Dashboards Providing Real-Time Management Info

Maybe I've had my head in the sand, but all of a sudden today, I realized that I've been seeing a lot about dashboard tools for real-time business intelligence.

Much of what I've seen about this topic has been in the call center/CRM space that we cover here at TMCnet, such as this release that came in today:

Castle CRM Launches Executive Dashboard Solution Based on the SalesLogix Enterprise Suite

But this one from earlier in the week is a little meatier, citing a market survey that came up with some interesting results about this trend:

Corporate Business Intelligence Dashboard Use On The Rise In 2005; Noetix Market Survey Reveals That One out of Four Enterprise Companies Plans to Purchase a Dashboard Solution in 2005

That news sent me to the Web site of provider Noetix, where I found a further study on this topic by IDC:

The Evolving Nature of Business Intelligence: Dashboards Come of Age (PDF)

This trend makes a lot of sense, as more and more management information becomes available in real time in businesses. How do you make use of the stream of information that is available and present it to decision makers in a usable interface? A good topic for further observation and analysis ....

AB -- 1/28/05