Decision Support Systems for Business Intelligence, Second Edition

Chapter 10. EXECUTIVE INFORMATION AND DASHBOARDS

In the early 1980s, executive information systems (EIS) were developed as specialized DSS intended to help executives analyze critical information and use appropriate tools to address the strategic decision making of an organization. In particular, EIS help executives develop a more accurate and current global view of the organization's operations and performance as well as that of competitors, suppliers, and customers. The goal of EIS was to provide an easy-to-use tool that would help improve the quality of top-level decision makers, reduce the amount of time needed to identify problems and opportunities, provide mechanisms to improve organizational control, and provide better and faster access to data and models. The focus of these systems included events and trends that were both internal and external so as to prepare executives to make strategic changes to avail the organization of opportunities and eliminate problems. In the early 1990s, it was believed that EIS applications were rising at a rate of about 18% per year (Korzenlowski, 1994). At that time, some estimates were that an EIS has been installed on the desks of between 25 and 50% of senior executives of the largest companies. Others claimed EIS were in use in 60% of the Fortune 1000 companies.

This was a visionary goal for systems, especially in an era before data warehouses, balanced scorecards, and OLAP. Systems at that time were plagued with problems of collecting, ...