Designing a dashboard might seem straightforward, just add charts, metrics, and a few visualizations. But the dashboards that actually help businesses make decisions often look surprisingly simple.

In this episode of The Dashboard Effect, Brick and Landon talk about why the most effective dashboards are usually the simplest to read, and the hardest to build. Behind a clean dashboard is often a lot of complex data modeling, business rules, and engineering work that makes the information accurate and easy to understand.

They walk through real examples, including salesperson ROI dashboards, accounts receivable reporting, and price-volume-mix analysis, to show how much work happens behind the scenes to create dashboards that people actually use.

If you’ve ever wondered why some dashboards get ignored while others become essential tools for decision-making, this episode explains the difference.

Learn more about Blue Margin:
https://bluemargin.com

Many companies assume the best way to build a data capability is to hire an internal team. But is that always the right move?

In this episode of The Dashboard Effect, Brick and Landon break down one of the most common questions they hear from prospective clients: Why outsource your data work instead of hiring in-house?

They talk through the real tradeoffs companies face when building a data team, from the challenge of finding a single person who can do everything (the “Batman” hire), to the hidden costs of recruiting, training, and managing multiple specialists.

They also discuss why outsourced teams can sometimes deliver more value than a single internal hire, thanks to a broader bench of expertise and the ability to scale resources up or down as business needs change.

Whether you're considering building your own data team or looking for ways to get more out of your data infrastructure, this conversation offers a practical look at the pros and cons of each approach.

Pulling financial data together sounds simple, until you’re dealing with 20+ acquired companies, multiple ERPs, and a reporting process held together by massive Excel files.

In this episode of The Dashboard Effect, Brick Thompson sits down with Senior Account Executive Kate Eberle to walk through a real client example: a PE-backed, billion-dollar organization struggling to consolidate financial data across a highly fragmented system landscape.

They break down what went wrong, why Excel stopped scaling, and how moving to a modern data platform eliminated weeks of manual FP&A work, while giving leaders faster, more actionable insight into the business.

About Blue Margin

Blue Margin helps growing companies make better decisions with their data. We work with finance and technology leaders to consolidate messy, disconnected systems into reliable, usable data foundations, so teams can spend less time wrangling spreadsheets and more time understanding what’s actually happening in the business.

Learn more: https://bluemargin.com

If your reporting process depends on manual work, fragile Excel files, or month-old data, we help you move to a more scalable, trustworthy approach.