March 24, 2008

Why Race Cars, Airplanes and Space Shuttles use Dashboards

Have you ever wondered why race cars and other machines whose operators need to make fast decisions don't have long lists of numbers? Instead they use easy to read and quite actionable dashboards for fuel out, speed indicators, heat sensors and so much more.

There's reasons that a picture is worth a thousand words - it's much easier to quickly grasp pictures than rows of confusing numbers. Fast Company wrote about this in its latest issue.

For your own business having a dashboard connected to live data can give you easier to understand insight into what's really going on in your business.

I had a look at an overview of Business Objects, an SAP company, Xcelsius Engage 2008, a data presentation and dashboard tool that helps business professionals quickly and easily transform complex business data into dynamic, actionable information. Xcelsius Engage can be used by anyone familiar with a spreadsheet and can transform the way data is presented, viewed and used every day.

Xcelsius Engage gives organizations the power to change meetings from one-way presentations to real dialogues by allowing all participants to get immediate feedback on relationships and impacts of decisions. Xcelsius turns static data presentations into powerful competitive weapons.

If you've never used a dashboard in your business - try it out. You might find that you've been missing information or reacting too late to it. Dashboards might just give you a competitive edge for second quarter of 2008.

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