Virtually every printer I meet with regarding their print software strategy mentions within the first five minutes their strong desire to easily get accurate data about their business. Some printers think this is only a software challenge: buy a reporting package, or better yet, invest in a business intelligence package. Some even think they need a database engineer on staff. Maybe even a full-time analyst who can simply respond to requests for business data on demand? 

All these ideas are valid. All these ideas are for getting data and presenting it. The crux of the issue in most print businesses is that the underlying data is a mess. Clean, accurate data is not something you can buy from a vendor. It's not even something you can pay a consultant to create for you. I wish there was an easy path to getting clean business data. Your business is creating data all day, every day, in all areas; data creation in a print business is done by everyone. However, just creating and acquiring data doesn’t automatically mean that it’s helpful. 

Here are some examples that might make you cringe: