Modern BI tools promise a lot — faster insights, cleaner visuals, empowered users.

But here’s the truth from the trenches:

BI adoption fails when tools come before trust.

We’ve helped organizations untangle BI rollouts that looked good on paper but missed the mark in practice. And time after time, it wasn’t the tool’s fault. It was the approach.

When BI Modernization Stalls

At one State Fund, Tableau had been chosen as the flagship BI tool. On the surface, it made sense: sleek dashboards, interactive visuals, and wide industry adoption.

But within weeks, adoption began to slow. Reports that had been workhorses for years were suddenly out of reach — or worse, rebuilt in ways that didn’t serve the business.

Two examples stood out:

• Contingent Commission: A regulatory report with complex conditional formatting, pixel-perfect layout, and business rule-based rendering. Tableau struggled to deliver both the structure and export fidelity required for compliance.
• Agency Current Book: A report built with page sets, custom summary rows, and advanced crosstab logic — again, poorly suited to Tableau’s flat design model.

And then there was the OCR (Open Claims Review) — a report designed for live meetings with outside agents.

For OCR, the business needed to override data values temporarily, reflecting last-minute changes that wouldn’t hit the source system for up to an hour. This meant:

• Users could write back changes in the source system.
• The DW received a near-real-time push of just this data item.
• Cognos picked it up immediately, ensuring the report reflected real-time adjustments.

Tableau, by contrast, required a full refresh to pick up those changes — not viable for these time-sensitive meetings.

From Feature List to Data Wishlist

We shifted the conversation from features to needs.

We led the team through a data wishlist process:

• What absolutely needed to stay?
• What could evolve?
• What was worth building new?

With that in hand, we ran a gap analysis and helped architect a hybrid BI environment:

• Cognos handled high-complexity reports, real-time overrides, and print-perfect outputs.
• Tableau supported exploratory dashboards and visual summaries where its strengths shone.

It wasn’t about holding onto the past. It was about preserving trust — and designing BI around how people worked, not just how the tool was sold.

BI Migration Pitfalls We See Again and Again:

1. Tool-first thinking: Choosing a platform before understanding user needs.
2. Feature-for-feature rebuilds: Replicating old reports exactly, even if they weren’t ideal to begin with.
3. Ignoring data flow realities: Real-time needs vs. batch refresh capabilities.
4. One-size-fits-all UX: Assuming executives and analysts want the same thing.

Successful BI isn’t about adopting what’s next — it’s about elevating what works and building for what’s possible.

Lessons in UX from the Field

Across industries, we’ve seen the same patterns:

• At a regional public university system, HR dashboards were redesigned around what leaders did with the data — not just how they wanted it to look.
• At a global retail group, dashboards were tailored for regional exploration and executive summaries, respecting different users’ needs.
• At a behavioral health provider, manual Excel processes were automated and brought back into the BI platform, improving time to insight.

Our UX Framework for BI Adoption

We’ve distilled years of experience into a simple model for BI success:

Datagize UX Triangle

• Audience: Who is using the data? What do they need to know quickly?
• Purpose: What action does this report drive? Storytelling or exploration?
• Tool: Which platform supports this best — structurally and visually?

UX Drives Trust. Trust Drives Adoption.

The best BI projects don’t start with tools — they start with users.

If your dashboards aren’t landing, or your adoption is stalling, it’s time to step back. Rethink who you’re designing for, not just what you’re building.

A Personal Note from the Trenches

When I first started building BI solutions in the ‘90s, it was all about getting the reports out — making sure leadership had what they asked for.

But I learned quickly: unless the people on the ground trust the data and know how to use it, none of it matters.

Over the years, I’ve built systems for sales, supply chain, finance, marketing, manufacturing, claims, and more. The tools have changed — but the challenge hasn’t.

BI adoption isn’t a tech problem. It’s a UX problem.

And that’s where we come in.

Ready to Rethink Your BI UX?

If you’re about to choose a tool, or already mid-migration, take a step back.

We’re offering a limited number of free 60-minute BI Trust & UX Fit consults this month.
Let’s talk about how UX could save you months — and rebuild trust before it’s lost.

📩 Drop us a note

You bring the road.
We’ll bring the steering wheel.

Some consulting wins come from perfect execution. Others come from how you respond when things go wrong.

In consulting, some lessons come easy. Others are forged in high-stakes moments that test your integrity, resilience, and commitment to doing what’s right. Trench Tales is a blog series dedicated to sharing those defining experiences—the moments that shaped us, challenged us, and reinforced the core principles that guide Datagize today.

The year is 2000. The consulting firm I co-founded had built a custom sales commission system for a major client — before any of the big software vendors had even developed their own sales compensation modules. It handled sales territory assignments, overlays, and complex commission formulas. After the client was acquired, we adapted the system for their parent company.

One night, during a critical monthly commission run, something went wrong. The system wasn’t calculating commissions correctly. Time was running out. The client’s leadership was panicked. The executive of sales operations flew in from Canada to oversee the crisis firsthand.

I had just been diagnosed with pneumonia and was at home when the call came in. The IT Director was frantic. The system they had invested so much in was failing at the worst possible time. He wasn’t just asking for help — he was asking for our presence.

So I showed up.

The War Room

As soon as I arrived at the client’s office, I took charge and established a War Room. Within minutes, we had assembled a cross-functional response team — our consultants and client engineers, all focused on one goal: finding the root cause. The stakes were enormous. If we failed, it wouldn’t just damage our reputation — it could cost client executives their jobs.

For 48 hours, we lived in that War Room. We worked in teams, pushing through exhaustion. Some of the brightest minds in the industry were on that office floor, including a PhD software architect who later went on to design a revolutionary virtual keyboard. Yet, despite our collective expertise, the issue eluded us.

Still, we refused to fail.

After 40 straight hours of debugging, log analysis, and relentless testing, our architect spotted something — an anomaly buried deep in the system. A single point of failure. A fixable one.

We patched it. We tested it. It worked.

Just in time to complete the commission run and restore confidence in the system—and in us.

After the dust settled, the client executive pulled me aside. He told me he had never, in all his years professionally, seen a war room run so effectively. The way we coordinated efforts across teams, stayed focused under pressure, and executed with precision left a lasting impression. Our commitment impressed him more than anything technical we may have achieved.

Why This Matters to The Datagize Way

This wasn’t about fixing a system. It was about showing up when it mattered most.

This experience helped shape the ethos of Datagize — where Integrity, Client-Centricity, and Pragmatism aren’t just words. They are how we operate. We take ownership. We stand by our clients. We do whatever it takes to get the job done.

Not every consulting firm would have stayed in that War Room. We did. And that relentless commitment is what defines The Datagize Way.

Want to work with a team that doesn’t back down from challenges? Click one of the buttons below to connect with Datagize.

In consulting, some lessons come easy. Others are forged in high-stakes moments that test your integrity, resilience, and commitment to doing what’s right. Trench Tales is a new blog series dedicated to sharing those defining experiences—the moments that shaped us, challenged us, and reinforced the core principles that guide Datagize today.

The year is 1996, early in my executive career. The fledgling consulting company I co-founded had just convinced a Silicon Valley giant—let’s call them Bigco—that our expertise in decision support systems and data warehousing could help them get their sales reporting under control. We put together a crack team of industry veterans, including some who had built the world’s first major data warehouse. The project was scoped for eight weeks.

Four weeks in, the phone rings. It’s the client. The project is completely off track, and if we don’t turn it around immediately, our future with Bigco is dead in the water. The only option, he tells me, is to remove the project manager, roll up my sleeves, and restart from scratch.

I pull the team together and quickly realize the hard truth: they’re not just missing the mark—they don’t even understand what the client actually needs. Worse, the only way to course-correct is to extend the timeline and effectively double our original budget. The math is brutal: if we do the right thing, we’ll take a major financial hit—one that could sink our small firm.

But I knew one thing for certain: the right thing was the only option.

I convinced my partner to take the loss, stepped into the trenches, and spent the next ten weeks leading the team to deliver exactly what Bigco had asked for.

Looking back from 2025, I can say this: it was the biggest financial loss I’ve ever taken on a project. But that decision—to honor our commitment, no matter the cost—defined my consulting career. It set the tone for everything that followed. And in the end, it wasn’t a loss at all: instead of walking away from us, Bigco became one of our largest clients for the next decade, fueling our growth to 300 consultants.

👉 Some lessons cost you. Others define you.

This story isn’t just about the past—it’s about what drives us today. At Datagize, we believe that Integrity, Client-Centricity, and Pragmatism aren’t just words; they are the foundation of how we do business. The right path isn’t always the easiest or the most profitable in the short term, but it is the one that builds trust, strengthens relationships, and delivers long-term success.

Want to work with a team that puts principles first? Let’s connect.