Struggling with BI Tools? Here’s Why You’re Not Seeing the Value

You’ve already made some investment in Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Power BI, or Tableau. You might even have some reports and dashboards set up. But despite the tools at your disposal, you're not seeing the results that you were hoping for. Sound familiar? We often see this with organisations who come to us. Many organisations struggle to unlock the full potential of their BI investments. This post looks at some of the common frustrations we see and how to overcome them. 

This state can be frustrating and is often characterised by a reliance on manual processes compounded by a lack of adoption of your BI tools. You might find yourself battling technical limitations or wondering why you have different versions of the same report but showing conflicting results. It's common to feel disheartened, with inconsistent data outputs, slow reporting processes (some of the dashboards are taking a long time to load and business users are too busy to wait for the information to refresh), and an overreliance on manual inputs. You are already feeling frustrated because these problems were meant to be solved by a BI tool… 

A major obstacle that we see with our clients is capacity or capability limitations within your team. Often, organisations have team members who dabble in BI tools but aren’t fully dedicated or trained in how to use them effectively. Data management may still be distributed across various departments, and handled by people who lack expertise in integrating and automating systems. Without a dedicated BI team, specialist or partner, it becomes difficult to create the kind of centralised, reliable reporting that drives meaningful insights. 

The issue isn’t necessarily the tools themselves—it’s how they’re being used. A classic case of technology being good but people and process maturity lagging behind.

One of the most common problems we see with clients facing this issue, is the lack of a unified information source. If your organisation hasn’t created a central means for turning data into information, you are likely pulling data from different systems into a multitude of siloed workbooks, leading to conflicting reports and a general lack of trust in the data. 

To truly benefit from BI tools, you need to start with centralising your data. Create a single source of truth. This could be the beginnings of a data warehouse, a set of standardised processes, or introducing data automation where possible. By removing reliance on manual data entry and cleanup, you’ll see the performance of your BI tools improve dramatically. 

It’s tempting to think that better tools alone will solve the problem, but the reality is that without fixing the underlying data management (people and process) issues, no tool will give you the insights you need. Once you address these elements, you’ll begin to see more consistent, actionable data that can help meaningfully drive business decisions. 

Tired of inconsistent reports and manual data processes? If you’d like to discuss the options that are open to you to unlock the full potential of your BI tools—contact us today to turn your data into a reliable, insight-driven asset. 

For more information visit our Business Intelligence page

Or get in touch to discuss your organisations BI journey.

Contact the Montage team here.