What is a weekly business intelligence briefing?

A weekly business intelligence briefing is a short recurring report that tells an operator what changed around their business, why it matters, and what to do next, in plain sentences. The format is borrowed from the executive briefing: a fixed day, a few minutes of reading, decisions rather than raw material.

It's the opposite of a dashboard. A dashboard waits for you to ask the right question. A briefing has already asked, answered, and ranked what deserves your attention this week.

What a good one contains

Answers, not charts: every finding is a sentence you can read aloud. Evidence: the figure behind each answer and what it's compared against, so you can trust it or challenge it. Exactly one action per finding, small enough to actually take. And continuity: what's new this week, what's repeating, what's strengthening, because the trend is usually worth more than the snapshot.

The test is simple. If you can read it with your Monday coffee and know what to do by the bottom, it's a briefing. If you have to interpret it, it's a report.

Briefing versus dashboard

Dashboards are for analysts: people whose job is to explore. Briefings are for operators: people whose job is to decide. Most physical businesses don't have an analyst, which is why so many dashboard subscriptions go unopened after the first month. The format matters as much as the intelligence inside it.

Who the format fits

An owner or general manager of a restaurant, venue, shop, gym, salon, or hotel who makes weekly decisions about staffing, hours, promotion, and spend, and who has minutes rather than afternoons. Multi-location leaders use the same format per location: one read on each room, every week, in the same shape.

How Pulse does it

Pulse by Misd is a weekly intelligence briefing for physical businesses. Every Sunday it answers a fixed set of questions about your business and the world around it: your audience, your opportunities, the movement of crowds, the wider market. Each answer is a card carrying its evidence and one move. A monthly edition rolls the weeks into a story with a checklist of moves worth making. Your first card is free.

See one about your own business

The fastest way to understand the format is to read one finding about your own address. Pulse builds your first card free, before you pay a dollar: one real answer about the crowd around your business.

• Why is my business slow this week?
• Where do my customers come from?
• Where do customers go after they leave?

Your first card is free. Get started · All answers · How Pulse works