decorations and borders.

The second part of information dashboard design is basically about choosing the appropriate display media. For example, line graphs are good for showing trends while bar graphs are good for comparision.

Topic 4 - Data Warehouse and OLAP

This week's BI is mainly about Data Warehouse. This week's lecture also showed the difference between DBMS, OLAP and Data Mining. We also learnt something called the Data Mart, which is something like a smaller version of the Data Warehouse, and it caters to one department, for example sales. A few of the data marts can make up to a data warehouse.

The various schemas are revisited this week while more in-depth. Even though this is learnt during Data Mining, i have completely forgotten what this is about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_schema

There is also something called the parent child dimensions and slowly changing dimensions(SCD). The former is based on two dimension table columns that together define the relationships among the members of the dimension. SCD is dimensions that change over time, for example salesperson moving from one sales territory to another. There will be changes to organisation chart as employees are promoted or resigned. There are a total of 3 types of SCDs.

We also learnt about Relational OLAP(ROLAP), Multidimensional OLAP(MOLAP) and Hybrid OLAP(HOLAP) and the differences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROLAP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOLAP

Topic 3 - Developing Dashboards

This week's BI is mainly about creating dashboards and process maps. First, we need to know what is a business process. A business process is a series of related activities that "flow" through an organisation. It is not limited to a single function or department and is something that can be viewed from end to end.

We learnt about the advantages of process mapping and the process framework. We also learnt how to create a cross-functional flowchart, which is also called swim lane. It basically looks like a swimming pool with each lane showing the different departments involved as well as customers. It shows how each department contributes to the process and which department contributes to which action. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swim_lane

Topic 2 - Business Performance Management

This week we learnt about Business Performance Management (BPM) and the BPM closed-loop process. "BPM encompasses a closed-loop set of processes that link strategy to execution in ordder to optimize business performances, which is achieved by:
- setting goals and objectives
- establishing intiatives and plans to achieve these goals
- monitoring actual performance against the goals and objectives
- taking corrective action

As usual, these doesn't make any sense at a glance, which is why the following few parts of the lecture explains these. The next thing that we learnt is the balanced scorecard(BSC), which is a holistic measurement system for aligning strategies with actions based on four perspectives. I personally find the BSC very interesting as it delivers something important via something simple. Furthermore, the process of creating a BSC helps us to understand the situation as we have to conduct research. We have to assess the internal and external environment via PESTEL, Porter's 5 forces and SWOT analysis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEST_analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis

Topic 1 - Introduction to Business Intelligence

This week's lecture is the introduction, which basically covers what is Business Intelligence and an overview. The explanation given in the lecture is Business Intelligence is about connecting data to effective action by drawing reliable conclusions about current conditions and future events. For people who are not familiar to Business Intelligence, the previous sentence may not mean anything. As we have taken Data Mining in year 2 semester 2, the sentence makes sense.

From what i have learnt in Data Mining, there is a cycle, which is the virtuous cycle of BI comprising of Understand-->Predict--> Act--> Understand (loop). Even though it has been a long time since i studied Data Mining, the lectures and tutorials are coming back into mind as i see this cycle. What this cycle basically means is to understand data, which can be past sales figures, through analyzing. After analysis, predict what will happen in future and act accordingly by setting up measures for example.

There was also a recap of the multidimensional database, star schema, snowflake schema and constellation schema. There is also a comparision of operational database and data warehouse. There was a preview of what we would be doing in future lab lessons, which are scorecards and dashboards. The software that we will be using is DataMicron Performa. More information about Performa can be found here at http://www.datamicron.com/Products/performa.aspx.