A cockpit is a module's analytics-first home page: the top half tells you how that part of the business is doing, and the bottom half is the module's own working list, so the cockpit is a place to work from, not just a page to look at. Every cockpit is built from the same four tiers, top to bottom:
- The findings banner. Up to three short observations the system has noticed about this module — a margin that has dropped, overdue money concentrating on a few customers, stock that has stopped moving. Each finding carries the figure behind it, and you can dismiss one that no longer concerns you; if the situation materially changes, it will be raised again as a new finding. The banner never does anything by itself. Where a finding has an obvious next step, its button prepares a proposal for the Action Assistant — which still needs a person to confirm it, there, before anything happens.
- The KPI strip. Four headline tiles for the period you have chosen. The period control at the top of the cockpit offers the current fiscal period, the previous one, year to date, or the last 30 days. Most tiles carry their comparison with the previous period built in (see 2.10), so "revenue" arrives already answered with "…and here is how that compares".
- Two charts. A trend chart — the module's main measure over time — and a breakdown chart, which slices a measure by segment: revenue by customer, spend by supplier, stock value by warehouse. You can change what the breakdown slices by, and the grain of the trend (quarter, month, week, day). The charts are how you explore; see 2.3.
- The live grid. The module's own list — sales invoices on the Sales cockpit, purchase orders on Procurement's, tank batches on Aquaculture's — with its usual columns, filters and actions. It is the same table you would work in from the module's menu, not a picture of it.
Two smaller things belong to the anatomy. At the top sits the freshness chip, naming the data snapshot you are looking at and when it was published (see 2.11). And the cockpit remembers your choices — period, breakdowns, whether the analytics are collapsed out of the way — per person, so the page reopens the way you left it.
If the analytics service is ever unavailable, the tiles and charts say so plainly and the grid carries on untouched: the working list never depends on the analytics above it.
Figure 2.1 — The anatomy of a cockpit. Drawing to be produced after the UI/UX pass: a cockpit page annotated tier by tier — findings banner, KPI strip, the two charts, live grid — with the freshness chip and period control marked.