We Built Dashboards for the Business. Then the Cloud Bill Built One for Us.

We discovered our BI architecture was quietly burning money.Two structural fixes - splitting giant 500M-row models into optimized pieces and replacing real-time DirectQuery with a 5-minute hybrid import model - cut our BigQuery spend from ~$545/day to ~$260/day.In 90 days, we saved ~$110K annually, stabilized performance, and kept dashboards feeling real-time.The lesson: BI isn’t a project. It’s continuous refinement, curiosity, and intentional design.