A new blog entry has been added:

online dashboards in Excel

Online dashboards coupled with in-memory analysis and predictive / statistical analytics form the major drivers of current BI solutions besides the obvious major driver routine operational reporting.

Operational baan reporting supplemented by in-memory data transformation in Excel/Baan and statistical functions in Excel substantially fulfils this need . However dashboards are an area so far unaddressed.
For online dashboards also Excel can play a good role. There is a myth that Excel can only be used with MS SQL. But that’s not correct . It can also be used with other databases like Oracle / DB2 which  may be installed on non-windows system through ADO-DB connections .

Here are certain resources which can help user build Excel based dashboards.  Excellent dashboard reports in http://www.exceluser.com/dash/index.htm

Importance of using named ranges (which can be used like variables in VBA by statements like application.range(“named_range”) and functions like lookup/match etc: http://charts.jorgecamoes.com/how-to-create-an-excel-dashboard/. Very good tips to improve dashboards and having good interactivity with user with dashboards: http://charts.jorgecamoes.com/tips-improve-better-excel-dashboard/