The Intelligence Brief — May 2026 | Issue 002
THE INTELLIGENCE BRIEF — May 2026 | Issue 002 Welcome back to The Intelligence Brief. May was a full month…
Read →June was the first full month with the platform live. Here’s what shipped, what’s coming, and what it means for the businesses we work with.
— Brandon
As of June 1, the Intelligent Analytics Intelligence Layer is in production. ARION, SPARK, and OLIVER are onboarding clients now. STELLA is in active development with an August target. If you’ve been watching and waiting — this is it.
Over the next two months, Intelligent Analytics is executing a strategic consolidation of all custom software engagements onto the FORGE infrastructure standard. Legacy PHP application environments and older SQL Server configurations are being retired and migrated to our current stack — cleaner, faster, and built to grow with the businesses running on it.
If you’re an existing custom software client, you’ll be hearing from us directly to schedule your migration. We’ll handle the heavy lifting.
And if you’ve been wanting a custom process to make your business run smoother — contact us today to see how we can help: info@intelligentanalyticsdm.com
Most small businesses have no real idea where they stand in search — or why. ARION changes that. The search intelligence tools inside your ARION portal give you a live, consolidated view of your keyword rankings across search engines, how those positions are moving over time, and where your competitors are showing up for the same terms. You can see which pages on your site are gaining ground, which keywords have untapped opportunity, and where a competitor is outranking you on a term you should own. Site health audits flag technical issues — broken pages, slow load times, content gaps — before they quietly drag rankings down.
SPARK combines contact management and outbound email marketing in a single system built for service businesses. Your contacts, your list segments, and your campaigns all live in the same place — which means your email platform always knows what your CRM knows. Build a segment from actual customer data, launch a campaign to it, and track performance without exporting a single spreadsheet.
OLIVER runs the operational side of a service business from one board. When a job is created, it moves through a defined workflow — scheduled, dispatched, completed — and the moment it’s marked done, a branded invoice generates automatically from the job record. Beyond one-time jobs, OLIVER handles recurring subscriptions and scheduled work, so repeat customers and maintenance contracts stay on cadence without anyone having to remember to book them.
STELLA is the business data and unit economics layer of the platform. It captures what the rest of the platform doesn’t — materials, labor, overhead, fuel, and equipment costs — and joins that data with everything ARION, SPARK, and OLIVER already track to produce your actual margin per job, per customer, and per service line. We’re targeting end of July for internal completion and an August release.
Each active product is receiving meaningful updates in July — refinements to ARION’s reporting views, new automation triggers in SPARK, and additional workflow controls in OLIVER. We’ll detail the specifics once they ship.
Fresh Water Isn’t Going Away. But Abundant, Clean, Cheap Water Might Be.
This month’s Brandon’s Take isn’t about software. It’s about something that belongs in the back of every business owner’s mind — water scarcity, data center demand, Iowa agriculture, and what happens when a resource everyone assumed was unlimited starts showing strain. Read it on the blog.
Six platform posts went live in June — one from each Intelligence Layer.
Your Google Business Profile Is Probably Out of Date — The most-seen thing most local businesses own online, and most haven’t updated it in two years. Read it.
The Hidden Revenue Problem in Your Email List — Sending to a bloated list doesn’t just waste money. It tanks your deliverability. Read it.
The Gap Between Your Quote and Your Next Job — Most service businesses lose revenue in the handoff between an accepted quote and a scheduled job. Read it.
What Does Your Business Actually Make Per Job? — Revenue per job is easy. Margin per job is what tells you if the business is actually working. Read it.
The Cost Nobody Talks About: Integration Debt — Every duct-taped connection between tools adds to a compounding cost that most businesses never see until it breaks. Read it.
Five Automations to Build Before Your Next Hire — The five workflow automations that should be running before you bring on another person. Read it.
New: The How-To Series — Starting this month: short practical guides on how things actually work. First two: how keyword research works, and how a job should flow from first call to final payment.
If something in this newsletter pointed at a problem in your operation — a process that’s messier than it should be, a number you don’t know but should, a software environment that’s overdue for an upgrade — that’s exactly what the consulting practice is for.
The first conversation is free. We’ll talk through your operation, identify where the real leverage is, and tell you honestly whether Intelligent Analytics is the right fit.
Book a consultation: book.intelligentanalyticsdm.com
Brandon Sheriff
Founder, Intelligent Analytics
info@intelligentanalyticsdm.com · 515-200-2100
intelligentanalyticsdm.com
THE INTELLIGENCE BRIEF — May 2026 | Issue 002 Welcome back to The Intelligence Brief. May was a full month…
Read →Issue 001 — Platform Pulse, Featured Article, IL Spotlight on ARION, April blog roundup, resources worth your time, and a…
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