THE LIMITATIONS OF ELECTRONIC DASHBOARDS
The Limitations of Dashboards By Pam Ashlund I first heard the concept of an electronic dashboard introduced in March 24, 1999. There it was, within the 496 pages of Bill Gates’ book Business at the Speed of Thought . It was so exciting to me that I ran back to the office determined to implement. I attended a Microsoft’s Dashboa rd training and found out that I was sold on an idea that didn’t technically exist. The back-end programming was available, but there wasn’t a commercial product; there wasn’t even a commercial engine to customize. So I waited. It was 2001, with this visionary Dashboard in mind, that I converted from Fundware to Financial Edge . There were other features that met our conversion requirements, but it was the promise of the Dashboard feature that was number one (two and three were: Integrating FE and RE; and Integrated Assets Software). But when we launched, there was a problem. An electronic dashboard may be live, but accounting isn’t—it’s accrued after the fac