Everyone who drives a car understands the importance of a dashboard. How fast are you going? How much gas do you have left? Are there any warning lights flashing? As with traditional dashboards for automobiles, executive dashboards are composed of several gauges that represent various aspects of the system to be managed. Executives like to have a dashboard that tells them at a glance the key information they need to run the company? How fast is revenue coming in? Where are they on expenses for this quarter? Are they running low on inventory?, etc. An executive dashboard, a part of business intelligence, uses graphs and maps as a primary display device and is connected to databases which are updated regularly so executives aren't looking at old information. Just like car dashboards, executive dashboards can vary in appearance. The design of executive dashboards varies depending upon the needs of the executives for which they are designed. However, unlike typical dashboards, the decisions that must be supported are often more complex.

MAIA Intelligence invited CIOs from various industry verticals to discuss about the strategies for building executive dashboards at breakfast meeting.

The scope, business role, time horizon, customization, level of detail, point of view of the dashboard were discussed. CIO's shared their experiences and discussed as to how should an dashboard look like, contain what data, how frequently updated, granularity (detail / drill-down) level, etc. Overall it was a thought provoking and brain storming session.