Multiple functions made easy

A car dashboard is more widely known than a software dashboard. At a glance, a driver knows his cruising speed, whether it’s time to gas up, if the transmission is straining, not to mention warnings of dislodged doors, low oil or unbuckled seats. A software dashboard is basically the same thing. A tool by which you would be able to perform multiple functions. Some products that aim to integrate information from multiple components into a unified display refer to themselves as dashboards.

How to get started

Dashboard software is free downloaded software which one can download from the Internet. But there are also a host of reliable companies available in the market from where you can buy the software. These include companies like Cisco’s partner IPcelerate, one of the leading providers of software solution, Inetsoft Technologies, Kipfolio, Infocapter etc. These companies provide reader’s manual and if required they give assistance in installing the software. In terms of features, the dashboard solution provided by IPcelerate includes 40 plus application which means 40 applications on Dashboard. Also, in India one can dial their toll free number, if they face any problem. The cost of installing a dashboard depends on the scale of the market and more specifically on the size of the organisation. However, for a small market the cost is $700-$800 which can go up to $80,000 if the scale of the business is bigger and complex. IPcelerate has provided dashboard solutions to a host number of companies include Subway in the retail category.

Business Application

For example, when you want to see how many stocks of specific products you have in your warehouse, you need not to open a separate window for it. Dashboard will help you in giving all the information in one page just as and when you type the word inventory. The dashboard will show things like your recent emails on inventory, your inventory bookmarks, and any files or notes you've got on your hard drive on inventory. The dashboard web page will give you information about the size, colour, and total stocks of products in your inventory.

The goal of the dashboard is to automatically show a user, important files and other objects in one page. While you read email, browse the web, write a document, or do any other things, the dashboard does its best to proactively find objects that are relevant to your current activity, and to display them in a friendly way, saving you from digging around.

Benefits it offers

Whether it is your sales teams, support organizations, marketing groups and operations, a dashboard leverages current enterprise applications and information systems to increase the visibility of critical and frequently changing performance metrics directly on the desktop. Les White of the US-based Subway restaurants comments, "I am responsible for 30 plus Subway stores and am constantly working to manage all the business process issues that impact profit." Some of the benefits of a dashboard include:

Easy availability: As the dashboard software is easily available on the Internet, the software is not meant for only CEO’s or COO’s.

Data sharing:  This Dashboard software tends to be more skilled at aggregating multiple streams of data from multiple sources in real-time, creating more functionality at the operational level. “No matter where the data is, we can access it and pull it into the dashboard,” says Mark Christensen, vice president of marketing for Corda, a Lindon, Utah Software Company that develops dashboards for small and mid-size businesses.

Improved visual displays. The visual displays that the Dashboard software provides are easier to understand giving a glance and are comfortable in using.

Dashboard increases productivity by saving time and by consolidating information in one place. Business houses outside India are already taking this business tool to strengthen their IT application. But in India, the concept is new and therefore will take time to find buyers.