Dashboard Lights — Dickeson
May 2006
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SOME 40 percent of the 2,000 largest (non-printing) companies are using what’s called “Dashboard” software technology. That’s the estimate of analyst Keith Gile in a recent Business Week article. (Giving the Boss the Big Picture, 2/13/06). These include Steven Ballmer at Microsoft, Ivan Seidenberg at Verizon Communications, James Campbell at GE and Robert Nardelli at Home Depot. Why? “The more eyes that see the results we’re obtaining every day, the higher the quality of the decisions we can make,” according to Seidenberg.
Well, what’s a “Dashboard?” Some new computer gizmo you’ve gotta have that’ll solve all your problems and make you rich? No way. You know what the dashboard is in your car. It’s the place you look when you hear a siren behind you so you can tap the brakes.
Curley was proud of the genuine leather dashboard in his “Surrey With the Fringe on the Top” in the musical Oklahoma. But, like in the ancient maps of the unknown, “There be dragons here” in that “Dashboard” named software metaphor. We tend to think of a dashboard as it is in our car or in a Boeing 747: an array of instruments providing instant information that enables corrective course decisions.
That’s the “metaphor trap.” It doesn’t work that way in a business. There is no array of instruments providing instant information. There are no brakes you can tap.
That software may work for those global or nationwide companies that have a need to assemble a lot of disparate Internet information from far-flung companies quickly in order to make decisions. There you can say the software application is like a dashboard—a simile. But it isn’t a Dashboard like in my car giving me instant readouts of rpm, fuel, door ajar, mph and the like. A dashboard metaphor it ain’t.
Dashboard-like software applications used to be sophisticated and costly. Now they’re not. There’s NetSuite, Salesforce.com and one of the printing software suppliers is even giving it away freely. Some are using a working relationship with Excel. (Is it any wonder that the printing management information system suppliers regard Excel as their prime competitor?)
Am I suggesting that printing companies use one of these so-called Dashboards? No way. I doubt we can ever take that metaphorical leap. Can we be ready for something like a Dashboard? That’s a different question, entirely. Weekly, maybe we can, as I suggest in Monday Morning Manager, for those of you who’ve had the patience to read it.
Well, what’s a “Dashboard?” Some new computer gizmo you’ve gotta have that’ll solve all your problems and make you rich? No way. You know what the dashboard is in your car. It’s the place you look when you hear a siren behind you so you can tap the brakes.
Curley was proud of the genuine leather dashboard in his “Surrey With the Fringe on the Top” in the musical Oklahoma. But, like in the ancient maps of the unknown, “There be dragons here” in that “Dashboard” named software metaphor. We tend to think of a dashboard as it is in our car or in a Boeing 747: an array of instruments providing instant information that enables corrective course decisions.
That’s the “metaphor trap.” It doesn’t work that way in a business. There is no array of instruments providing instant information. There are no brakes you can tap.
That software may work for those global or nationwide companies that have a need to assemble a lot of disparate Internet information from far-flung companies quickly in order to make decisions. There you can say the software application is like a dashboard—a simile. But it isn’t a Dashboard like in my car giving me instant readouts of rpm, fuel, door ajar, mph and the like. A dashboard metaphor it ain’t.
Dashboard-like software applications used to be sophisticated and costly. Now they’re not. There’s NetSuite, Salesforce.com and one of the printing software suppliers is even giving it away freely. Some are using a working relationship with Excel. (Is it any wonder that the printing management information system suppliers regard Excel as their prime competitor?)
Am I suggesting that printing companies use one of these so-called Dashboards? No way. I doubt we can ever take that metaphorical leap. Can we be ready for something like a Dashboard? That’s a different question, entirely. Weekly, maybe we can, as I suggest in Monday Morning Manager, for those of you who’ve had the patience to read it.
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