To make smart business decisions for the future, you need to look at what already happened. Your company’s data can tell you everything you need to know to make better decisions for your business—as long as you know what you’re looking for.

In this example, we will setup a drill path that drills across to a Rep Scorecard report that indicated which rep has the highest win rate.

Step One:  Within your dashboard, click on the  "Edit"  icon.

Step Two: Click on the report wheel icon located on the top right. 

Step Three: Select a metric (Won) and select the report we want create the drill path. Click "Apply."

Step Four: Click on any of the bars in the chart that represent the metric we selected.

In Release 71, GoodData improved the core database technologies, which will bring about significant improvements in report computation and data loading performance.  Happy reporting! 

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
- reads the sign in Albert Einstein’s office at Princeton.

Early in my career, I worked in the art department of a newspaper and was lucky enough to be mentored in the art of creating effective charts. The main goal was to ensure the chart type chosen was effective in communicating the data, not obscuring it, and to ensure the reader could see the “story” of the data quickly. The same rules apply in creating dashboards.

I had the good fortune to work with GoodData very recently. This company helps convert big data into profitable insights and strategies for business executives by offering a disruptive cloud-based enterprise business intelligence platform. We collaborated to show how effective investigation and counsel when envisioning a dashboard will give the executive more actionable information. In newspaper vernacular, it tells a story.

For example, in a request for a dashboard to show the volume of Support Calls within a group, a basic chart would look like this (see the chart on the left).

At first glance, it looks like Janice is not working up to par with her colleagues. However, let’s look at the same information in a different way (see chart on the right). Notice that instead of a single color bar chart, it is now a stacked, colored bar chart. A time element was also introduced. The stacked bar chart quickly shows that a major product issue cropped up this week. And in fact Janice is not avoiding work. She doesn’t work on product calls, but her colleagues do. There is an issue that must be dealt with by management.

This illustration shows how by not choosing the proper report attributes and chart type, you can obscure the information that would be most meaningful and actionable to you, your staff and the business. Below are 5 best practices we at Bluewolf and GoodData counsel when we approach dashboard creation.

1. Understand what attribute dimensions are most appropriate for your business or role, and which chart types will best visualize those dimensions.
2. The best charts show comparative data. This can be historical, year over year, month over month, groupings or date progressions. Dashboards should be organized so that trends and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) stand out and are easily identifiable. The top left chart is usually the chart most people look at first in countries where written languages are left to right. Choose this chart carefully. Also, think about what charts will be seen when the dashboard is first clicked on. The most important charts should be seen in that first screen.
3. Too many colors in a chart will be overwhelming to the reader and will occlude the message. Try another grouping instead. Keep background colors to a minimum.
4. Titles should be descriptive and any assumptions clearly explained. Attribute filters, such as date ranges or territories, should be applied at the dashboard level rather than individual report level whenever possible.

Albert Einstein had good reason to like the quote above. Data can be misleading, and you don’t want to be led to the wrong conclusions.

Goldman Sachs Investment Banking second annual Cloud Computing Conference bands together prominent individuals across the cloud computing landscape. Stanek will join industry leaders to discuss, debate and network around the important trends driving this tectonic shift in the technology landscape. Stanek will share his insights and examples on the next stages of big data cloud development and the business value of cloud-based analytics.

Roman Stanek is GoodData’s visionary leader. When he started GoodData, in 2007, the founding vision was simple: connect more business people to business data to help them make better business decisions. Stanek’s innovative idea that cloud computing could finally make good on the broken promises of generations of BI has since revolutionized business intelligence. Roman has been a tech entrepreneur for almost 20 years. He was Founder and CEO of NetBeans (acquired by Sun Microsystems) and Systinet (acquired by Mercury Interactive and later Hewlett Packard).

What
Goldman Sachs Cloud Computing Conference

Where
Rosewood Sand Hill 2825 Sand Hill Road Menlo Park, CA 94025

When
Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 7:00 a.m to 5:30 p.m Pacific Time

About
GoodData GoodData is a disruptive, cloud-based enterprise platform for business intelligence. The GoodData technology is intuitive, secure and fast. It helps convert big data into profitable insights and strategies for business executives. GoodData is trusted by companies like Enterasys, Capgemini, and Software AG, and embedded into offerings from cloud innovators like Zendesk, Get Satisfaction and Pardot. Headquartered in San Francisco, GoodData is privately held and backed by leading venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners, and Windcrest Partners.

You were not far off. The concept is not really new, and has existed by many other names, including virtualization, managed hosting or simply “the Internet.” But the power, accessibility and reliability of remotely hosted, on-demand services (SaaS), products (PaaS) and infrastructure (IaaS) have greatly improved in the past couple of years. For most companies, the prospect of lower-cost, high-availability browser-based tools is very appealing. They understand the value of keeping operating investment down so they can spend their time and money on their core business.

By most accounts, the term “cloud computing” came from textbooks using clouds to represent the Internet. The telecom industry also used clouds to explain Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) in the 1990s. VPNs were a great improvement over point-to-point circuits.

It was not until 1999, though, when Salesforce.com launched its eye-opening “portal” for enterprise applications—they made “cloud” a buzzword and people started to consider the advantages of this business model. In 2002, Amazon Web Service debuted with much fanfare. The next big thing was Google Docs in 2006, when the potential of public cloud computing became more mainstream. That was the same year that Amazon’s Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) hit the streets, offering IT folks and developers a way to spin up new servers in minutes and scale capacity at a manageable cost.

This was especially important to startups and webtrepreneurs who could not always predict spikes in load (or afford to pay for unnecessary capacity). Take Instagram for example. This hip photo-sharing app that started with one server gained 1 million active users in 12 hours after they launched their Android app. And they were ready, because they could just add more capacity on demand (and because wisely they built it to scale, as should others).

Fast-forward to 2012 and pretty much everyone is on the cloud computing bandwagon. For many IT executives, the evolution continues as they move toward platforms and weigh the ever-improving cost-benefit tradeoff of public cloud adoption.

Interested in the origin of the term, “cloud computing”? Here’s one opinion on cloud computing. Agree? Disagree? Tell us who you think originated the term.

The GoodData BI Platform Continues Proliferation; Embedded in More than Fifty Solutions Across Industries

San Francisco, CA, April 19, 2012 (PRWeb) -- GoodData, a disruptive, cloud-based enterprise Business Intelligence (BI) platform, today announced that Coupa Software, the fastest growing cloud-based spend optimization company, is using the GoodData platform to power it’s advanced spend analytics solution Coupa Spend Optimizer. GoodData enables Coupa customers to gain business insights into the percent of spend under management, better understand how to control costs, and maximize budgets as a way to bring the right products and services to market faster.

“The speed with which business moves today, it is counterproductive to wait weeks or months for IT generated reports that contain information that can drive bottom line value,” said Cody Crnkovich, senior director of powered by partnerships at GoodData. “The combination of GoodData and Coupa is directly in line with our mission to open up complex data and deliver it in an easily digestible manner for business managers.”

Through Coupa Spend Optimizer, customers have unprecedented access to rich spend management business intelligence without the challenges of traditional deployments. Coupa Spend Optimizer dashboard reports and alerts provide insight into contract management, percent of spend under management, workflow efficiency analysis, and cash management analysis to name a few.

“Coupa’s success is based on providing our customers a spend optimization solution that is convenient and familiar,” said Ravi Thakur, Vice President of Services and Support, “With GoodData we’re able make robust analytics available to the people who need it the most, the business user.”

About GoodData
GoodData is a disruptive, cloud-based enterprise platform for business intelligence. The GoodData technology is intuitive, secure and fast. It helps convert big data into profitable insights and strategies for business executives. GoodData is trusted by companies like Enterasys, Capgemini, and Software AG, and embedded into offerings from cloud innovators like Zendesk, Get Satisfaction and Pardot. Headquartered in San Francisco, GoodData is privately held and backed by leading venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners, and Windcrest Partners.

About Coupa Software
Founded in 2006, Coupa Software is the fastest growing provider of cloud-based spend optimization solutions. More than 250 customers in over 40 countries use Coupa software to amplify their spend power and reduce spending up to 11 percent. Only Coupa provides a true cloud procurement application that enables customers to launch the solution rapidly and quickly realize significant savings. Learn more at: http://www.coupa.com or call (650) 931-3200. Read more at our company blog or follow @Coupa on Twitter.

For businesses pressured to manage by the metrics, the need has never been greater. According to a study conducted in early 2012 by Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership and the New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA), corporate marketers need significant improvements in “the use of data, the measurement of digital marketing and the assessment of marketing ROI.”

CMOs should focus on 5 key imperatives, in order to gain more from marketing efforts > 

Reports vs. Dashboards
What's the Difference?

Data needs to make sense, and knowing the difference between a report and dashboard—and when each should be used—can help you organize your data in a way that is both comprehensible and accessible. While reports and dashboards are both capable of turning collected data into useful information, they drastically differ in function and usability.

Incorporate the proper visual design and layouts to effectively deliver your business data > 

Meet a GoodData Customer

Moguldom Media Group, the world's largest network of owned and operated websites addressing African Americans, deployed the GoodData platform to mashup data from their Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, and Google Analytics instances. “We needed visibility into social media conversations to understand how well our social programming was translating into sales,” said Jamarlin Martin, chairman and CEO of Moguldom Media Group. “We looked at a number of solutions, but only GoodData could deliver a holistic view of our business performance."

Learn how Moguldom Media's marketing team gets on-demand access to their company performance metrics >

GoodData Product Update

Original Air Date: April 11, 2012
Take a look at GoodData's latest product updates and enhancements. In this on-demand webinar, our product team explores all the new releases that went live in the last 3 months. From new widgets, to new features, to new UI enhancements, we think a few of these features will help you improve the design of your reports, dashboard visibility and overall reporting performance.

Watch the on-demand webinar >

The GoodData Team

Ever wonder who is helping you with your GoodData technical and how-to questions? Forget about the auto-generated replies and robot answers. There are human beings behind GoodData support. Meet Pavel Zak. Pavel is the Level Two Support team lead and oversees a skilled group of support engineers. Based in Prague, Czech Republic, Pavel and team have an extensive background in data, reporting, CL tool, and SSO.

Have a GoodData question, we're here to help >

• Bullet - Thermo Charts
• Dashboard Tab Export
• Chart Label Visual Enhancement
• Data Collaboration Improvements

Bullet - Thermo Chart
This new chart type allows users to easily visualize the current performance versus the targets. Users can define different degrees of performance, such as less satisfactory to most satisfactory. Take a look at how to create a Bullet-Thermo chart.

Dashboard Tab Export Users can export a complete dashboard tab to PDF, making physical distribution of your dashboards a breeze. 

Chart Label Visual Enhancement
See more labels alongside your charts than before. We are going green and using the screen space wisely.

Data Collaboration Improvement
Regardless of a users invitation status, recipients have access to the "Invite Users" button the Project & Users page within the GoodData project page. 

San Francisco, CA, April 19, 2012 (PRWeb) -- GoodData, the world’s fastest-growing cloud-based Business Intelligence (BI) platform, today announced participation in the Cloud Analytics Summit panel discussion, “Real-World Cloud BI Success Stories.” GoodData’s founder and CEO, Roman Stanek will collaborate with cloud industry leaders to discuss how enterprise companies have achieved business success based on the latest cloud innovations and industry best practices.

The panel discussion is scheduled for Wednesday, April 25th at 9:35 a.m. Pacific Time at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. In addition, GoodData will be an Exhibitor Sponsor of the Cloud Analytics Summit.

“It’s an honor to take part in the Cloud Analytics Summit. The event allows industry leaders to share their perspectives about big data, data integration and cloud-based analytics with corporate executives,” said Roman Stanek, founder and CEO of GoodData. “The Cloud Analytics Summit is the perfect opportunity for corporations to meet with the experts and learn how to leverage the power of cloud BI.”

The Cloud Analytics Summit is part of the 2012 Cloud Innovators Summit executive forum series aimed at helping corporate decision-makers better understand how they can leverage the latest Cloud innovations to satisfy their business requirements and achieve their business objectives. The other forums include the Cloud Management Summit on June 19 and second annual Cloud Channel Summit on November 5. All of the events will be held at the Computer History Museum.

For more information about the Cloud Analytics Summits, please visit http://www.cloudanalyticssummit.com

About GoodData
GoodData is a disruptive, cloud-based enterprise platform for business intelligence. The GoodData technology is intuitive, secure and fast. It helps convert big data into profitable insights and strategies for business executives. GoodData is trusted by companies like Enterasys, Capgemini, and Software AG, and embedded into offerings from cloud innovators like Zendesk, Get Satisfaction and Pardot. Headquartered in San Francisco, GoodData is privately held and backed by leading venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners, and Windcrest Partners..