So, those smart people spent their time in 1) implementing around bugs in the sw we were supposed to use, 2) writing ad-hoc statistical analysis sw to be able to do at least something, 3) analysing data in the domain they were not experts in, 4) writing the report.

After all this, the report was stellar, the customer extremely satisfied, the results solid, the reasoning compelling.

Had I not been involved and had I not known how much of the potential had been wasted and on how small fraction of the data the analysis had been performed, I would consider the final report to be a nice example of a clever, honest, top level business intelligence job.

So, this problem is NOT one I'm tackling directly (I'm more saying, how can they get smart people like you to make that cludge for much cheaper) but the model does indirectly incentivize better BI tools by creating competition directly in forecasting ability, and not just signaling ability.