A pattern shows up in almost every company. Someone needs an answer. They don’t
By Sreenath Reddy · March 9, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
A pattern shows up in almost every company.
Someone needs an answer.
They don’t have access to the data.
Or they have access — but not the SQL skills.
So what happens?
They ask the data team.
Someone spends hours — sometimes days — building a dashboard.
The dashboard gets delivered.
Someone looks at it once.
And then it’s forgotten.
Meanwhile, the cost was real:
🔸 Build time
🔸 Context switching
🔸 Maintenance overhead
All for a dashboard that had one moment of usefulness.
Here is a simple exercise.
Look at all the dashboards and reports built in your organization over the last 12 months. How many of them are actually being used today?
And how many quietly died after the first week?
The reality is that a large portion of dashboards in most companies are single-use.
So, before building the next dashboard, ask one simple question:
Will this be used repeatedly?
If the answer isn’t clearly yes, stop.
Dashboards should be used for ongoing monitoring, not for one-off questions.
The good news is that AI is changing this model.
Instead of asking someone to build a dashboard, we are all headed down the path of connecting AI directly to the data layer and asking questions in plain language.
No SQL. No waiting on IT.
This shift could eliminate one of the biggest hidden productivity drains inside analytics teams:
👉 The single-use dashboard.
The Intentwise product team has an exciting announcement next week regarding this topic. Stay tuned.
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