Executive Dashboard

Challenge

Our client, a fast-growing telecom company, needed real-time operational performance data to assist in decision-making. Based on the operational state of the network, orders volume, customer care center performance, billing and collection issues, etc., management was expected to take quick actions and redirect resources to maximize utilization.

However, unless the existing reports are executed manually and the inferences are made manually based on the report data, the management team could not get any meaningful information. Visual representation of the data was unavailable. Moreover, the summarized data was not stored for historical analysis, which was based on multiple dimensions such as time, sales promotions, network degradation, etc.

Geographical separation between operational teams made this problem more interesting. With a back office on the US east coast, sales offices in several regions, a call center in Philippines and Canada and Network and Server Management in India, gathering the data real-time was challenging.

Our Solution

Our professionals analyzed the challenges as well as available technologies and suggested an Executive Dashboard solution that leveraged available technologies.

workMETHODS team developed custom transactional reports based on Business Objects for each transactional system including Order Entry System, Provisioning System, Network Monitoring System, Call Center IVR, Trouble Ticketing System, Local Number Portability, etc. Each report graphically presented the data. These reports were executed on a predefined schedule and the executed reports were stored on the Business Objects Server. Business Objects Server was accessible throughout the corporation and historical report copies were stored on the server.

SharePoint was chosen as a platform to display dashboards. WorkMETHODS developed custom web parts that leveraged object parts from Business Objects. Object parts technology within Business Objects allowed extracting just the graphs from the reports. These web parts were deployed on the SharePoint.

This approach allowed dashboard and reports to function asynchronously. Executives could click on any graph to obtain a detailed report behind the graph. Crystal Report Server was also extended to deliver the reports automatically to the shift operation managers so they could know the state of operations before the shift started.