Power BI shows your numbers trending down, because it can't see the stadium was dark that month
A custom BI dashboard build in Cardiff typically costs £30,000 to £100,000 over 2 to 5 months. You move beyond Tableau, Power BI or Looker when your numbers only make sense against the events calendar, when bilingual reporting is required, or when you blend public-sector and commercial data that standard dashboards keep separate.
Power BI and Tableau visualise whatever you feed them, and that's the trap. A Cardiff hospitality or events firm sees revenue down month-on-month and the dashboard reads it as decline, when the real story is that the stadium had no fixtures that month. Without the events calendar as a dimension, the dashboard tells a true-looking but misleading story, and you make decisions against a fiction.
Public-sector and bilingual needs add to it. A Welsh Government-facing body wants reporting in both languages and has to blend grant and commercial data that standard dashboards treat as unrelated. So the analyst exports to a spreadsheet, adds the event context and the Welsh labels by hand, and the expensive BI tool becomes a chart generator feeding manual work.
- Your numbers only make sense against the events calendar
- Bilingual reporting is required for public-sector audiences
- You blend grant and commercial data that standard tools silo
- Analysts waste time re-adding context to off-the-shelf dashboards
- Your reporting is simple and English-only
- Event context doesn't affect your numbers
- You have no public-sector or grant data to blend
- Power BI or Tableau covers your needs out of the box
- Events calendar as a first-class dimension so trends are read in context
- Bilingual Welsh and English reporting for public-sector audiences
- Blended grant-funded and commercial data in one honest view
- Self-serve dashboards that end the spreadsheet re-work analysts do now
- Pulls from your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), POS (Point of Sale) and accounting software for a single source
- A custom dashboard layer costs more than a Power BI licence
- It's only as good as the data feeding it, so data quality work comes first
- You maintain the model as your data sources change
- For simple English-only reporting with no event context, off-the-shelf is fine
Business Intelligence Dashboards pricing in Cardiff: the real numbers
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Event-aware bilingual dashboard core | £30k to £50k | 2 to 3 months |
| Plus blended data modelling | £50k to £75k | 3 to 4 months |
| Full BI platform with connectors | £75k to £100k | 4 to 5 months |
The features that matter for Cardiff
Business Intelligence Dashboards services we deliver in Cardiff
Everything a business intelligence dashboards build here can cover: data warehouse, embedded analytics, business intelligence dashboards, BI development and data visualization.
Exactly what you get
BI dashboards that read your numbers against the events calendar, so an event-light month shows as exactly that rather than a false decline, with bilingual Welsh and English reporting and blended public-sector and commercial data in one honest view. It drills from event day to line item, schedules bilingual reports for stakeholders and frameworks, and pulls from your ERP, CRM, POS and accounting software for a single source of truth.
How to choose a developer in Cardiff
Pick a team that asks what drives your numbers before building a single chart, and treats the events calendar as a dimension. They should handle bilingual reporting and blended public and commercial data. A Cardiff partner who understands the events economy will build dashboards that explain a quiet month instead of misreading it as decline.
From kickoff to launch: the schedule
- !They build charts without the events calendar. Ask how event context enters the data
- !No bilingual reporting. Ask how Welsh-language dashboards are produced
- !They silo grant and commercial data. Ask how the two are blended honestly
- !They skip data quality. Ask how source accuracy is assured
- !They quote without seeing your data sources. Ask what drives the estimate
Most Cardiff teams pricing business intelligence dashboards end up comparing notes on helpdesk & ticketing, erp, custom software too; the systems share one data spine.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Power BI mislead us?
Power BI visualises what you feed it. Without the events calendar as a dimension, it reads an event-light month as decline, when the stadium simply had no fixtures. A custom dashboard makes event context first-class so trends are read correctly.
Can it report in Welsh and English?
Yes. Dashboards and scheduled exports render bilingually, so public-sector audiences and frameworks get reporting in both languages rather than English-only charts with hand-added Welsh labels.
Does it blend grant and commercial data?
It models grant-funded and commercial data together into one honest picture, instead of leaving them siloed the way standard dashboards do, while still letting you report each separately.