What is Management Information Design & IBCS?
Appropriate information design ensures that decision-relevant information is made available to the respective report recipients in a precise, transparent, comparable and addressee-appropriate manner. The basis for this are defined standards for the visual preparation of information - in the form of uniform notation concepts. In other fields, such nomenclatures have already been used successfully for a very long time. A particularly striking example is the field of music: thanks to the internationally valid notation, musicians with different mother tongues can easily communicate and cooperate with each other on stage. Maps, construction plans or electronic circuit diagrams are also uniformly and unmistakably legible worldwide. Which in turn clearly confirms: Visual recognition plays a central role in the efficient recording, analysis, understanding and interpretation of complex amounts of information (i.e. data) - provided that certain laws are observed. In business administration, the principles of information design are applied in this regard. Their practical application offers companies the opportunity to successfully take their internal and external reporting to a new level.

On which notation standards is IBCS® (International Business Communication Standards®) based?

The IBCS® (International Business Communication Standards®) based on the SUCCESS reference framework by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rolf Hichert aim at maximum transparency in reporting, business communication and presentation design. These notation standards form the basis for optimal, practice-oriented information design according to the following principles:

S AY Convey message

U NIFY Apply semantic notation

C ONDENSE Increase information density

C HECK Ensure visual integrity

E XPRESS Select suitable visualization

S IMPLIFY Avoid superfluous

S TRUCTURE Structure content

Source: https://www.ibcs.com/de/standards

What are the objectives of the IBCS® (International Business Communication Standards®)?

Report messages are directly visible

Contents are structured in a uniform, non-overlapping and exhaustive manner

Decoration is eliminated, instead clear information is present

Value and measurement variables are defined

Contents are condensed

Reporting errors are eliminated as part of the project

What impact do the IBCS standards have on my dasboards?

Dashboards present all important and success-relevant information graphically or in tabular form on one screen - condensed, highly aggregated, clear and transparent. In this way, all relevant key figures can be recorded and monitored at a glance. Drill-downs and options for data filtering are often available to enable the most effective and goal-oriented work possible.
Optimal information design is also crucial for dashboards, as the collection of information is oriented towards the principles of visual human perception. Thus, the design should be as comprehensible and descriptive as possible - ideally based on the quasi-standard IBCS® and accompanied by simple, intuitive operation by the user.
Compared to conventional reporting solutions, dashboard information is not presented in a print-optimised way, but specifically for on-screen capture. The arrangement of the related information details therefore fits on one or a few screen pages. In this way, only what is really relevant is compressed into a format that is quick and easy to understand.