When “Just Give Us the Data” Wasn’t Really About Data

Context

At PegEx, we were supporting environmental services companies operating in highly regulated environments. As part of the platform, we built reporting dashboards intended to give customers visibility into their activity and performance. The dashboards were detailed and thoughtfully designed, and internally, they were seen as a meaningful product investment.

The Problem

Despite the effort put into reporting, a small but consistent set of customers began asking for something much simpler: access to the raw data. At face value, this seemed like a step backward. A request that bypassed the reporting tools we had already built.

The Tension

There was a natural temptation to interpret these requests as a preference issue or a lack of familiarity with the dashboards. From a product perspective, the reporting features were robust, and improving them further felt like the logical next step. At the same time, customers were spending significant time exporting data manually, reshaping it, and running their own processes outside the platform.

My Role

I worked closely with customers to understand what they were actually trying to accomplish with the data, rather than focusing on how they were interacting with the reporting tools themselves. The goal was to clarify whether the issue was usability, capability, or something else entirely.

How I Approached It

Instead of treating the request for raw data as a feature gap, I spent time digging into the workflows customers were supporting outside the system. Through those conversations, a clearer picture emerged: these customers weren’t looking for better dashboards; they were trying to meet strict reporting requirements from the EPA and state agencies that oversaw their operations.

The reporting tools we had built were answering internal questions, but they weren’t aligned with the formats and structures required for regulatory submission. As a result, customers were forced to manually reshape data to stay compliant. Once that became clear, the problem shifted from “how do we improve reporting?” to “how do we reduce the operational burden of compliance?”

Rather than adding more visualization or configuration options, we focused on creating a reporting mechanism that allowed customers to extract data directly from the platform in the exact formats required by regulators. The emphasis was on accuracy, consistency, and ease of submission — not presentation.

Outcome

What had previously been a time-consuming and error-prone process became a straightforward workflow that could be completed in just a few clicks. Customers were able to meet regulatory requirements more efficiently, with far less manual effort, and without needing to maintain parallel systems outside the platform.

By aligning the solution to the actual constraint customers were facing, we delivered something far more valuable than a more elaborate dashboard.

What It Reinforced

This experience reinforced for me that simplicity is often a sign of deeper understanding and that the most useful solutions are the ones that remove work customers shouldn’t have to do in the first place.