The head honchos of corporate America now have another tool to help them steer their companies along the path to profitability.
New "dashboard" products from Lindon-based Corda Technologies are electronic displays that convert company database information into easy-to-understand charts, graphs and maps to Web displays, keeping executives and others in the business from slogging through a stack of printed pages mucked up with column after column of mind-numbing numbers.
What's more, CEOs can let managers, sales reps and others access elements for their own dashboards, allowing them to see how much horsepower they're adding — or taking away — from the corporate engine.
"Companies have this data. The data is there, but it's not useful," said David Vandagriff, vice president of marketing for Corda. "They've (put their) money on the big Oracle databases and the boxes to run the big Oracle databases, but they're not getting useful information about how to run their business out of those systems.
"For a relatively small sum of money, compared to what they've already spent, we can give them a way of looking at that data and understanding it so it's really useful, not just for one or two people in the IT department and not just for CEO, but for anybody in the organization who needs to know the information."
The dashboards are part of the evolution of Corda's other technologies. PopChart allows Web site developers to produce interactive charts — just run the cursor over an element and quick-read details of that element pop up — and drill-down capabilities that bring up additional bits of information about those elements. Corda's OptiMap works the same way but uses geographic representations for pop-ups and drill-down.
The dashboards convert database numbers into graphs transferred to the browser, with drill-down to an infinite number of levels. That allows the CEO or others to easily and quickly track sales, production, staffing and other pertinent information.
"At a glance, you can visually see if everything is OK," Vandagriff said.
"I can see all these things in numbers and tables and Excel spreadsheets, but the dashboard lets me visually see what's going on much better and allows me to do drill-down. This information is in all the databases, but without the dashboard, it's virtually nonexistent."
Problem areas are easily spotted.
"The dashboard lets me as an executive see, am I exceeding the speed limit here, is my engine running too hot — all the things the metaphor works for in the automobile," he said.
Companies can decide how quickly to update the databases, and, thus, the dashboards.
"Many companies are used to looking at things at a quarter-by-quarter basis in a rear-view mirror, but If I'm looking at data that way, by the time I find out about it, the damage is done, whereas with a system like this, where the information is as real-time as the data in my databases, I'm able to head things off before they get bad," Vandagriff said.
Examples using dummy data from fictitious companies are available at www.corda.com. A person can easily check store revenue by clicking on maps, then drilling down to the state, then individual stores and their departments. Charts easily can be converted to pie, line, area and bar graphs.
"If I have one operating finger, I am doing substantial navigation through what can be a very, very large database," Vandagriff said.
Customer locations also can be tracked, first by state, then county, then ZIP code. Ages or other demographic information can be put at the next drill-down level.
The dashboard graphs can easily be dropped into PowerPoint presentations, and comments can be added by the person in charge of certain departments to explain factors behind the figures. Outgoing e-mail can pop up by clicking on a contract name. The example shows how individual sales reps' appointments match with product orders.
"This demonstrates the power of the dashboard. I can go from the 50,000-foot view down to individual sales reps in three clicks," Vandagriff said.
"You can image what the Excel spreadsheet or the printout would look like for all of this data — you've got umpteen different regions and billions of dollars. Theoretically, I could get this in an Excel spreadsheet or printed report, but how long will it take me to find out where there's a problem and identify the individual sales reps that are not doing their jobs?"
The company would determine who sees what data. But a regional sales vice president would know that the CEO would be able to see how his region is faring.
Vandagriff said competitors, known as business intelligence software companies, exist. But he said their offerings typically cost seven figures, take at least six months to deploy and tend to be analytically complex.
"Our approach is going to be that many, many companies don't need the analytics piece, which is the most complex and expensive part of this whole thing, because they know what's important to them: sales, expenses, watching their inventory on key items," he said.
"Companies say, 'We know what we want to measure, but we don't have a way to quickly and easily communicate this across our whole organization.' We specialize in the display and information distribution."
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com