Business Intelligence
The dashboard nobody opens: a field guide to BI that gets used
11 January 2026 · 5 min read
The average enterprise Power BI estate we inherit has over a hundred reports. Fewer than ten have been opened in the last month. The rest are the sediment of old requests, departed analysts and meetings that no longer happen.
Every metric needs one named owner — a person, not a department. When two dashboards disagree, the owner arbitrates. Without ownership, disagreement becomes distrust, and distrust sends leadership back to spreadsheets.
Distribution beats destination. A weekly summary that lands in the leadership WhatsApp group or inbox at 7am Sunday gets read; a beautiful portal that requires a login and two clicks does not. Meet the decision where it already lives.
Prune quarterly. Archive anything unopened for ninety days. A BI estate is a garden, and gardens that are never weeded stop producing food.