This thesis is a study with focus on real estate companies for one of several sub-projects under “Stadens kontrollrum” initiative in Västerås. “Stadens kontrollrum” is a concept that brought together expertise from various fields of industry, research and government to create a platform that will aggregate data from different stakeholders and proposed services to achieve the goal of making Västerås a smart and sustainable city. Our project aims to extend “Stadens kontrollrum” platform in order to make it beneficial for real estate companies. In this case study, we applied expert driven methodology, i.e. with domain experts. A detailed literature review has been performed. We identified user requirements based on the information gathered during workshops with nine participants from real estate and utility companies; interviews with three experts from Mälarenergi. During the study, we identified that data visualisation, predictive maintenance and big data analysis for decision making are the main tools, among others, that should be applied to facilitate user needs. Based on user requirements, we have suggested an architecture of a module for the “Stadens kontrollrum” platform that includes those features. To verify feasibility of the solution, a prototype was built and evaluated with a group of four experts from Mälarenergi. The prototype is going to serve as a live demo in workshops and further discussions with the potential users later in the project. A full prototype of the solution is planned to be implemented in the next stage of the project.

Esta dissertação apresenta, através de um estudo de caso, a proposta para o desenvolvimento de indicadores de desempenho balanceados, a servir como ferramenta de apoio aos gerentes das filiais da empresa Renner Sayerlack. A construção de um painel tipo scorecard partiu da análise do plano estratégico da companhia e dos objetivos e indicadores estratégicos em uso. A partir deste estudo, propõe-se uma nova concepção de avaliação de desempenho, construída com base no método do Balanced Scorecard, desenvolvido por Kaplan e Norton, e que vai além da exclusiva análise pautada somente em indicadores financeiros. Dessa forma, pretende-se auxiliar os gestores das filiais da empresa numa melhor visualização, tradução, comunicação, motivação e alinhamento frente às metas acordadas junto aos acionistas, contribuindo dessa forma para o encaminhamento da Renner Sayerlack rumo ao seu objetivo estratégico. / This dissertation presents through a case study the proposal of development of balanced performance indicators in order to help the managers of the branches of the company Renner Sayerlack. The formulation of a scorecard dashboard starts with the analysis of the strategic planning of the company with its goals and current strategic indicators. With this study, a new evaluation conception emerges, based on the Balanced Scorecard method, developed by Kaplan and Norton, which overpasses the exclusive financial analysis. This way, it intends to help the branch managers of the company achieve a better visualization, interpretation, communication, motivation and alignment with shareholder target agreements, contributing in this way to the routing of Renner Sayerlack on its strategic plan course.

O tema medição de desempenho vem sendo cada vez mais discutido por acadêmicos e profissionais de todas as áreas. A grande quantidade de publicações sobre o tema indica a existência de problemas nesta área e sua importância para a gestão dos negócios. No Brasil, as empresas da indústria da construção civil também têm manifestado um crescente interesse em melhorar os seus sistemas de medição de desempenho. Entretanto, as características inerentes a este setor tornam o processo de desenvolvimento de um sistema de indicadores uma tarefa relativamente complexa. Percebe-se uma necessidade de melhoria no uso destas informações para a tomada de decisão, através da análise e extração do máximo de valor dos dados. Nesse sentido, um painel de controle fornece a possibilidade de monitoramento dos principais indicadores de desempenho através de uma única interface. Assim, este trabalho de pesquisa propõe um conjunto de diretrizes para concepção e avaliação de painéis de controle visando à melhoria de sistemas de medição de desempenho para a gestão da produção na Construção Civil. A estratégia de pesquisa adotada neste trabalho foi a pesquisa-ação. A pesquisa foi dividida em duas etapas: a etapa preparatória e a etapa principal. Na primeira etapa foi realizado um estudo exploratório e um diagnóstico inicial em duas empresas construtoras, visando a ampliar o conhecimento da autora sobre o tema, permitindo um refinamento do escopo da pesquisa. Ainda na etapa de preparação, foi realizado um estudo sobre o painel de controle em uma empresa fora do setor de construção civil, com o objetivo de analisar um caso bem sucedido da utilização de painéis de controle, fornecendo maior conhecimento prático sobre o tema. Na etapa principal foram realizados estudos paralelos nas duas empresas construtoras analisadas no diagnóstico. As principais contribuições desta pesquisa estão relacionadas a: (a) estabelecer critérios para a avaliação da eficácia dos painéis de controle; (b) propor mecanismos de vinculação entre os diferentes níveis gerenciais envolvidos na análise destes painéis e (c) propor diretrizes para a implementação de painéis de controle. / The issue of performance measurement has been each time more discussed by the academic community and professionals of every area. The large amount of publications about this issue indicates the existence of problems in this field of research and its importance for business management. In Brazil, civil construction enterprises have also demonstrated an increasing interest in improving their performance measurement systems. However, the characteristics of this field make the process of a measurement system development a relatively complex task. It may be seen the need of improvement in the use of the information gotten from these measures for decision making, through the analysis and obtainment of the maximum potential of data. In this sense, dashboard gives the possibility of monitoring the main performance indicators through an only interface. Therefore, this research proposes a set of guidelines for the conception and assessment of dashboards aiming the improvement of performance measurement systems for production management in civil construction industry. The research strategy adopted in this paper was action-research. It was divided in two phases: preparatory and main phase. In the first one, an exploratory study and a diagnostic step were accomplished in construction companies, aiming to broaden the author’s knowledge about the issue, allowing the refinement of the research. Still in the preparatory phase, it was accomplished a study about dashboard in a company outside civil construction sector, with the aim of analyzing a well succeeded case using dashboards. In the main phase, parallel studies were accomplished in the two civil construction companies analyzed during diagnosis. The main contributions of this research are related to: (a) establish criteria to assess the effectiveness of dashboards; (b) propose mechanisms for entailing different management levels involved in the analysis of such dashboards; and (c) propose guidelines for implementing dashboards.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’améliorer les tableaux de bord (dashboard) de visualisation afin d’aider à la prise de décision et d’analyse BI, et les rendre accessibles à un public plus large. Nous identifions les tendances actuelles et pratiques d’utilisation des dashboards de visualisation dans le domaine BI, et après une approche de conception centreé, nous proposons des améliorations et des solutions. Plus précisément, nous relevons les défis suivants: faire la construction du dashboard et d’utiliser accessible aux novices de visualisation, l’amélioration des dashboards avec des capacités d’annotation pour aider les analystes BI dans le processus d’analyse, et ajouter des fonctionnalités du storytelling pour aider à la communication entre les analystes et les décideurs. Notre approche centrée-utilisateur consiste à recueillir les besoins des utilisateurs (grâce à la recherche de fond, des entrevues en profondeur ou des séances de prototypage avec des experts BI), le développement itératif des prototypes, et l’évaluation des prototypes issus avec des utilisateurs représentatifs. Dans la première étape, notre travail rapporte idées recueillies au sujet des pratiques des utilisateurs novices sur Exploation Views (EV), un système qui permet aux utilisateurs novices de visualisation à créer facilement des dashboards et les personnaliser, mais fournit également des fonctionnalités nécessaires aux les experts. Nous avons évalué EV à la fois d’experts et des utilisateurs novices de visualisation, et constaté des différences dans la façon dont les experts et les utilisateurs novices interagissent avec l’interface. En se basant sur ces observations nous proposons de nouvelles lignes directrices, qui augmentent les travaux antérieurs, sur la conception pour les novices, dans le contexte des systèmes de visualisation interactifs sous forme de dashboard. Les analystes BI utilisant des dashboards (experts ou novices) ont besoin d’aide dans la tenue des dossiers de leur analyse, de leurs découvertes et des idées recueillies des données. Ce soutien fait défaut dans la plupart des systèmes de visualisation de dashboard. Nous avons effectué des entretiens approfondis avec des experts en analyse BI, qui ont révélé de nouveaux besoins d’annotation pour les systèmes de visualisation multi-graphiques (tels que des dashboard), sur lesquels nous avons basé la conception d’un prototype de tableau de bord qui gère les données et les annotations contextuels, qui peuvent être partagées à travers visualisations et des ensembles duel données. Nous nous sommes concentrés en particulier sur les aspects d’annotation innovantes, tels que les annotations multi-cibles, la transparence des annotations à travers des graphiques, ainsi que les annotations qui peuvent être partagées entre les différentes sources de données et des applications de BI. Nous avons identifié et fourni des solutions aux problèmes en utilisant les annotations contextuels, notamment les questions qui se posent lorsque le contexte de l’annotation change (par exemple les données annotées sont supprimés ou modifiés). Notre prototype a été évaluée avec des experts, utilisateurs BI, qui ont réussi d’effectuer facilement plusieurs tâches qu’ils estiment importants dans leur travail. / The goal of this thesis is to improve visualization dashboards in order to help decision making and Business Intelligence (BI) analysis, and make them accessible to a larger user audience. We identify current trends and use practices of visualization dashboards in the BI domain, and following a user-cantered design approach we provide enhancements and solutions. More specifically we address the following challenges: making dashboard construction and use accessible to visualization novices, enhancing dashboards with advanced annotation capabilities to help BI analysts in the analysis process, and add storytelling functionality to dashboards to help the communication between analysts and decision makers. Our user-centered approach consists of gathering user requirements (through background search, in-depth interviews or prototyping sessions with BI experts), iterative prototype development, and evaluation of our prototypes with representative users. First, our work reports gathered insights regarding novice user practices on Exploration Views (EV), a system that allows novice visualization users to easily build and customize BI information dashboards, but also provides functionality needed by experts. We evaluated EV with both expert and novice visualization users, and found differences in how experts and novice users interact with the interface. Based on those observations we provide new guidelines that augment previous work on designing for visualization novices, in the context of interactive visualization systems in the form of dashboards. BI analysts using dashboards (experts or novices) need support in record-keeping of their analysis, their data discoveries and gathered insights. This support is lacking in most dashboard visualization systems. We conducted in-depth interviews with BI experts that led to new annotation needs for multi-chart visualization systems (such as dashboards), on which we based the design of a dashboard prototype that supports data and context aware annotations, shared across visualizations and datasets. We focused particularly on novel annotation aspects, such as multi-target annotations, annotation transparency across charts, and annotations that can be shared among different data-sources and BI applications. We identified and provided solutions to challenges in using context aware annotations, notably issues arising when the annotation’s ”context” changes (e.g. annotated data are deleted or changed). Our prototype was evaluated with BI experts that were able to easily perform several tasks that they deemed important in their work. To increase the value of an analysis, recorded insights and knowledge need to be organized and communicated to others, and made available for future analysts to learn from. This communication step is very important, as often the analyst of data and the decision maker are two different people. To achieve this we need an easy insight organization and sharing mechanism to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, experiences, and stories, to decision makers and other analysts. We interviewed BI analysis experts and collected new requirements related to BI visual storytelling. Based on these requirements we designed and implemented a storytelling prototype that is integrated in a dashboard analysis tool, and allows easy transition from analysis to story creation and sharing. Our system was identified by experts as having great potential for training other analysts. Moreover, it can help BI analysis authors organize and communicate their findings faster to decision makers, and they can reach a broader audience since the results of a data analysis presented in the storytelling tool can be read with little to no training.

Esta dissertação apresenta, através de um estudo de caso, a proposta para o desenvolvimento de indicadores de desempenho balanceados, a servir como ferramenta de apoio aos gerentes das filiais da empresa Renner Sayerlack. A construção de um painel tipo scorecard partiu da análise do plano estratégico da companhia e dos objetivos e indicadores estratégicos em uso. A partir deste estudo, propõe-se uma nova concepção de avaliação de desempenho, construída com base no método do Balanced Scorecard, desenvolvido por Kaplan e Norton, e que vai além da exclusiva análise pautada somente em indicadores financeiros. Dessa forma, pretende-se auxiliar os gestores das filiais da empresa numa melhor visualização, tradução, comunicação, motivação e alinhamento frente às metas acordadas junto aos acionistas, contribuindo dessa forma para o encaminhamento da Renner Sayerlack rumo ao seu objetivo estratégico. / This dissertation presents through a case study the proposal of development of balanced performance indicators in order to help the managers of the branches of the company Renner Sayerlack. The formulation of a scorecard dashboard starts with the analysis of the strategic planning of the company with its goals and current strategic indicators. With this study, a new evaluation conception emerges, based on the Balanced Scorecard method, developed by Kaplan and Norton, which overpasses the exclusive financial analysis. This way, it intends to help the branch managers of the company achieve a better visualization, interpretation, communication, motivation and alignment with shareholder target agreements, contributing in this way to the routing of Renner Sayerlack on its strategic plan course.

O tema medição de desempenho vem sendo cada vez mais discutido por acadêmicos e profissionais de todas as áreas. A grande quantidade de publicações sobre o tema indica a existência de problemas nesta área e sua importância para a gestão dos negócios. No Brasil, as empresas da indústria da construção civil também têm manifestado um crescente interesse em melhorar os seus sistemas de medição de desempenho. Entretanto, as características inerentes a este setor tornam o processo de desenvolvimento de um sistema de indicadores uma tarefa relativamente complexa. Percebe-se uma necessidade de melhoria no uso destas informações para a tomada de decisão, através da análise e extração do máximo de valor dos dados. Nesse sentido, um painel de controle fornece a possibilidade de monitoramento dos principais indicadores de desempenho através de uma única interface. Assim, este trabalho de pesquisa propõe um conjunto de diretrizes para concepção e avaliação de painéis de controle visando à melhoria de sistemas de medição de desempenho para a gestão da produção na Construção Civil. A estratégia de pesquisa adotada neste trabalho foi a pesquisa-ação. A pesquisa foi dividida em duas etapas: a etapa preparatória e a etapa principal. Na primeira etapa foi realizado um estudo exploratório e um diagnóstico inicial em duas empresas construtoras, visando a ampliar o conhecimento da autora sobre o tema, permitindo um refinamento do escopo da pesquisa. Ainda na etapa de preparação, foi realizado um estudo sobre o painel de controle em uma empresa fora do setor de construção civil, com o objetivo de analisar um caso bem sucedido da utilização de painéis de controle, fornecendo maior conhecimento prático sobre o tema. Na etapa principal foram realizados estudos paralelos nas duas empresas construtoras analisadas no diagnóstico. As principais contribuições desta pesquisa estão relacionadas a: (a) estabelecer critérios para a avaliação da eficácia dos painéis de controle; (b) propor mecanismos de vinculação entre os diferentes níveis gerenciais envolvidos na análise destes painéis e (c) propor diretrizes para a implementação de painéis de controle. / The issue of performance measurement has been each time more discussed by the academic community and professionals of every area. The large amount of publications about this issue indicates the existence of problems in this field of research and its importance for business management. In Brazil, civil construction enterprises have also demonstrated an increasing interest in improving their performance measurement systems. However, the characteristics of this field make the process of a measurement system development a relatively complex task. It may be seen the need of improvement in the use of the information gotten from these measures for decision making, through the analysis and obtainment of the maximum potential of data. In this sense, dashboard gives the possibility of monitoring the main performance indicators through an only interface. Therefore, this research proposes a set of guidelines for the conception and assessment of dashboards aiming the improvement of performance measurement systems for production management in civil construction industry. The research strategy adopted in this paper was action-research. It was divided in two phases: preparatory and main phase. In the first one, an exploratory study and a diagnostic step were accomplished in construction companies, aiming to broaden the author’s knowledge about the issue, allowing the refinement of the research. Still in the preparatory phase, it was accomplished a study about dashboard in a company outside civil construction sector, with the aim of analyzing a well succeeded case using dashboards. In the main phase, parallel studies were accomplished in the two civil construction companies analyzed during diagnosis. The main contributions of this research are related to: (a) establish criteria to assess the effectiveness of dashboards; (b) propose mechanisms for entailing different management levels involved in the analysis of such dashboards; and (c) propose guidelines for implementing dashboards.

Twitter and social media has a big impact on the modern society. Companies uses Twitter and other social Medias as marketing channels to reach multiple customers. The purpose of this research was to get an insight on what day and time that businesses get the most respondents on Twitter. The focus area is the social media Twitter and the way to use the 140 characters available. Efficiency and profitability are key factors for business firms so if they know when the prospective and existing customers are most receptive to a message you can obtain an advantage which may be important in the future. The factors comes down to time, specifically time and day. To reach a conclusion on this matter the scientific report at hand will use business analytics to analyze data from Twitter to reach this conclusion. The data used for this analyze is from five companies with a Swedish market and based on two months April 2015 and May 2015.

Master of Arts / Department of Geography / J. M. Shawn Hutchinson / Information dashboards are decision-support tools that pull data from multiple sources and display those data on a single screen. Information dashboards are becoming common in fields such as medicine, computer science, and business, given their perceived ability to facilitate faster and more accurate assessments by users. However, there is very little peer-reviewed research on information dashboards that support this assumption. This research focuses on applying the concept of an information dashboard visualization within the spatial sciences and evaluating the effectiveness of a geographic information dashboard, or GID, on improving user performance related to spatial thinking tasks. A review of literature from multiple disciplines highlights what is, and what is not, understood about dashboard visualizations. Borrowing from ideas such as Cognitive Fit Theory and past work in evaluating the effectiveness of map animations, an appropriate method for evaluating the GID is proposed. A Web-based GID and an alternative “tabbed” visualization were developed using the R Shiny package to support an analysis of grassland vegetation development for a site located in northeastern Kansas. A controlled experiment was conducted using a survey completed by volunteer student participants who responded to a series of benchmark tasks related to the interpretation of 6 related maps and graphs. Data for three dependent variables (task completion time, task response accuracy, and an integrative measure of performance accounting for both time and accuracy) were collected directly from the survey or post-survey grading of responses. Three independent variables and their impact on spatial task performance were analyzed, including the type of visualization, assessed spatial thinking ability, and cognitive task type. Results showed that participants using the GID completed the benchmark tasks faster and more accurately, but that a users’ spatial thinking ability had the most significant influence on performance regardless of visualization. Evidence was found to support the idea that the GID improved spatial thinking performance, especially for users with more experience in spatial reasoning, and that the GID format may improve user performance beyond what is expected based on an independent assessment of spatial thinking ability.

Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is a broad concept focused on managing performance of companies and is related to information technologies like Business Intelligence (BI). CPM and its associated technologies are currently one of the most tracked areas in the field of business informatics. The reason is the growing market competition, globalization, the dynamic changes on the market and the growing need for companies to effectively manage their performance. The aim of the theoretical part of the thesis is to familiarize readers with this concept, with its components and link to business informatics. The work focuses on a specific area of CPM, which is monitoring and analysis, i.e. dashboarding. In the thesis there is analyzed monitoring and analytical functionality of the software Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (PPS). Furthermore, there are identified dashboard and scorecard concepts and analyzed the characteristics and categorization of dashboards. There are various best-practices approaches to deployment of dashboarding into business. In the thesis there are mentioned some of these practices and basic rules for proper dashboard design. At the end of the theoretical part of the thesis there are evaluated the world's leading suppliers of CPM solutions. The aim of the practical part of the thesis is design and documentation of CPM dashboarding solution based on the real business data of the company that provides consulting services and develops BI software. The solution is designed in the PPS software and its purpose is to support the company's management in terms of monitoring the effectiveness of internal and external projects and business activities of the company. The solution is not a definitive CPM solution, but a step by the company to reveal possible weaknesses in the organization and encourage efforts to develop its own holistic CPM solution.

This thesis is concerned with evaluation CPM applications -- Analytical Portals. Based on reading up the evaluation criteria from another authors in third chapter, are chosen own criteria for evaluation of application Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, where are dashboards and reports created. The thesis consists of two general sections, theoretical and practical. The theoretical section describes division of CPM applications from particular vendors of software. In second chapter are explained the most important features of CPM applications and their submission into software portfolio particular vendors, which is the first target of this thesis. In the practical section are worked up the data of fictive company named Matastav into form, which is needed for creating dashboards and reports. After that in fourth chapter, are created dashboards and reports by software MOSS 2007. Here is explanation of the creation and of course the required hardware and software installation. The software and created dashboards and reports are evaluated in fifth chapter with own chosen criteria. That is the second target of this thesis.