“Oh, I need more data”

I recently sat across a conference table with the president and owner of a small manufacturing company.

For years, he has run his company on spreadsheets. Sales, forecasts, inventory, customers, etc. We were spending the day introducing him to Power BI and allowing him to explore what it might do for him and his business.

Within an hour of picking up the tool and clicking through some demo workflows, the lightbulb came on.

He said: “Oh, I need more data”

I asked him to explain what he meant.

As he’s been collecting and managing data in spreadsheets, its overwhelming to manage too much data. The spreadsheet crashes. Even more so, it’s challenging to communicate to his team anything about the data if there are too many data points.

So for years, he’s been limited in what he can collect and communicate.

“Oh, I need more data” was filled with excitement about the possibilities. Now he saw data with a whole new viewpoint. And he wanted more of it.

That's what good data does.

It doesn’t overwhelm, frustrate, or confuse. It empowers and expands.

A good tool. A few good processes. Can unlock decisions and business opportunities they had only dreamed of.

You want more of it.

It was good to see you today,

Sawyer

from ​The Data Shop