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GCN Home > 03/05/07 issue

The tools of the master forecaster

iDashboards

By Carlos A. Soto, Special to GCN

GCN Lab Review: iDashboards

Pros: Real-time, one-page view of your agency, plus drill-down analysis capability
Cons: Expensive to implement

Performance: B+
Functionality: A
Price: B-
Ease of use: B+
Overall importance: A-


 Contact:
iDashboards Inc.
(248) 952-0840
http://www.idashboards.com

Unlike ProfitMetrics, which can take two to three weeks to install and start generating reports, iDashboards complies with a multitude of Web and database standards such as Java 2 Enterprise Edition, XML, Open Database Connectivity (Oracle) and Microsoft Windows .Net to get your high-density reports up and running within a week, typically two to three days.

iDashboards is similar to the ProfitMetrics model in that the software renders a topographical and holistic view of your agency. However, unlike ProfitMetrics, this view is dynamically exhibited on a Web portal for an up-to-the-minute look at your organization.

This functionality makes it a more important tool if you have a lot of staff dispersed in several locations around the globe, and pushes iDashboards into a category that is more of a decision-making tool as opposed to a reporting tool.

We found ProfitMetrics a little more conducive to letting you conduct trend forecasting, or predicting possible future scenarios by glancing at past information. However, iDashboards is by far the best tool at depicting the current state of your enterprise. Perhaps the most important aspect of iDashboards is that it is built on layers upon layers of customizable information. So, you can link charts to other charts, dashboards or even URLs.

For example, if I’m looking at a budget chart for December, I can customize the dashboard so that when I click on that chart it links to another chart that details budget information by weeks or days.

Another feature that sets iDashboards apart from its competitors is the pivot feature. A pivot lets you filter the data on the chart without having to create a separate chart. For example, if you have a map of Europe that details the economic data of each country in Europe for 2006, you can select a small map key on the left-hand side of the chart and change the year from 2006 to 2005 or earlier. This lets you quickly see any trends in your analysis without having to create multiple charts.

For all the features that iDashboards offers, we were hoping to see an aggressive price stratum. But iDashboards costs about $7,500 per server installation. iDashboards does offer a 20 percent discount for government employees.

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