I was out on the driving range trying (and failing) to fix a slice on my drive some time ago. There was only one other person out there, and as expected, we started talking about work in between strokes. I’m a marketer at Domo, and he was a manager at a shipping company and a much better golfer than me.

Of course when I said I work for Domo, he responded, “I’ve seen your billboards all over, but I can’t figure out what you do.”

I could have quoted it to him before the sentence ever left his mouth. In Utah, our billboards are as ubiquitous as they are cleverly vague (one of my favorites was a hiring billboard that said “Sexy Young Start-Up Seeks Hot Engineers. For a Good Time, Call 801-980-1000…”). My fellow golfer-in-training had the same impression that a million other Utahns have had—the universal “Huh?”

So I told him. Domo makes it easier for business leaders to access their data and know what’s going on so that they can make better decisions. It’s crazy that we can get real-time updates about our old college friends but we can’t get real-time info on our business. Domo fixes that.

Then came the question I hadn’t heard: “Isn’t that why they were hired in the first place—to know what’s going on? If they don’t know, then maybe they just aren’t doing a good job.”

That’s when I realized that some business leaders probably had been hired for that reason. But it’s the wrong reason. Knowing what happened is only preliminary information—it’s the proverbial tree fallen in the woods. The fact that the tree fell is not the most important part of the story; it’s what you do about it that matters.

But managers are hamstrung. They’re stuck trying to see the big picture by getting reports. The reports they receive are typically static spreadsheets that tell them about last week’s data. Look, there’s a reason your rearview mirror isn’t nearly as large as your windshield. Managers need to see what’s coming, in real time. Knowing if you missed your exit and by how far isn’t nearly as useful as seeing it, anticipating it, and moving over at the right time.

That’s a lot of metaphors, but the point is this: today’s BI and analytics have the capacity to tell us what we need to know. But we don’t have the ability to get it when we need it. Domo does all the legwork of getting that information to the right people, so they can make the right decisions at the right time with the right data.

We just produced a nifty new demo video that shows you exactly what I mean. If you haven’t taken the time to see it yet, you should. Domo makes the difference between just gathering information and using it to grow your business.