Designing a Sales Enhancement Dashboard using Key Performance Indicators

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International Journal of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Systems (IJEECS)

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ISSN (Online): 2347-2820, Volume -4, Issue-7, 2016 1

Designing a Sales Enhancement Dashboard using Key Performance Indicators

1Ashwini G S, ²Manjuprasad B, ³Sarath B Sribhasyam

1Computer Science & Engineering, GSSSIETW, Mysuru, Karnataka, India

2Dept of CSE, GSSSIETW, Mysuru, Karnataka, India

3Chief Technology Officer, Theorganic. life, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Abstract: Information management is very complex in

today’s business scenario as the information drives the process like strategic planning, effective productivity and proper decision making. In order to carry out these vital processes, effective intelligence reporting tools are very much needed. Business Intelligence and retail have tools to turn huge amounts of information into useful knowledge.

One of the tool used to design Business Intelligence Dashboard is the Scriptcase tool.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) play an important role in designing the dashboard, it demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. The paper presents the sales enhancement dashboard which provides better user experience by enhancing cross sell and upsell.

Keywords: Business Intelligence, Dashboard, Key Performance Indicator (KPI), Sales Enhancement, cross sell

& up sell.

I. INTRODUCTION

Organization system have an enormous amount of data to assemble and also process them in a way to make the finest decision as soon as it’s possible. One of the solutions that can improve the decision making process is BI [1]. BI tools help transforming raw data into smart information and knowledge [2, 3]. Knowledge is typically obtained about the customer needs, the competition, conditions in the industry, and general economic and technological trends.

The productive use of visual models for distribution of the useful data has been analyzed both in tool and in applications like public health, education and business management [4]. Dashboard is one of the result which has been using in several fields in order to summarize the key indicators or the metrics for handling huge organizations in help with management and decision-making, which helps in looking at the related data at a glimpse [5-7]. A dashboard is termed as a GUI (Graphical User Interface) in management information system. It helps in organizing and presenting the data or information in a way that is to understand and portray [4]. Typically, a dashboard is a

kind of OLAP demonstration and a great tool in BI [8].

Concept of dashboards is to pursue the study of decision support mechanisms in the 1970s. The dashboard concepts are being used in organizations for many solutions such as sales enhancement, performance management, and effective business analysis and for tracking business management and so on.

By assessing how precisely an organization is operating globally, it grants to capture and address definite information bits from every department inside the organization, thus provides a “snapshot” of the performance. Dashboard displays demanding data in the mode that allows quick conclusions, decreased costs, and improved assurance [9]. Advantages of utilizing dashboards are:

1. Visual display of performance measures.

2. Capability to analyze and correct negative flow, produce accurate reports

3. Calculation of efficiencies and inefficiencies.

4. Lining up of strategies and organizational goals.

5. Time preserving over running many reports.

6. Instant visibility of overall performance [10].

The process of actually implementing a dashboard involves the identification of Key Performance Indicators (KPI). A Key Performance Indicator or a metric is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.

Organizations use KPIs at multiple levels to evaluate their success at reaching targets. As a dashboard, all of the information should fit on a single screen. Prominence should be given to the major metrics and attention should be drawn to any measures that indicate poor performance in relation to the targets.

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II. SURVEY ON RELATED WORK

Dashboards provide distinct and powerful tool to communicate the information with specific benefits, but they also pose a specific set of design challenges [11]. As such, the design challenges are largely challenges of visual design.

(1). Business Performance Management [12]

Business Performance Management (BPM) is a series of processes and applications designed to optimize the execution of business strategy; indeed, organizations are discovering that BPM is more than just planning, budgeting, forecasting, consolidation, or score carding application-rather it is a common framework that underlays all above applications. Through this paper, the modern meaning of BPM is sorted out, a four step process BPM framework is developed; furthermore the use of technology and tools in BPM is introduced in detail.

Business Performance is a series of processes and applications designed to optimize the execution of business strategy. To understand and effectively design and implement such a solution a four steps closed-loop process framework is required: Strategize, Plan, Monitor, and act and adjust. Business Intelligence is introduced as an enabler technology for BPM, which can leverage the BPM applications in a packaged analytic solutions;

Finally, dashboards and scorecard are introduced as the last component and the critical one of the BI architecture with its their three organizational, business user and IT needs. The role of analytic applications in BPM, BPM trends and market analysis, and BPM/KPI localization, are interesting future research topics.

(2) Dashboard’s Necessity [12]

In this paper three different dashboard in different fields are reviewed. First is performance dashboard that is used for measuring, monitoring and managing business .It is to focus on the work of employees so that everyone are going in the same direction. Second is a model driven dashboard used for business performance. Describing models that can effectively represent all the elements necessary for the business performance reporting process on the basic interactions among them. Third is marketing dashboard that is used to compare performance across different products, market segments or units. Fourth is dashboard as integration tool and testing platform which is used by a consortium of eleven academic institutions to develop a suite of bidirectional machine translation system for nine pairs of Indic languages.

One of the more popular types of performance dashboards today is the Balanced Scorecard, which actually specific methodology for aligning organizations with corporate strategy. A Balanced Scorecard is a strategic application, but as we shall soon see, there are other types of performance dashboards that optimize operational and

tactical processes that drive organizations on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. There is a growing trend in using model-driven methodologies for developing large system software, due to their high level abstraction and code re-use (or regeneration). They have been widely applied in related areas, such as software reuse, reverse engineering, and user interface design. The benefits of adopting model driven design include reduced software development time, enhanced code quality, and improved code maintenance.

(3) Cross and Upselling Techniques [14]

Cross and Up-selling are the two major marketing techniques which are used for sales enhancement in e-commerce. Iterative client service model is presented in this study, in which the particular roles of cross selling and up-selling are indicated in integration marketing activity and automation processes. Other than this the existing will include clustering techniques, nearest neighbor algorithm, Bayes analysis and lot more. The internet portal usage analysis results are presented in the work which are in form of association rules. The results of above technique is important for cross-selling technique and also helpful for up-selling.

III. PROPOSED SYSTEM

Organizations use KPIs at multiple levels to evaluate their success at reaching targets. As a dashboard, all of the information should fit on a single screen. Prominence should be given to the major metrics and attention should be drawn to any measures that indicate poor performance in relation to the targets. The dashboard should be designed in a way that allows sales executives to know at a glance any areas of sales - both problems and opportunities - that might require their attention.

KPI’s will optimize the company or organization’s valuable assets and expenses. They provide a way in managing the performance in an easier way and to make decisions in prior for the great impact. Before designing the Dashboard, identification of KPI’s is most needed.

For that understanding of business objectives and translating it into goals that are measurable and then selection of KPI’s for these goals are to be done. Some of the key steps required for the identification of the KPI’s include a SMART criteria, Smart goals will provide a great guidance and structure for the project and help in accomplishing the goal. Here SMART means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. And, set the main goals and for each goal having at least 3 KPI’s is important. Finally more KPI’s need to be linked to main objectives of the project [15].

The proposed system involves in the identification of some KPI’s, including Gross Merchandise Value, Total orders in Transit and pending, Total payout, Shipping

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Charges Collected, Count of Tickets, Top 5 Selling Product and many more.

 Gross Merchandise Value: The total Merchandise sold over an established time period.

 Total Orders in transit and pending: Total number of orders placed within certain time period and which are shipped and pending.

 Total Payout: It is the total payout of a business and is calculated by taking the difference amount left from total revenue.

 Shipping Charges Collected: It is the sum of total shipping amount of the total orders.

 Count of Tickets: It is the count of number of tickets raised by the customers.

 Top 5 Selling Product: It is the selling product list out of which the top 5.

All these KPI’s are designed as charts or grids using the tool, the final screen would like in the figure 1, which is shown below.

Figure 1: Screen design of the dashboard Designing of the dashboard using a tool called Scriptcase is proposed in the system. The system architecture includes the following which is shown in the figure 2.

Figure 2: System Architecture

Queries are written to fetch the desired result either in grid or chart forms, finally all are linked into a single dashboard screen. All these things are done using the Scriptcase tool.

Cross-selling and Up-selling of products will be done using this dashboard. Which in turn enhances the sales.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The generated charts and grids of the proposed system KPI’s are generated using Scriptcase, some of them include the following in figure 3, figure 4 and figure 5.

Figure 3: Chart of Total Orders in Transit

Figure 4: Chart of GMV(Gross Merchandise Value)

Figure 5: Grid View of Product Review

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V. CONCLUSION

Dashboard efforts for the visualization of the business action that can be used by different users to work on monitoring, management of inventory, monitoring and measurements of the performance, etc. This variable use of the dashboard will enhance organizational needs to evaluate the business and its performances against the predefined objectives or goal. Use of KPI’s is one of the good practises to follow in order to design the dashboard, which helps in cross sell and up sell with the accurate measurement of organizational goals.

VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I thank Our Chief Executive Officer Mr. Mallesh and Chief Technology Officer Mr. Sarath B Sribhasyam, Theorganic.life, Bengaluru, the company where I pursued my internship and carrying my M.Tech project, for their guide and support.

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