I've heard versions of the same BI promise for years: "No more exports." No more pasting into Excel. No more copying into slides.
And yet here we are in 2025, with capable platforms such as Snowflake and Databricks, plenty of data engineering tools, and increasingly polished dashboards.
I still see people finish their analysis by pasting into Excel. Then into PowerPoint. And increasingly, into LLMs. The important distinction is whether the tool and the information being shared fit the organisation's policies and controls. A convenient place to paste is not automatically an appropriate one.
Why? It's not just user inertia, though some of that exists too. Sometimes the tools do not fit the way people make decisions.
BI platforms often aim to keep analysis inside the platform. But decisions don't only live inside a dashboard. They live in workflows and meetings and conversations. When a tool does not provide enough context or flexibility, people look for another way to finish the task.
The governance gap
Useful BI needs shared definitions, clear ownership and a way to resolve disagreements about the numbers. Building and maintaining that takes time, especially as people and priorities change. Where those foundations are weak, adoption can stall, definitions drift and trust suffer. The "last mile" of decision-making may remain outside the tool.
What LLMs are changing (hopefully by 2027)
The aspiration is analytics that are conversational, contextual and trustworthy (million-dollar word). Ask "Why did Q4 miss plan?" and get a useful explanation, drivers and possible next steps. That is an ambition, not a guarantee of a correct answer. The data, definitions and response still need checking. Demos are not reality.
The trust layer pattern
I think the strongest BI products will do more than make dashboards prettier. They'll reduce organisational friction, help companies build governance and put context where people need it. They'll make staying inside the platform easier than leaving.
- BI vendors: be curious about why people paste. Build systems they don't want to leave. The everyday pain points deserve as much attention as the shiny new features.
- Business users: ask yourself whether there is a better way than pasting into Excel or PowerPoint. And if you must paste, at least leave a breadcrumb: the link to the source report and the business owner of the numbers.
First posted on LinkedIn. Revised for this site in November 2026.