Bernie
When little report-production problems become a disaster
I’ve sat in a lot of MI (management information) departments over the years and have noticed a common theme. You can tell when there’s going to be highly visible (and embarrassing) failure in KPI and measure production well before the event. There’s a well established concept called Heinrich’s Accident Pyramid that asserts that a number near-miss events increase the probability of more…
Old news? When not to put data in a dashboard or report.
Some information can be essential to know on a second-by-second basis (heartrate, stock prices or altitude) other information is naturally slower to change; staff survey results, seasonal totals or audit results, for example. A quick way to devalue a dashboard or report and to turn off readers is to put data in the report that…
Dashboard? That’s just a posh name for a report, isn’t it?
I had an interesting conversation with a company lawyer a little while ago. We were discussing dashboards and she said “It makes me laugh when people talk about dashboards, it is just a posh way of describing a report!”. It made me think as it seems to be a common misconception. What is the difference between…
Real life measures: Measuring efficiency in offices
Who is this article for? This article is a fairly technical article aimed at people who are looking to measure the efficiency or productivity of teams in an office-based environment, want a guide on how to measure efficiency and the system options for doing this. Article facts: Word count: 1320 Approximate time to read:…
A plain English guide to OEE
OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. It is a very commonly used efficiency measure. What do we mean by efficiency? Put simply, it is “How much did we make, compared with how much we could have made.” OEE splits our efficiency down into three categories. The idea here is that we can get some understanding…
9 Things you should never do in Excel
Excel rules the roost when it comes to real-world management information. It’s easy to knock it, but millions of people find it quick and painless to use. There are some things you just should not do in Excel. Here’s my highly subjective list. Never…. Use Excel as a database. OK, I know you are…
Using data to become a millionaire
It’s hard to believe, but many companies still see the data they collect as “a drain on IT systems” I really recommend reading this item on the couple behind the Tesco Clubcard scheme. It’s a brilliant tale of using high quality data to give a huge competitive advantage (“it is estimated that since its introduction…
“Compressor on”, how to label your reports more clearly
I just poured myself a cup of water from the water chiller. I noticed that it helpfully offers two temperatures of water and has a little light with “Compressor on” next to it. Why would you put this on a customer facing display? What they really mean is “this water cooler is working and cooling…
Design Principles for an Effective Management Control System
Here’s a 30 second guide to what makes up a management control system. A clear set of strategic objectives A method for translating strategic objectives into practical measures and KPIs that every person in the organisation can affect in some tangible way Trusted, clear and accurate management information. Produced in timely way, to the right…
How to keep your reports short and effective
Which is the easier question to answer?: “Tell me about France” or, “Tell me about the restaurants in the village of Venosc that serve Italian food” ? It’s very obviously the latter (assuming you have the information available in the first place). It’s the difference between these two questions that explains how some reports can be…