QAD Usability Dashboards Demonstration Guide May 2015 EE2015
Overview This demonstration focuses on one aspect of QAD Usability Dashboards and shows how this functionality supports the vision of the Effective Enterprise; where every business process is working at peak efficiency and perfectly aligned to the company s strategic goals. QAD Enterprise Applications Dashboards Key Points Enabling the Effective Enterprise
Related Metrics Leveraging QAD Usability Dashboards to provide easier access to critical information makes users more productive and supports better decision-making, directly affecting your company s performance against all of your Key Performance Indicators. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) define what the Effective Enterprise means to your company, mapping your company s vision, strategy and goals to specific measurements that will help you drive efficiency and identify improvements in the business process. QAD has identified ten high level KPIs focused on the main areas of performance that manufacturers need to measure to ensure their businesses are working at peak efficiency. Dashboards Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Key Points Standard metrics Importance varies by company
Enabling Solution Dashboards support improvements to these key metrics by providing users managers and administrators with all of the information they need to know in their role, at their fingertips. Dashboards bring Browses, Metrics and web pages all together on one multi-panel display. Each panel offers a quick summary; to find out more, all you need to do is click the panel. QAD provides a variety of sample dashboards that you can use as is, or customize. Each of these samples includes information that a given role might find useful for example, the AP Clerk or the Customer Service Manager. Tools allow each user to modify these dashboards or create their own, with just the information they need to see. Dashboards Enabling Solution Multiple panel Dashboards including: - Browses - Metrics - URLs Sample role-based dashboards Tools to add/change Key Points Multi-panel Dashboards o Browses, Metrics, BI Visual Items and Web pages QAD samples for specific roles Tools to add/change
Demonstration Summary In this demonstration, we will talk about two things. First, what are Dashboards and why will they make a company more effective? Second, how do I tailor these Dashboards to my unique needs? Dashboards Demonstration Summary Sample dashboards Productivity tools Creating dashboards Panel options Translation support Administration Key Points What are Dashboards? How do they help? How do I change them?
How QAD reduces implementation time Role-Based Dashboards QAD offers a number of sample Dashboards that represent typical roles in a manufacturing company executives and staff in Finance, Manufacturing and Supply Chain, and Customer Management. These examples show how different users or roles in your company can get very specific views of operating information both trends and transactions tailored specifically for their needs. Here are a couple examples a Customer Service Representative might want to monitor new and overdue orders. A Sales Representative typically wants to monitor their quota and sales numbers, as well as any issues affecting their customers such as past due orders or credit holds. Demo 1. Expand Dashboards menu 2. Expand Published Dashboards menu 3. Select Published Dashboards > Customer Service Representative
4. Page down 5. On Toolbar, click Dashboard drop-down
6. Click More 7. Double-click Sales Representative
8. Page down Key Points Sample Dashboards provided by QAD; Use as is, or customize
How QAD supports fact-based decisions Centers & Collections Each user can have one or more customized dashboards that include just the information they want to monitor, set up to automatically display whenever they log on to the system. Rather than having to go to various systems and menu items to gather critical information, everything they need is at their fingertips. Armed with complete, accurate, timely information, they will be able to make better decisions and respond to potential issues more quickly. Complementing Dashboards are role-based Centers and Collections. These enable users to perform their daily tasks more efficiently, accessing virtually everything they need to do with just a few keystrokes. In fact, a typical user might never need to use more than two screens! The combination of a role-based Dashboard and a role-based Center make a perfect homepage for a particular role, set up to auto-start at logon. Demo 1. In My Published Dashboards, right-click Sales Representative 2. Select Add to Favorites 3. Expand Favorites 4. In Favorites, right-click Sales Representative 5. Select Auto-Start 6. Right-click Collections > Menu Collections > Sales Representative Center
7. Select Add to Favorites 8. In Favorites, right-click Sales Representative Center, select Auto-Start 9. (Optionally) Log off and log back on 10. (Optionally) In Sales Representative Center, right-click Customer 10C1000 11. (Optionally) Click various tabs on bottom display Key Points Increase productivity, Add to Favorites & Auto-start
Drill-Downs You may think of role-based Centers as the transaction hub and role-based Dashboards as the information hub. Dashboards include multiple panels of information browses, graphs, metrics, URL links and more. They combine information from multiple sources on one single display, but behind each panel is the same functionality you would get if you accessed this item from the application menu. For example, the Sales Representative Dashboard includes Item Sales My Customers. Click on this and it launches the full browse in another tab. From there, the sales representative has access to all of the standard browse capabilities adjust search criteria, expand or remove groupings, add semi-totals, export the data to a spreadsheet, print, E-mail, and more. Demo 1. Click Sales Representative tab 2. Scroll-down to Item Sales My Customers panel 3. In Item Sales My Customers, double-click any line
4. In Search, click Add icon 5. Search Item Number Range 01, 02 6. Expand MediLogic 7. Right-click YTD Sales 8. Select Summary > Sum
9. Right-click Margin%, select Summary>Average 10. In Actions, click drop-down Key Points Click panel to open underlying browse detail All standard browse functionality available
How QAD adapts to your needs Creating Dashboards Each company is likely to have a unique set of dashboards, developed for each role and customized to meet their specific needs. You can use the sample dashboards as a guide edit them directly, or make a copy and make changes to the copied version. You can also just add a new dashboard from scratch. Let us see how this works. The first step is to add content to the dashboard a browse, URL or metric. Begin with a Browse. This list shows all of the browses available in your QAD Enterprise Application. Select a browse that shows sales orders. Then edit this browse to display only sales order line items with an extended price over $10,000. Change the title to reflect this and then add this browse to the dashboard. Demo 1. Click Sales Representative tab 2. Click Tools drop-down 3. Select New Note: you could also select Create Dashboard from the Applications menu
4. Search Sales Orders 5. Double-click Sales Orders (sobr103.p) 6. Search Extended Price greater than 10,000
7. Enter Title Sales over $10,000 8. Click Add to Dashboard Key Points Tools to create new, copy, edit, delete Add content o Browse o URL o Metric o BI Visual Item
Panel Options The browse defaults to the smallest size, but you can easily resize it. You can also select just the data you want to see on the browse, using the standard browse controls. Demo 1. In Sales over $10,000, click Resize Medium icon 2. Click Edit icon
3. Right-click heading line in browse 4. Select Columns 5. Click Uncheck All 6. Check 0, 2, 3, 7, 12, 13, 23, 24, 26
7. Click Save 2 times Key Points Resize panels; Manage columns using standard browse controls
Add Metrics Panel In addition to Browses, you can also add operational metrics to the Dashboard. These metrics typically show data quality issues like customers with no credit limit or with incomplete data; or performance measurements like the number of past due sales orders. You can choose the format to display. The pie chart or gauge show the number of past due sales orders at this time. The Metric History chart shows how this value has changed over a specified period. Demo 1. Click Add Content 2. Click Metrics icon 3. Double-click Customer Data
4. Click Back 5. Search Sales Orders
6. Double-click Sales Orders 7. Enter Title Past Due Orders 8. Click Metric History 9. Highlight Past Due Orders 10. (Optionally) In Date range for chart, click drop-down 11. Click Add to Dashboard
12. (Optionally) click Past Due Orders to update metric 13. Close metric window 14. In Past Due Orders, click Refresh icon Key Points Metrics o Summary pie chart o Gauge o History graph
Add BI Metric If you are using QAD Business Intelligence, you can also add any visual item to your dashboard. For example, you may want to keep track of Days Sales Outstanding. QAD Business Intelligence monitors your critical performance indicators with predefined metrics for QAD modules. These may be charts, graphs, grids, pie charts, or other visuals. Demo 1. Click Add Content 2. Click BI icon 3. Enter Days Sal
4. Highlight Days Sales Outstanding for the Last 12 Months Chart (EE Accounts Receivable) 5. Click Add to Dashboard Key Points Add any BI Visual Item to Dashboard Key Performance Indicators
Add Web Page Another item that is useful on Dashboards is to display a web page. Perhaps in addition to tracking order activity, this role needs to keep an eye on external information like exchange rates. You can include any external web page on a Dashboard panel, viewing the data from there or click it to launch that website in a new tab within your QAD Enterprise Application. Demo 1. Click Add Content 2. Click URL icon 3. Enter Title Exchange Rates, URL http://money.cnn.com/data/currencies/ 4. (Optionally) Click Preview 5. Click Add to Dashboard
6. Drag & Drop Exchange Rate panel to beside Past Due Sales Orders panel
7. Click Save Dashboard 8. Enter Name Sales 9. (Optionally) click Exchange Rate panel to launch in new window Key Points Attach any URL Click to launch web page in new tab
How QAD supports international implementations When you saved the dashboard, it prompted you to enter a dashboard name. The default format of this was ${UNTITLED}. You can enter any name here for example, we entered the name Sales. However, if you are operating in multiple countries and multiple languages, you can store and reference all text strings in Label files. This simplifies translation by keeping all text in one place. In this situation, rather than entering the name Sales, you could have entered the name ${Sales}. This same holds true for all of the names and labels you see when setting up Dashboards, making it easy for you to deploy Dashboards anywhere in the world. Demo 1. Select 36.4.17.2 Label Master Browse 2. Search Term starts at Sales Key Points Use text strings from Label Master o ${insert-label-name-here} Concatenate text strings o ${ORDERS_ON_CREDIT_HOLD} - ${MY_CUSTOMERS}
How QAD reduces on-going maintenance cost Administration Tools Initially, when you add a dashboard, it is only available to you. You see it under My Dashboards. However, if you are the Administrator, you have a Publish option. Publishing a Dashboard makes it available to any user, subject to role-based security. The Administrator also has the option to Import and Export Dashboard information, making it easy to manage multiple sites and implementations. Demo 1. Click Sales tab 2. In Tools, click drop-down 3. Select Publish 4. In Roles, check SuperUser
5. Click OK 6. In Applications Menu, expand Dashboards > Published Dashboards
Key Points Publish dashboards for others to use Import/Export definitions in.xml files
Closing In closing, Dashboards provide easier access to critical information, making your users more productive and supporting better decision-making, directly affecting your company s performance against all of your Key Performance Indicators. QAD: Enabling the Effective Enterprise! Dashboards Closing Easier access to critical information Increased productivity Improved decision-making Enabling the Effective Enterprise! Key Points Supports improvements in all KPI s Enabling the Effective Enterprise!