Power BI charts your Dundee studio's invoices. The milestones that drive them stay invisible.
If a Dundee studio's most important numbers, milestone status, royalty break-even, grant cost-recovery, live in spreadsheets and docs that Tableau and Power BI can't read cleanly, your dashboards chart the easy data and miss the data that matters. Custom BI runs £35,000 to £100,000 over 2 to 6 months, often built on the custom systems that finally hold that data.
Power BI, Tableau, and Looker are powerful, but they can only visualise data that's structured and reachable. In a Dundee studio or lab, the decisive numbers aren't: milestone status sits in a producer's spreadsheet, royalty break-even in a finance side-sheet, grant cost-recovery in a funder document. So the dashboards end up charting invoices and headcount, the data that happens to be tidy, while the questions that actually matter go unanswered.
You can point Power BI at a pile of spreadsheets, but you inherit their mess: inconsistent formats, manual updates, and a dashboard that's only as fresh as the last person who remembered to export. The result is a BI layer that looks impressive and tells you little, because the underlying data was never modelled to be analysed, only to be survived.
- Your decisive metrics live in docs BI tools can't read cleanly
- Dashboards chart tidy data and miss the questions that matter
- You need live answers on profitability, milestone risk, or grant burn
- Disputed numbers signal there's no trusted single source
- Your data is already clean, structured, and reachable
- Power BI or Tableau connects to your sources directly
- Standard dashboards answer your questions well
- You don't need bespoke metric modelling
- Dashboards fed from modelled milestone, royalty, and grant data, not messy exports
- Answers to your real questions: title profitability, milestone risk, grant burn
- Live data straight from source systems, so dashboards are never stale
- One trusted source so numbers stop being argued over
- Built on your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), project, and accounting systems for end-to-end analytics
- Good BI needs good underlying data, so you may need to fix source systems first
- Custom dashboards need maintenance as your questions and data evolve
- Off-the-shelf BI ships connectors and templates a custom build recreates
- If your data is already clean and standard, Power BI alone may suffice
Business Intelligence Dashboards pricing in Dundee: the real numbers
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboards on existing clean data | £35k to £55k | 2 to 3 months |
| Add data modelling for milestones and grants | £55k to £80k | 3 to 5 months |
| Full BI platform + source integrations | £80k to £100k | 4 to 6 months |
The features that matter for Dundee
What we build under business intelligence dashboards in Dundee
Digital Heroes builds the full business intelligence dashboards stack for Dundee teams. Typical engagements cover KPI dashboards, data warehouse, embedded analytics, business intelligence dashboards, BI development and data visualization.
Exactly what you get
You get dashboards fed from modelled milestone, royalty, and grant data, answering the questions that actually drive decisions: which titles are profitable, which milestones are at risk, which grants are burning too fast. The data refreshes live from your source systems, so it's never stale, and it comes from one trusted source so the numbers stop being argued over in meetings.
How to choose a developer in Dundee
Choose a team that treats data modelling, not chart styling, as the real work. Ask how they'd make milestone and grant data analysable before building a single dashboard. The right partner connects BI to your ERP, project, and accounting systems for live feeds, and is honest that good dashboards depend on fixing the source data first, rather than pointing Power BI at a pile of spreadsheets.
From kickoff to launch: the schedule
- !They point BI at spreadsheets without fixing the data. Ask how dashboards stay fresh
- !No plan to model milestones or grants. Ask how the decisive metrics become analysable
- !Dashboards chart only tidy data. Ask which real questions they'll answer
- !No live source feeds. Ask how stale the data will be
- !No governance or single source. Ask how number disputes are resolved
Teams investing in business intelligence dashboards in Dundee usually scope it next to helpdesk & ticketing, erp, custom software, since these systems share data and budgets.
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 can't Power BI answer our real questions?
Power BI can only visualise data that's structured and reachable. In a Dundee studio, milestones, royalties, and grants live in spreadsheets and docs, so dashboards chart tidy invoice data and miss the metrics that actually drive decisions.
Do we need custom systems before custom BI?
Often yes. Good dashboards need analysable data, so making milestones and grants readable, sometimes via your ERP or project system, comes first. BI built on messy exports looks impressive but tells you little.
Can BI dashboards show title profitability?
Yes, once revenue recognition and project costs are modelled. Dashboards then show which titles are profitable, which milestones are at risk, and how grants are burning, all live rather than reconstructed manually.