Most businesses assume a “data problem” means missing dashboards. Often, it’s something further upstream: inconsistent definitions across departments, data that’s collected but never structured for analysis, or nobody owning data quality. A dashboard built on top of that just displays the mess faster.
Signs to watch for: two departments report different numbers for the same metric, nobody can explain how a number is calculated, or reports take days to assemble by hand every month. Fixing the reporting layer without fixing these underlying issues just produces a better-looking version of the same unreliable numbers.