Agreed. A lot of my background is in banking / fintech. So much scrambling on "adhoc analytics" can be avoided if you have really well constructed, standard reports and dashboards.
The department I started my career at didn't have this and every exec request was a bespoke, adhoc request, tailored to answer that one question. I spent many late nights writing SQL and building excel files / powerpoints to answer a single question.
When I started at a fintech as the first data person, we built a few primary dashboards where you could drill down for detail. Those answered over 80% of the questions people asked.
The department I started my career at didn't have this and every exec request was a bespoke, adhoc request, tailored to answer that one question. I spent many late nights writing SQL and building excel files / powerpoints to answer a single question.
When I started at a fintech as the first data person, we built a few primary dashboards where you could drill down for detail. Those answered over 80% of the questions people asked.