A regional logistics company replaced Looker, three Google Sheets, and a daily Slack standup with a single live dashboard built in 3 days.
Operations managed a fleet of 40+ vehicles across three states. Every morning, the ops manager spent 45 minutes pulling data from Looker, cross-referencing two Google Sheets, and posting a summary in Slack. Nobody trusted the numbers because they were always 6-12 hours stale. Looker cost $400/mo for 12 seats, and only 3 people actually logged in.
Day 1: Friction Audit + Data Mapping. Walked through the ops manager's morning routine step by step. Identified the three data sources that mattered (PostgreSQL orders DB, fleet GPS API, and a Google Sheet for driver schedules). Mapped every metric to its source and decided which ones actually needed real-time updates vs. daily.
Day 2: Build + Ship Core Dashboard. Built the Express app with live PostgreSQL queries and fleet API integration. Designed a clean, scannable layout with the 6 metrics the ops team cares about most: active deliveries, on-time %, avg delivery time, exceptions, revenue today, fleet utilization. Deployed by end of day.
Day 3: Alerts + Mobile + Polish. Added color-coded exception alerts (red for delays > 30 min, amber for approaching deadline). Made the layout responsive so drivers could pull it up on mobile. Added a daily email summary that replaced the Slack thread entirely.
Looker is a great product — for companies that need it. This team needed 6 metrics from 3 sources, refreshed every 5 minutes. That's not a BI platform problem. That's a custom dashboard that took 3 days to build and costs $0/month to run. The tool paid for itself in under 8 months, and now more of the team actually uses it because there's nothing to log into.