Revenue Intelligence vs dashboards

A dashboard is a view: a screen with charts and figures that show what was put into it. It waits for someone to look and read it correctly. Revenue Intelligence is a system that looks for what does not add up between CRM, contracts, orders and invoices on its own, puts an amount on it and brings the finding to the right person. A dashboard answers the question its builder thought of. Revenue Intelligence also flags what nobody asked about.

What is a dashboard?

A dashboard can live anywhere: in Power BI, in the CRM, in the ERP, in a spreadsheet or in a standalone tool. The principle is always the same. Someone decides which figures matter, retrieves the data and puts it into charts, gauges and tables. Users can filter by period, region or customer.

Dashboards are valuable. They give a picture of how the business is doing at a glance. Revenue per month, margin per product group, outstanding receivables, pipeline per stage. Without a dashboard, someone has to pull that out of the systems every time.

The four limitations of a dashboard

1. It shows totals; leaks sit in lines

A revenue chart shows that revenue in March was EUR 820,000. It does not show that three invoices are missing that should have been there. A missing invoice of EUR 4,000 on monthly revenue of EUR 820,000 is half a percent. No chart makes that visible. You find leaks at line level: this deal, this order, this invoice.

2. It shows what exists, not what is missing

A dashboard builds on data that exists. An invoice that was never created does not exist, so it appears on no dashboard. To see something that is missing, you have to compare two sources: what should have been there (deal, contract, work order) and what is there (invoice). That is a check, not a view.

3. It waits for a reader

A dashboard does nothing if nobody looks. And when someone does look, they need to know what counts as abnormal. Is a 6 percent drop in service contracts normal for this month, or a sign that something is going wrong? The dashboard does not say. There are companies with dozens of dashboards of which a handful are opened each week.

4. It goes out of date

A dashboard is built around the questions of the moment. The business changes: new products, new contract types, a different pricing structure. The dashboard keeps showing what it always showed until someone changes it. If a field in the CRM is renamed, a chart can quietly drop to zero without anyone noticing.

What does Revenue Intelligence do differently?

Revenue Intelligence does not start with the question "what do you want to see" but with "is it right". The difference comes down to four things:

• Comparing instead of displaying. Every won deal next to its order and invoice. Every contract next to the invoiced price.
• Looking for what is missing. A deal without an invoice, a contract without indexation, additional work without an invoice line.
• Reporting instead of waiting. The finding reaches the owner as a task or signal, with the evidence attached.
• An amount per finding. So it is clear what comes first.

Revenue Intelligence has dashboards too. But they show the outcome of the checks: how much is leaking, where, and what has been recovered. The dashboard is the result, not the means.

Worked example: a green dashboard

Worked example: suppose an MSP with EUR 4M in revenue has a dashboard showing monthly recurring revenue (MRR). It is green: MRR grows slightly every month.

Beneath that growth sits the following:

• 14 customers with more workstations in use than are in billing. On average 6 workstations under-invoiced, at EUR 35 per workstation per month. That is 14 times 6 times EUR 35, or EUR 2,940 a month, EUR 35,280 a year.
• 9 customers whose indexation was not carried through. EUR 900 a month in services on average, 4 percent indexation. That is EUR 324 a month, or EUR 3,888 a year.
• 3 customers who have left, but for whom licences are still being bought from and paid to the vendor. Say EUR 400 a month in total, which is EUR 4,800 a year in costs with no revenue against them.

MRR is growing, so the dashboard is green. But it should have grown faster, and costs are still running. None of this is visible in an MRR chart. The figures are made up to show the mechanism. How this plays out at MSPs specifically is covered in Revenue leakage at MSPs.

Why more dashboards are not the answer

A common reflex when the numbers are in doubt is to have a new dashboard built. A "CRM vs accounts differences" dashboard. A "contracts without indexation" dashboard. That can work, but it brings the same limitations: someone has to build it, maintain it, open it and follow up. And it only finds what the builder thought of.

The underlying problem is not that too little is visible. It is that nobody owns the differences, and that differences do not find their own way to someone. Who should be responsible is covered in Who is responsible for revenue leakage?.

When is a dashboard enough?

Dashboards are good enough when:

• you mainly want to follow trends and proportions, not individual errors;
• there is someone who reads them daily or weekly and knows what normal looks like;
• the underlying data has already been checked for completeness;
• your questions are stable and do not change often.

For revenue checking at line level, across multiple systems, a dashboard is the wrong tool. For that you need a check that runs on its own. How to set one up is described in How do you detect revenue leakage automatically?.

Checklist: what do your dashboards actually do?

Go through your existing dashboards with these questions:

1. Which dashboards were opened in the past month, and by whom?
2. Which decision was taken in the past month on the basis of a dashboard?
3. Does any of your dashboards show what is missing, or only what exists?
4. Does any of your dashboards work at line level, with a link to the deal or invoice?
5. Do you know for each dashboard whether the underlying connection still works?
6. Is there an owner for every deviation a dashboard could show?

The wider comparison with BI, CRM, ERP and other software is in Revenue Intelligence vs Business Intelligence. What the RiOS screens look like, with example data, is shown on the page about the system.

Frequently asked questions

Isn't a Power BI dashboard Revenue Intelligence?

It is a view. It can be part of a revenue check if someone builds the line-level comparison and follows it up. On its own, it checks nothing.

Why can't I see revenue leakage in my dashboards?

Because a dashboard shows what was booked. Leakage is revenue that was not booked. You only see it by comparing what should have been there with what is there.

Should I throw away my dashboards?

No. For trends and management information they remain useful. Revenue Intelligence takes over the checking work that dashboards do not do.

Does Revenue Intelligence have dashboards too?

Yes, but they show the outcome of the checks: what is leaking, where, how much, and what has been recovered. The dashboard comes after the check, not before it.