The “Export to Excel” Joke was Never About the Users

A few weeks ago, I came across one of the most aggressive versions of the classic “Can I export this to Excel?” meme, and it made me stop for a moment. Not because it was particularly funny, but because it highlighted something that I believe we, as BI professionals, consistently misunderstand.

I’ve been working as a BI developer for over five years now, and during that time I’ve built dashboards that I’m genuinely proud of. Looking back, the most successful ones had something very specific in common: they were the projects where I was not only allowed to build, but also to design. In those situations, I spent a significant amount of time with stakeholders trying to understand what they actually needed, not just what they initially asked for. Then I would take a step back and sit with the problem — sometimes for days — until I could clearly see what was really going on underneath the surface.

Only after that would I start designing the report. And interestingly, the end result was often something the stakeholders hadn’t even imagined, yet it turned out to be exactly what they needed.