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01 · TRK · 01/03

Dashboards.

Not 80 pastel widgets. Not a monthly PowerPoint. A board you read in 30 seconds.

We connect your sources of truth (GA4, BigQuery, ad platforms, ERP) into a single dashboard. You read your revenue, CAC, ROAS per channel and threshold alerts without calling anyone. The rest stays accessible, but stops polluting the weekly call.

By Jérôme · Strategy & data

Get my dashboard quotedSee the Brasero mission

02 · OPERATION NOTE · OPS DASHBOARDS

Dashboards, decoded

The field report

You spend more than an hour a week stitching numbers between GA4the Google audience measurement tool, your ERPthe internal management software (stock, invoicing), Meta Ads Manager and an Excel export. Budget calls run on approximate memory, not on consolidated up-to-date figures.

The cost of waiting

Without a centralised dashboard, marketing steering turns slow and tribal. The exec board looks at one channel, marketing at another, sales says something else. The hidden cost: three weeks late on every meaningful budget decision.

In black and white

A single view (revenue / CACthe cost to acquire a new customer, customer acquisition cost / ROASwhat your ads return per euro invested, return on ad spend) per channel that reads in 30 seconds. Threshold alerts so you no longer miss a channel dropping off or a creeping cost per leadwhat each inbound enquiry costs you. The ability to arbitrate live in the meeting instead of chasing numbers afterwards.

The manoeuvre

We start by listing the 5 weekly decisions the dashboard must serve, before plugging any source. Then we connect GA4the Google audience measurement tool, BigQuerythe Google dedicated data warehouse and your ad platforms onto Looker StudioGoogle reporting dashboards, or a dedicated build if volume justifies it. No orphan widget without a written usage.

The lock that breaks

Budget calls made live in the room instead of after. A marketing reading shared by the exec board and sales. A clean foundation to plug revenue forecasting or lead scoring on top.

03 · WHAT WE WON'T WRITE IN AN RFP

A dashboard is a decision tool. Not a reporting artifact.

A dashboard only serves the decisions it triggers. As long as no budget arbitrage comes out of a chart, it pollutes the meeting. The right question before signing: which 5 weekly decisions do you want your dashboard to trigger? If the answer stays fuzzy, the right order is to lay the analytics layer first (GA4 and the measurement platform), then the reading.

  • 01

    Decision in 30 seconds

    You read your revenue, your CAC (customer acquisition cost), your ROAS (return on ad spend) and threshold alerts without navigating. The dashboard answers 5 precise weekly questions, not 80 possible curiosities.

  • 02

    Shared exec / marketing read

    One single source of truth visible to all. No more divergent figures across teams. Budget calls happen in the meeting, not three days later.

  • 03

    Threshold alerts wired in

    You get a signal when your cost per lead exceeds the 4-week average by 25%. No more silent crash between two exec meetings. Data comes to you, not the other way round.

  • 04

    Foundation for what comes next

    Once the reading is set, you can plug revenue forecasting, lead scoring (prospect rating), multi-entity consolidation on top. The dashboard becomes a starting point, not an end point.

04 · THE MISSION THAT PROVED IT

We deployed it on these fields.

Brasero estate, corporate retreats and weddings in Liège province

Brasero Group

Hospitality & events

24-month GA4 + ad platforms dashboards.

Read the Brasero mission
Ecostal Group team handling a solar panel in their warehouse

Ecostal Group

B2B photovoltaic e-commerce

6-month Funnel.io data lake + Looker Studio.

Read the Ecostal mission
Battlekart Verlaine, immersive indoor karting

Battlekart

B2C indoor leisure

12-month tracking + Ads dashboards.

Read the Battlekart mission

05 · THE PLAY-BY-PLAY

Four steps. Three weeks on average. Zero orphan widget.

  1. STEP 01

    We list the 5 weekly decisions.

    Half-day workshop with marketing + exec + sales. We write the 5 questions that need answering in the weekly call. What serves no decision drops out of the dashboard scope. No orphan widget.

  2. STEP 02

    We audit the sources of truth.

    Inventory of GA4 (opens in a new window), BigQuery (opens in a new window), Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, ERP. We check freshness, cross-source consistency, blind spots. If a source does not hold up, we say so before plugging it.

  3. STEP 03

    We build the target board.

    Looker Studio (opens in a new window) build connected directly to BigQuery, or via Funnel.io (opens in a new window) (a marketing data lake that consolidates your ad platforms) if cross-channel volume justifies it. One page per decision, not one page per channel. Client sign-off before locking. No production freeze on your site.

  4. STEP 04

    We document and hand over.

    Notion documentation: sources, formulas, alert thresholds, owner per page. 1-hour handover to your team or your media agency. If you switch providers in six months, the board stays readable and editable. Full ownership.

06 · THE FLOW AT A GLANCE

The path each number takes between your sources and the weekly call.

GA4business eventsBIGQUERYraw exportFUNNEL.IOdata lakeMAILCHIMPCRM eventsDASHBOARDread in 30 sREVENUECAC42€↓ −12 % vs M-1ROAS7,2×THRESHOLD ALERTS1 CTR drift detectednot 80 pastel widgets

Four sources converge into a single dashboard. Four zones, four weekly decisions, read in 30 seconds.

07 · NOT YET FOR YOU IF

Three cases where a dashboard is not the top priority.

  • Your analytics layer is broken.

    GA4 mis-configured, business events (the customer actions we measure) missing, doubled conversions. A dashboard plugged on top just consolidates the noise. We lay the measurement layer first, the board second.

  • Your marketing revenue is under 1 M€ a year.

    At these volumes, a properly maintained weekly Google Sheet is more than enough. The entry cost of a managed dashboard does not pay back. We would rather say it than walk you into the dark.

  • No one on your side will read it.

    If no recurring weekly meeting exists to open the board, it will become a forgotten tab. The cost of a dashboard is not paid back by its mere existence. Governance matters as much as data.

08 · THE QUESTIONS WE ACTUALLY HEAR

Questions whispered after the second meeting. Honest answers.

The cost is not in Excel, it's in the decision lag. SME field feedback in 2026 converges on a 2 to 3 weeks average gap between a signal appearing (drifting cost per lead, channel dropping off) and the corrective budget call. On media at 5-10 k€ per month per channel, that adds up to thousands of euros wasted fast. The broader agency vs freelance vs in-house debate sits here.

Looker Studio is free, natively connected to GA4 and BigQuery, and readable by your team without heavy training. Power BI and Tableau have more analytical depth but cost a lot in licences and need a dedicated profile. For 90% of SMEs in the 5-50 M€ range, Looker Studio covers the 5 weekly decisions. Above that, we move to Power BI when analytical depth becomes the real bottleneck. On the source side, the GA4 config fed by BigQuery export remains the clean prerequisite.

Clean V1 range: 8 to 12 widgets on the main page, no more. One page per weekly decision (acquisition, conversion, retention, channel margin, threshold alert). Beyond that, the board turns unreadable again. Curiosity widgets (heatmap, scatter by city) go to a secondary page, not home. Simple rule: if a widget does not trigger a decision over 4 weeks, it goes out. When the expected arbitrage is conversion rate, the UX audit makes the widget actionable.

Belgian SME e-commerce 2026 field feedback: 30 to 60 minutes saved per weekly meeting, that is 2 to 4 hours per month on marketing + exec side. The real gain is not time, it is decision quality: arbitraging on fresh numbers rather than on last week memory. The server-side layer that secures what comes back remains the foundation that keeps those numbers reliable.

Looker Studio infra: 0 € per month (free from Google). BigQuery or Funnel.io side: 50 to 200 € HTVA per month depending on event volume. Maintenance: 1 dev day per quarter to follow GA4 evolutions and schema changes. If we leave, you keep the Notion doc + Looker access + internal agency relay procedure in under a week. The Brasero mission shows the actual run after we left.

Yes. We do this on 30% of our missions. The rule: who steers the definition of the 5 weekly decisions and the final board sign-off. If your existing agency stays pilot, we frame scope and timeline. If they execute our plan, we accompany the build. We never step on the other agency without saying.

Field note

A good dashboard is a board you open once a week and that tells you in 30 seconds what to do. Not a panorama. Not a showcase. A decision tool. When we frame the 5 weekly questions upfront, the rest falls into place. With us, we start there, never with the widgets.

Jérôme · Strategy & data
JérômeStrategy & data · HeySquad

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