‘A dashboard without action? That’s just a screensaver’

Data should be designed for decisions, not decoration – and a group of agency leaders agree that the sheer volume of metrics available is overwhelming teams, slowing down decisions and, in some cases, pushing them towards making the wrong calls.

“You can collect an essentially infinite amount of data, but it will take you an infinite amount of time to parse through it,” says Kurt Hauptman, vice-president of performance analytics at Team Lewis. “The question is: are you collecting the data that will actually help you make decisions?”

A fool’s errand

This is driving a shift from hoarding to orchestration. Instead of capturing every available signal, brands need to curate the right ones – and build the structures to act on them.

“It’s not just about the quality of the signals we’re collecting, but the quality of the data structure brands have in place to be able to act on that,” says Emily Lesinski, group director of analytics and insights at Rightpoint.

“Source of truth is a fool’s errand when it comes to your marketing because, depending on what question you’re trying to answer, there’s going to be different truths,” says Ebrahim Bakhtar, senior analytics director at PMG.

The point being that marketers should stop chasing the mythical perfect dataset and focus instead on fit-for-purpose data that can move the business forward.

The speed factor

And of course, real-time data creates new pressures – and new risks. “We can’t really be relying on quarterly reports,” says Zver. “Teams need to identify the signals that will actually change what we do tomorrow.”

This speed must be balanced with judgment. Lesinski cautions against overreacting: “If you look at the performance of a campaign on day one or two and make a decision based on that, have you really given it enough time to take root? It’s like if Google Maps says turn right into the lake, do you just follow it or use common sense?”

The panel agrees that agility doesn’t mean knee-jerk. It means having the processes and accountability in place to know when to act fast and when to hold steady.

Managing expectations

The other part of this is the uphill battle agencies often face when it comes to client expectations. “Clients hear ‘data’ and think ‘answer’ – they want a silver bullet,” says Tina Allan, global chief data and intelligence officer at FCB. “Our role is to rein them in and get them to understand that there isn’t just going to be one metric, one analysis or one report.”

For Hauptman, that means rethinking the role of reporting. “Clients ask how often we should be reporting and the answer is as often as you can make decisions with that information,” he says. “Yes, a dashboard is nice, but it’s a tool and you need to synthesize the information and either stop, start or continue something based on that.”

The culture challenge

Across the board, the panel believes that the hardest part of data transformation isn’t technology. “Technical challenges are a lot easier than cultural ones,” says Bakhtar. “We can all solve pipelines, we can all solve tracking, but changing behaviors is really hard.”

Hauptman agrees: “The best marketers are inherently curious. You can have all the tools in the world, but you need to know what to do with them. Intentional change management is key to success going forward.”

Data projects succeed when everyone is clear on who owns which part of the process – and when the goal isn’t just reporting, but insight that drives creative and media decisions.

Less dashboards, more decisions

So, what does a healthy data strategy look like in 2025? The group settled on three principles: agility, action and accountability – that’s how brands need to approach it.

The key is a data strategy and plan that has “an absolute focus on quality,” says Lucy Darbon, data strategy director at Armadillo CRM.

That means building dashboards that tell you what to do next, reports that trigger decisions and data cultures where teams know not just how to collect information, but how to act on it.

And perhaps most importantly, it means asking the right questions. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. The biggest question brands and agencies need to have in their head when approaching data is: why?