Voortware
In many businesses, Monday looks like this. Someone exports revenue from the accounting software, the pipeline from the CRM and the hours from the time tracking. Everything goes into an Excel file, the pivot tables are refreshed, someone checks whether the formulas still work, and the PDF goes to the management team. By Wednesday the overview is already out of date.
As long as it works, there's nothing wrong with that. But there comes a point where it costs more time than it gives back. This article is about that point: how to recognise it, which figures belong on a dashboard, when Power BI or Looker Studio is enough and when a custom dashboard pays off, and what it costs. And also about when you're better off simply keeping Excel.
Excel isn't the problem
Excel is excellent for calculating, investigating something or running through a scenario. The problem only starts when an Excel file becomes a fixed overview, fed from several sources every week, used by several people to make decisions and growing more tabs all the time. Then you're using a spreadsheet as a reporting system, and that's not what it was made for.
Six signs Excel is no longer enough
- The report takes hours of manual work every week or month: exporting, pasting, checking and sending it out again.
- The figures are old by the time they arrive. You're adjusting course based on what happened last month.
- Several versions are going around, and meetings start with which number is right instead of what to do about it.
- One person understands how the file works. If they're ill or on holiday, there are no figures.
- You can't drill down. You see the margin dropping, but not for which client, project or product.
- Everyone sees everything, or nobody does. The file with margins and salaries sits in a shared folder, or it's locked away so carefully the team gets nothing out of it.
If three or more sound familiar, a dashboard is worth looking at. If it's just one, tidying up the Excel file is often quicker.
Start with the questions, not the charts
The most common mistake with a dashboard is putting everything on it that can be measured. Thirty charts look impressive on delivery day, and a month later nobody looks at them. So start with the questions you ask every week.
- Are we hitting the revenue we budgeted for this quarter?
- Which clients pay late, and how much money is involved?
- How full is the schedule for the next four weeks?
- Which projects are running over on hours compared with the quote?
- How many quotes are open, and for how long?
Next to each question, put one figure and the person who makes decisions based on it. You usually end up with five to eight figures per role: the directors want to see something different from the planner or the account manager. Then pin down the definitions. Is revenue what's invoiced or what's won? Does a project count as running from the quote or from the order? Until that's settled, everyone calculates their own version, in a dashboard too.
A dashboard is only as good as the decisions made with it. Start with the question you ask every Monday, not with the chart that looks nice.
Where the figures come from
A dashboard doesn't create data, it fetches it. The sources that come up most often: accounting for revenue, margin and outstanding invoices, the CRM for the pipeline, time tracking and planning for utilisation, the webshop or order processing for orders, and the Excel file with budgets and targets that lives nowhere else. For each source, the question is whether there's an API the dashboard can use to fetch the data automatically. With most modern packages there is.
Most of the work is rarely in fetching, but in aligning. The same client has a different name in the CRM than in accounting, project codes aren't the same everywhere, and some hours are booked to the wrong code. Ideally you fix that at the source, with agreements on which system is the source of truth. How that works is covered in connecting your CRM to your accounting software. The fetching itself is the same craft as connecting software, except that here the data flows one way.
Real-time or once a day?
Having a real-time dashboard built sounds appealing, but it's far from always necessary. For revenue, margin and receivables, an update every night or every hour is plenty: you act on those weekly or monthly. Real-time makes sense for figures you act on the same day, such as today's orders, today's utilisation or requests that are piling up.
Real-time also costs more. The dashboard has to knock on the sources' door more often, and some packages limit how often that's allowed. So choose per figure how current it needs to be. A dashboard that refreshes orders every minute and margin every night is usually just right.
Power BI, Looker Studio or a custom dashboard?
Power BI and Looker Studio
These are strong tools, and the basic version of Looker Studio is free. If you have someone in-house willing to put time into it, your figures come from packages with a standard connector, and the dashboard is for internal use only, one of these tools is often the logical first step. We'll tell you that too.
Watch out for three things, though. Not every accounting or planning package has a good connector, and sometimes the only option is a third-party connector with its own subscription. Sharing reports requires a paid licence per user with some tools. And there's a risk the dashboard becomes something only one person understands, just like the Excel file it replaced.
A custom dashboard
A custom build pays off when your sources lack a good connector, when the figures need processing before they're right, when you don't want to build and maintain it yourself, or when the dashboard needs to be part of an environment your team works in or your clients look at. You don't get a tool in which you have to build reports yourself, but the overview you need, with permissions per role already set up. We build those as part of our internal tools.
A middle route
There's a middle way too: the data is fetched automatically, cleaned and kept current in one place, and your team builds the charts in Power BI or Looker Studio. You keep the flexibility of those tools without having to do the hardest part yourself.
Looking, or also working?
A dashboard shows what's going on. If your team also needs to act on it straight away, such as picking up a task, updating a status or calling a client, an internal tool is the better form. The dashboard then becomes the start screen of that tool, instead of a separate window you look at before getting to work in another system.
What a dashboard costs
- Power BI or Looker Studio: any licences and connectors, plus the time of whoever builds and maintains it. That time is often underestimated.
- Custom build at Voortware: discovery is free, a build project starts at € 9,500 with a fixed price up front, and a first working version is live in four to eight weeks on average. Hosting usually costs € 20 to € 80 per month.
- Ongoing: if you want the dashboard to grow with new figures and sources, that's possible in a partnership from € 3,500 per month. That's a choice, not a condition.
What mainly drives the price is the number of sources, the state of the data and the number of roles with their own view. A management dashboard based on one accounting package sits at the lower end. Five sources with messy data and separate views per branch sit higher. All rates are on the pricing page.
Do the maths for yourself: how many hours a month does the report take now, and whose hours are they? Add the time lost to discussions about which number is right. Set that against the build price and you get an honest picture. Seeing things coming earlier, such as a client paying later and later or a project running over, is harder to count. Treat it as a bonus, not the main reason.
When Excel is perfectly fine
- For a one-off analysis or a question that's different every time.
- When the figures come from one source and only one person uses them.
- When the monthly overview takes half an hour and nobody is waiting for the numbers.
- For budgets and scenarios, where you want the freedom to calculate.
In those cases a dashboard solves a problem you don't have. Keep the Excel file, and at most make it a little more robust.
Where to start
- Write down the five questions you ask about your business every week or month.
- Next to each question, note the figure that answers it, the source it comes from and who decides based on it.
- Count how much time the current report takes per month.
- Find out whether your packages have an API or a standard connector. Their helpdesk can tell you.
- Then choose: tidy up Excel, get started with Power BI or Looker Studio yourself, or a custom dashboard.
With that list, one conversation is enough to know which route fits. If the dashboard should also sync data between your systems, see how we approach integrations.