Three Options. One Clear Answer.
Build it, outsource it, or partner with Marquis.
Every manufacturing business eventually faces this choice. Here's an honest comparison of what each path actually looks like in practice.
For a decade, the industry promised that self-service analytics would put every business user in control of their data. The tools were built for technicians. Business users got the complexity without the results. Here's what a different approach looks like.
Most data firms know data. Most manufacturing consultants know manufacturing. Very few know both deeply. That combination is what makes Marquis IQ different, and why it gets deployed in weeks instead of years.
A fully burdened data analyst costs $150,000–$200,000+ per year: one person, one skill set. When your need spans finance, operations, sales, procurement, and pricing, headcount alone doesn't scale the way the work does. Marquis IQ gives your existing team access to the full capability stack, at a fraction of what building it through hiring would cost.
Every manufacturing business eventually faces this choice. Here's an honest comparison of what each path actually looks like in practice.
A traditional bespoke data platform takes 6–18 months to build. A technology firm contract takes longer. A new hire takes months to find and months more to onboard. Marquis IQ is pre-built, pre-tested, and proven across dozens of manufacturing environments. The only thing to configure is yours.
The premise was appealing: give business users great tools, and they'll answer their own questions. After a decade of Power BI and Tableau investment, the results are in. Most business users can read a chart. They can act on a well-framed insight. But building the underlying logic, defining the right metrics, connecting the right sources, maintaining the data model over time, that requires a different skillset entirely.
The tools didn't fail. The assumption did. Data literacy and data analytics are not the same thing, and conflating them led most companies to underinvest in the infrastructure that actually makes analytics work.
So maybe the answer is to hire. Bring in someone analytical, a "data analyst," a "BI developer," a "report writer." For a while, that person is a hero. Then the requests pile up, priorities conflict, and your one hire is expected to do the work of six.
"You are the expert in your business.
We are the experts in data.
Together, we go further and faster than either of us can alone."
That's not a tagline. It's the model. Marquis Data is not a software vendor you license and figure out on your own. We are a genuine partner, embedded in your business, accountable to your outcomes, and available when the numbers don't look right on a Tuesday morning.
Start the conversationOur partnership with Marquis Data has provided ACPI with a platform that will support all of our acquisitions, has allowed us to capture real-time changes in product costs, and has dramatically reduced the hours needed to generate our analysis.
We'll connect to your ERP, run your data through the platform, and show you what Marquis IQ looks like in your environment, in 30 minutes, with your numbers.