FAQ

Business Dashboards

  • Why does my organization need a Business Dashboard? Business Dashboards drive a better understanding of the dynamics of your business and allow managers to steer faster and more accurate.
  • What is a Right Time Business Dashboard? In todays Real-Time world, we see a lot of information overload. Managers are driven by Real-Time information. With Right-Time Dashboards we empower managers with Business trends & forecasts, allowing them to make an informed and proactive decision rather then giving managers a Real-Time information overload which often lead to reactive decisions.
  • Can Mirror42 deliver also Real-Time Dashboards Dashboards? Yes, Mirror42 Live delivers Real-Time dashboards alongside Mirror42 Trends that delivers Right Time Dashboards. An example when real-time becomes right-time: When managers identify a negative business trend, they need to have the ability to drill and get a real-time view of the business. Mirror42
  • What is a personalized Dashboard? There is no such thing as a one size fits all dashboard. Different users have different information needs and different information authorization levels in a company. Mirror42 can be authorized and personalized depending on your role, authorization level and accountability in the organization
  • What kind of information can be shown in dashboards? Dashboards can contain Metrics, KPI’s, Groups of KPI’s, “Governed Objects”, Explanations, Actions, Issues, RSS Feeds, Lists of related documents and more. Mirror42’s dashboards can serve as IT Portals, combining performance information with any other external information that the IT organization whishes to distribute

Key Performance Indicators

  • What is a Key Performance Indicator? A Key Performance Indicator or KPI is a key control used to measure company performance. KPI’s are related to activities you want to manage. For instance KPI’s related to a sales process could be:
    • Avg length of a sales cycle
    • Avg revenue by customer
    • Avg discount by product
    • Conversion % from leads to customers
    • % of lost deals.
  • How does Mirror42 consolidate performance information? Mirror42 uses weighted Indexes to consolidate performance information. The principle of weighted indexes for consolidation is often used. The best known example are stock indices such as Dow Jones, Nasdaq, FTSE 500 and Nikkei. How those this work? In the above example the sales process was measured with multiple KPI’s. By calculating a weighted average of these KPI’s we express the performance of the overall Sales Process with an index. By tracking index performance overtime we can identify trends.
  • What are KPI libraries? KPI Libraries are best practice templates with example key performance indicators. Mirror42 is constantly researching and building these libraries. As a customer you will have access to these libraries. Libraries serve the purpose of pick-lists allowing our customers to quickly identify the KPIs relevant to them and turn them into powerful dashboards.
  • Which KPI Libraries are available? Please see [the KPI library section](/kpilibrary/) of our web page
  • Do I need to use Mirror42 KPI libraries or can we use our own KPI’s? Customers can obviously create their own KPIs. We are interested to find out which KPIs our customers use so we can enhance our libraries.

Data connectors

  • How does data collection exactly work? Mirror42 collector agents are windows services that can be deployed in a distributed fashion. The collector hold a connection with the Mirror42 data store and the application it needs to collect from. On pre-configured times, the agent “wake’s up” and starts collecting the desired information from the target application and inserts the information in the Mirror42 data store. The desired information is configured in the Mirror42 MetaMart for the target application.
  • Can we collect data from our “onDemand” hosted applications? Mirror42’s collectors are web services that can be configured to run over the web. Access to the target database or XML definitions is required.
  • We have Excel reporting, can we import this information? Yes, Mirror42 has an Excel import interface
  • We use Excel for data analysis, can we export from Mirror42 to excel? Yes Mirror42 can export data to Excel
  • What kind of interfaces are available for data collection? XML, RSS, ODBC, JDBC, web services
  • Can we use Mirror42 for surveys or (self) assessments? Yes, Mirror42 has a “manual” collection mechanism. Persons can be made responsible to submit data to Mirror42 and are notified via e-mail the deadline approaches. Web forms in the form of mini questionnaires can be set up.
  • Can we manually enter key metrics? Yes

Scorecards & Collaboration

  • Does Mirror42 support scorecards? Yes, Mirror42’s default navigation structure is a series of performance scorecards
  • How much time does it take to design the scorecards? Zero. Scorecards are the default navigation structure. Once you have selected your metrics and key performance indicators and how they relate to “Governed activities”, scorecards are automatically generated.
  • How do Performance scorecards drive business improvements? Performance scorecards consolidate the score of multiple key performance indicators in a weighted index. This enables businesses to identify performance trends on groups of KPI’s that are used to measure the performance of a business activity of business process. By identifying a trend and analyzing the trend business can forecast future development and initiate performance improvement programs accordingly.
  • What is Mirror42 Collaboration? Mirror42 Collaboration facilitates all the teamwork that needs to be done and supports performance improvement programs. With Mirror42 Collaboration, businesses can integrate their performance measurement information with management explanations, actions and issue management. Mirror42 Collaboration also allows for notification, escalation and approval cycles on dashboard creation and publication. As a result, the mirror42 scorecards & dashboards are fully integrated reports, keeping all information securely stored in a single place, easy to find, easy to retrieve, easy to understand.
  • Can Mirror42 control a phased distribution of business dashboards? Yes. One of the unique Mirror42 features is the controlled distribution of information. Not all information should be accessible to all people at the same time. Think about your monthly customer report, you definitely want to review it before you publish it. With Mirror42 collaboration you can.
  • Can we use Mirror42 for web-based customer reporting? Yes, Mirror42 dashboards are 100% web based and can be published securely.
  • Does Mirror42 support performance notification and escalation? Yes. This functionality is provided with Mirror42 Collaboration.

Deployment

  • How long does it take to deploy Mirror42? In general Mirror42 can show first results in a couple of days and a full deployment in weeks.
  • How is it possible that Mirror42 can be deployed in weeks? This is possible because we do not have to “custom” design your data warehouse, custom configure your metrics and kpi’s and custom tailor all your scorecards and dashboards. Instead our architecture works with a fixed database structure, a pick and choose KPI list and out of the box scorecards.
  • During an implementation how much time is spend on data warehouse design? Zero. We have a fixed database structure designed and optimized to manage data, metrics, KPIs. We have
  • During an implementation how much time is spend on Dashboard design? Just a number of days. By default performance scorecard and a navigation structure is generated based on the configuration of metrics and KPIs and the accountability profiles. Dashboards can be tailored to further personalize and optimize the graphical experience of users. Every user can have a set pf personalized home pages
  • Does Mirror42 have a documented implementation methodology? Yes. see the methodology and resources sections on our website.

Technical Architecture

  • What is a Service Oriented Architecture? A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) leverages information that is already available on elsewhere on the network. It is a decentralized architecture that allows applications to communicate with each other with web services and XML. Mirror42 uses this architecture to collect information from third party systems and to make that information available to other systems. Mirror42 leverages XML, RSS, AJAX, and Microsoft .NET technology.
  • Does Mirror42 support LDAP? Yes
  • What are the technical requirements? Client: Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web- and Application Server: Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), Microsoft .NET framework Database: Oracle 9.2 and higher, or Microsoft SQL Server 2000
  • Does Mirror42 support secure web-based dashboards? Yes, https is supported