u/Sufficient-Profit-81

The more I learn about Business Intelligence, the more I realize that dashboards aren't the hardest part.

I've spent the past few weeks reading discussions from BI professionals, data analysts, and data engineers. One thing surprised me:

Most of the frustration isn't about Power BI, Tableau, or SQL.

It's things like:
• Stakeholders not knowing what they actually need.
• Different departments using different KPI definitions.
• Spending hours cleaning messy data.
• Building dashboards that nobody ends up using.
• Being asked to export everything back to Excel.

It made me wonder if we're focusing too much on building dashboards instead of solving the real problems behind them.

So I'd love to hear from people working in BI, analytics, or data engineering:

What's the biggest pain point in your day-to-day work that you wish someone would solve?

I'm not looking for feature requests or software recommendations. I'm genuinely trying to understand the problems that consume the most time and are still poorly solved.

I'd really appreciate hearing your perspective.

I'm doing some research because I'm curious about where people in BI, analytics and data engineering actually spend most of their time.

Not the "ideal" job description—but what frustrates you in real life.

If you could magically eliminate one recurring problem from your work forever, what would it be?

Some examples (but don't feel limited to these):

• Cleaning messy data?
• Stakeholders changing requirements?
• Building dashboards nobody uses?
• KPI definition arguments?
• Waiting for data access?
• Debugging pipelines?
• Endless ad-hoc requests?
• Excel exports?
• Meetings?
• Something else?

I'd also love to know:

• What is your role? (BI Developer, Data Analyst, Data Engineer, Analytics Engineer, etc.)
• How often does this happen?
• Have you found any tool that actually solves it, or do you just live with it?

The more detailed your answer, the more helpful it is. I'm especially interested in hearing about problems that seem "normal" in the industry but waste a huge amount of time.

I'm doing some research because I'm curious about where people in BI, analytics and data engineering actually spend most of their time.

Not the "ideal" job description—but what frustrates you in real life.

If you could magically eliminate one recurring problem from your work forever, what would it be?

Some examples (but don't feel limited to these):

• Cleaning messy data?
• Stakeholders changing requirements?
• Building dashboards nobody uses?
• KPI definition arguments?
• Waiting for data access?
• Debugging pipelines?
• Endless ad-hoc requests?
• Excel exports?
• Meetings?
• Something else?

I'd also love to know:

• What is your role? (BI Developer, Data Analyst, Data Engineer, Analytics Engineer, etc.)
• How often does this happen?
• Have you found any tool that actually solves it, or do you just live with it?

The more detailed your answer, the more helpful it is. I'm especially interested in hearing about problems that seem "normal" in the industry but waste a huge amount of time.