This is an adage you have heard many times, but like most good advice, it's hard to remember, in the moment.
This was crystallized for me on a project several years ago. We had started unpivoting and cleansing and unwinding a clunky Excel report to use as a data source, creating what would likely be a brittle solution. I asked whether the customer provide the same data in a more standard tabular format, like we would get from a database. "Of course. That's what we start with before we create this." It never hurts to ask.
My colleague Karl said "It never hurts to ask" to me upon this announcement:
Starting in 2021 Qlik changed its Luminary program to limit it to customers only, not partners. (We work for a partner.) He reached out to the program coordinators to see if there was any way for us to indicate we had received the recognition before, even though we would not be eligible again.
Well done, Karl! It never hurts to ask.