Ditching dashboards for scalable analytics

We talked to Magnus Dahlbäck, Senior Director of Data and Platform, who leads the data team at Voi. He shares how implementing Steep transformed analytics at the company, going from a dashboard-dependent approach to a scalable, metrics-first strategy.

Background Data access bottleneck

Analysts at Voi were the only ones with full access to company data, leaving business users dependent on them for insights. This created a cycle of dashboard requests, where each delivery often sparked new follow-up questions, keeping analysts stuck in an endless loop of ad hoc work.

This pattern led Magnus to ask two questions:

1. How can we be smarter about our data team's time?
2. How can we make it easy for more people to find and use data independently?

Challenges Dashboard overload

Voi’s data team faced three main challenges:

1. Inefficient use of analysts' time: Highly skilled analysts spent the bulk of their time designing, building, and editing dashboards.
2. Lack of engagement with data: Most business users had view-only licenses in Tableau, which didn’t allow them to explore data. Upgrading licenses for all users was too expensive and still not a viable solution, since the tool was too technical for business users. This made it impossible for everyone to access and engage with data.
3. Dashboard chaos: With hundreds of dashboards in use, business users struggled to find up-to-date visualizations. KPI names and numbers could vary depending on who created the dashboard, and without consistent governance, it was hard to know what data to trust. This led to confusion and cognitive overload for users.

Solution Replacing dashboards with metrics

Relying on dashboards prevented Magnus’s team from scaling analytics. Transitioning into a metrics-first approach could foster scalability, free the data team from inefficient admin work and an endless dashboard cycle, and empower business users to explore data independently.

How Steep fosters scalability

Steep is built on a semantic layer, enabling a consistent, metrics-based way of working with data. KPIs are defined centrally, ensuring a single source of truth for all data. Thanks to the intuitive interface, all employees can easily access and explore data freely.

A small but powerful benefit of naming metrics centrally is that Voi can use the business language already familiar to everyone. It makes metrics easy to find, recognize, and relate to across the company. For example, a key metric for Voi is vehicle rides per day, centrally defined and available to all users in Steep under the same name used in daily operations.

Using Steep Giving business users access to data

Introducing Steep gave Voi a new way of working with data across the organization. The data team builds and maintains the metric catalog in Steep, which is accessible and easy to use for all teams.

With Steep, Voi gets:

• A single source of truth for all data with metrics as building blocks.
• An accessible, easy-to-use tool for all non-data specialists.
• Powerful, modern BI built to handle Voi's high data demands.

Impact High productivity and curiosity for data

Since implementing Steep, Voi’s data team has seen a game-changing boost in productivity. Metrics are now the core data asset, accessible to everyone in the organization. There is a visibly stronger curiosity for data among business users, who are actively using insights to inform their daily decisions.

Core benefits of using Steep:

1. Data quality and ownership: Centrally defined metrics guarantee data consistency and reliability at all times. Metrics have clear owners, ensuring accountability for all data, and making it easy to know who to turn to with questions.
2. Increased data consumption: Analysts, business users, and even warehouse staff can create their own content with Steep. Easy access to data enables employees to analyze metrics crucial to their team’s success, and has sparked an unprecedented curiosity for data that helps teams make better decisions.
3. Reduced data requests: Business users now have access to their own data, cutting the bulk of inbound requests and completely eliminating dashboard building. Magnus estimates his team saved the time equivalent of one full-time employee, allowing skilled analysts to spend their time solving more advanced problems that have a strategic impact on the company.

The reception of Steep at Voi has exceeded Magnus’ expectations in both time to implement and adoption. Business users highly value the intuitive user interface, the modern feel of Steep, and the connection to Voi's business language, making it simple for everyone to access the right data. The number of monthly active users of data has significantly increased, as employees can now independently use data to make informed decisions.

Want to say goodbye to dashboards? Book a demo with Steep and discover how our intuitive BI platform can transform how your team works with data.