Patterns
Why your first dashboard widget should be the deadline
Most teams start with a chart. We start with a date. Here is why the deadline is the anchor every other widget hangs off.
Ilias
May 18, 20265 min read
Blog
Notes from the build room.
Patterns, anti-patterns, and post-mortems from the team that ships seven-day builds.
Featured video
The AI-fication of cyber threats
Twelve minutes on how generative AI is rewriting the playbook for phishing, social engineering, and infrastructure attacks. Why we host customer data in Germany, why every Datareaches build ships with audit logs and role-based access, and what we recommend any business with sensitive data put in place this quarter.
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Anti-patterns
The 12-tile dashboard problem (and how we fix it)
If your dashboard has more than seven tiles, nobody reads it. We walk through the cull we did with a Series B client last month.
Ilias
May 4, 20267 min read
Integrations
Connecting two ERPs without breaking your month-end
A mid-market manufacturer had SAP and Exact running side by side. Here is the reconciliation pipeline that closed the books two weeks earlier.
Santi
April 22, 20269 min read
Hosting
Why all our customer data sits in Germany
Hetzner versus the hyperscalers. The trade-offs we made, the audit trail we kept, and what we tell procurement teams when they ask.
Ilias
March 28, 20268 min read
Process
The seven-day build, day by day
Discovery on day one, build on days two to five, review on six, live on seven. A walkthrough of every artefact we hand over.
Santi
March 14, 202611 min read
Behind the build
What the month-end close looks like with a live dashboard
For most finance teams at 50–200 person companies, the month-end close is a three-day ritual: export from the ERP, pull from the CRM, reconcile in a spreadsheet nobody fully trusts. Here is what close looks like after the dashboard is live.
Ilias
June 2, 20267 min read
Anti-patterns
The weekly reporting loop that no one has time to fix
Every Monday it starts again. Someone exports from the CRM, someone else pulls the ops sheet, a third person reconciles the numbers in a master spreadsheet that only they understand. By Thursday the data is already stale. By Friday you are presenting numbers you do not fully trust to a room that has stopped asking hard questions. We have seen this pattern at fourteen of the last twenty clients we onboarded. The teams were not lazy, they were stuck. The loop had become invisible, part of the job. Nobody had time to fix it because fixing it required the same three hours the loop was already eating. This is what we found when we looked at the data source chain, and what it cost to untangle it.
Santi
June 2, 20266 min read
Patterns
What your CRM is not telling you about your pipeline
Every sales manager knows the feeling. You open the CRM the morning of your pipeline review and the numbers look fine on screen, but you already know three deals are wrong. The one your best rep mentioned on Friday is not in there yet. The verbal that came in Thursday has the wrong stage. The renewal that needs a decision by month end is not on anyone's radar. The CRM tracks what gets entered. It does not track what is actually happening. This is the gap that shows up as a surprise miss at the end of the quarter, and what it looks like when you close it.
Santi
June 2, 20267 min read
Behind the build
Why your stock level is always wrong when you need it right
The ERP says 340 units. The warehouse says 312. Your purchasing lead says she stopped trusting the ERP number six months ago and runs her own spreadsheet instead. This is the most common inventory problem we encounter, not that companies lack data, but that the data is always slightly out of date at the exact moment a decision needs to be made. Here is what causes the gap, what it costs in over-ordering and stockouts, and what a live inventory view actually requires to build.
Santi
June 2, 20268 min read
Anti-patterns
Why hotel operations starts every day in three different systems
The PMS has occupancy. The OTA dashboard has pickup. The F&B system has last night's covers. None of them talk to each other, so someone opens all three before the 9am briefing and reads the numbers out loud. This is the most common operations pattern we see in hospitality, not a technology problem, a data assembly problem. Here is what it costs, why it persists, and what a single morning board actually requires to build.
Santi
June 2, 20268 min read
Anti-patterns
Why construction projects always have two sets of numbers
The PM has a forecast in the project management tool. The site manager has different actuals from the ground. Finance has a third version in the accounting system. Every week someone reconciles them manually, and every month the overrun is a surprise anyway. This is the most expensive data problem in construction, not that the data does not exist, but that it lives in three places and nobody has the same number at the same time. Here is what causes it, what it costs, and what a single project board actually requires to solve it.
Santi
June 2, 20269 min read
Anti-patterns
Why Shopify tells you what sold, not what you have
Your Shopify dashboard says 24 units. Your 3PL portal says 31. Your supplier is on a six-week lead time and hasn't replied to the last two emails. A flash sale inquiry just landed and you have four hours to respond. This is the e-commerce inventory gap, not a Shopify problem, not a 3PL problem, but what happens when three accurate systems each hold a different part of the answer and nobody has the full picture at once.
Santi
June 2, 202610 min read
Behind the build
How a logistics ops team cut its morning check from 90 to 8 minutes
A 35-person freight and 3PL operation. Five systems, 90 minutes every morning, delayed shipments discovered by customer complaint. Here is what we connected, the six tiles we built, and the three specific outcomes that were measurable in six weeks, including the Monday morning email chain that stopped on its own.
Santi
June 2, 20268 min read
Behind the build
How a finance team cut its month-end close from three days to four hours
A 65-person consulting firm. Three data sources, a 14-tab Excel file, a close that took three days and caught revenue timing errors only at the quarterly review. Here is what we connected, the six tiles we built, and the three outcomes in the first quarter, including a budget overrun caught before it happened.
Santi
June 2, 20269 min read
Behind the build
How a sales ops team stopped spending Thursdays on the pipeline report
A 45-person B2B SaaS company. HubSpot, a 14-tab forecast spreadsheet, and two and a half hours every Thursday to build a report that was already out of date by Monday. Here is what we connected, the five tiles we built, and the three outcomes, including a mid-market coverage gap that had been invisible for six months.
Santi
June 2, 202610 min read
Anti-patterns
Why self-serve BI tools don't stick for ops teams
Most ops and finance leads have tried this: IT or an analyst sets up Tableau or Power BI, it works for three months, then the team is back in the spreadsheet. Here is why the maintenance model breaks, where BI tools actually do work, and what is different about a fixed-scope build.
Santi
June 2, 20268 min read
Behind the build
How a healthcare practice cut its morning prep from 45 minutes to 8
A 3-location outpatient clinic. EHR, scheduling platform, and insurer billing portal, three logins, 45 minutes every morning before the first patient arrived. Here is what we connected, the five tiles we built, and the three outcomes, including a billing denial pattern worth €9,200 that had been running unnoticed for four months.
Santi
June 2, 202610 min read
Behind the build
How a marketing team stopped spending Wednesdays rebuilding the revenue board
A 55-person B2B SaaS company. CRM, three ad platforms, and GA4, reconciled by hand in a spreadsheet every Wednesday before Thursday's revenue meeting. The attribution argument ran for four months. Here is what we connected, the five tiles we built, and the three outcomes, including a budget reallocation that would not have happened from a spreadsheet.
Santi
June 2, 202611 min read
Behind the build
How a hotel group cut its morning ops check from 40 minutes to 7
A four-property urban hotel group. PMS across four sites, a channel manager, and an F&B POS, Katrin spent 40 minutes every morning before the 7:15 briefing pulling numbers from three systems. Here is what we connected, the six tiles we built, and the three outcomes, including a rate parity gap caught on a Thursday morning before it cost a peak weekend.
Santi
June 2, 202610 min read
Behind the build
How a construction PM team cut its project reporting from three versions to one
A 60-person contractor running eight projects. Procore for programme, Sage for actuals, a site spreadsheet for cost-to-complete, and a 90-minute Wednesday cost review that spent the first 20 minutes reconciling three different numbers. Here is what we connected, the six tiles we built, and the three outcomes, including a 9% package overrun caught in week seven instead of month three.
Santi
June 2, 202611 min read
Behind the build
How a DTC brand stopped losing bulk orders to a three-system inventory gap
An 18-person homewares brand, Shopify plus two 3PLs plus a supplier PO tracker, and a 45-minute reconciliation exercise every time a bulk inquiry came in. Here is what we connected, the five tiles we built, and the three outcomes in four months: €7,000 in bulk orders that would have been declined, a product drop that ran without overselling, and a 3PL sync failure caught four days before a flash sale.
Santi
June 2, 202612 min read
Behind the build
How a consultancy cut its Monday utilisation review from three hours to fifteen minutes
A 28-person management consultancy was running three systems, Harvest, Teamwork, Xero, and a two-hour Monday morning report. Partners made staffing decisions on last week's numbers. Here is the five-tile board that changed that, and the three outcomes in five months: a scope-creep engagement caught mid-project, a consultant's bench risk identified three weeks earlier than the old report would have shown, and a client commitment breach avoided before it was made.
Santi
June 2, 202611 min read
Anti-patterns
Why your production floor and your ERP tell different stories
The ERP records what was booked. The floor records what actually happened. In most manufacturing plants, closing that gap requires a morning stand-up, a clipboard, and a phone call to the supervisor. Here is what the gap costs, in decision lag, optimistic OEE, and schedules built on capacity assumptions that stopped being true years ago, and what a production board changes.
Santi
June 2, 202610 min read
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