Companies across different industries are utilizing dashboards, including ING Direct.

ING DIRECT is part of ING (NYSE: ING), one of the top financial organizations in the world. The phenomenal performance of the company is apparent from the fact that ING DIRECT was launched in the United States in the fall of 2000 and has already grown to be one of the eight direct banks operated globally by ING; the other locations are Canada, Australia, France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Germany (where ING DIRECT is known as DiBa), with a total worldwide customer base of more than 10 million (including U.S. customers).

Business Drivers for Dashboards

Four key business drivers for dashboards were the following:

1. Monitoring of results
2. Single version of the truth
3. Measurement of deliverables
4. Cost reduction through automation

Monitoring of results: Business managers wanted to easily monitor results to quickly respond and adjust the course of business as needed. For example, company management wanted to monitor the direct mail results. Users can easily view and analyze the results of marketing activity with more than 30 different data dimensions.

Single version of the truth: Different managers arrived at different numbers for the same metrics being reported in various reports. This led to wasted resources in validation and a lack of conviction about the available information. We needed a solution to unify the various information sources with a common gateway for information delivery. Dashboards helped deliver accurate information to multiple people across multiple departments within the company.

 Measured deliverables have a higher chance of success. Company management wanted a clear set of measurable goals that would be displayed and well conveyed across the organization. Dashboards enhanced management's ability to get all managers within the organization to focus on the top-priority deliverables.

Automation reduces cost. On average, we had two people in each of the ten different departments spending all of their time manually processing and crunching numbers. We wanted to leverage technology to introduce greater efficiency. Dashboard deployment helped achieve greater automation and reduced the number to six people who now maintain the process for all ten departments. The automation has led to far fewer errors as well.