Business Data Analysis
Management reports that arrive in time to act on
Many leadership teams decide on figures that are weeks old and assembled by hand. We start with the decisions you need to make, then build the reporting and analysis that supports them.
Signs this is the problem
Does this sound familiar?
- Monthly reports arrive too late to change anything.
- Skilled staff spend days each month copying figures between spreadsheets.
- Two departments bring different numbers for the same measure to the same meeting.
- Reports describe what happened but not why, or what needs attention.
- Important questions about customers, branches or products take weeks to answer.
What we do
Management that can see what is happening and decide sooner.
- Management reporting designed around the decisions each report should inform.
- Executive dashboards that show the few measures leadership needs, with exceptions made obvious.
- Performance analysis across sales, finance, customers and operations.
- Sales, mobile money and stock figures pulled together from point-of-sale systems, spreadsheets and accounting packages.
- Trend and exception analysis that points to what has changed and where to look.
- A recurring analytics service for organisations without their own analyst.
Often today
- Export from each system
- Copy into spreadsheets
- Reconcile conflicting figures
- Format the pack by hand
- Circulate weeks later
After the work
- Draw from the source
- Apply agreed measures
- Pack with exceptions first
How an engagement runs
Four steps, starting small
- 01Understand
The reporting review. We look at what you produce today, who uses it and which decisions it should support.
- 02Diagnose
We examine your data sources, how figures are assembled and where time and accuracy are lost.
- 03Implement
We build the reports, dashboards or analysis agreed, using tools your organisation can maintain.
- 04Hand over
We document how everything works and train the people who will run it.
What you receive
Concrete deliverables
- A written summary of the reporting review, with findings and recommended priorities.
- Agreed definitions for your key measures, so everyone uses the same numbers.
- The reports, dashboards or analysis in the agreed scope.
- Documentation and a handover session for the staff who will maintain them.
Illustrative scenario: Commercial bank
Regulatory returns prepared from source, not rebuilt every month.
A commercial bank's finance and risk teams prepare monthly regulatory returns by extracting figures from the core banking system, the treasury system and departmental spreadsheets. The same reconciliations are repeated every month, and late corrections ripple through several schedules.
We would trace each return line back to its source, agree definitions with finance and risk, and build a repeatable extraction and reconciliation so the team reviews exceptions instead of rebuilding the return.
Connected services
Where this work leads
Questions
Asked before a first meeting
Do we need to buy new software?
Usually not at the start. We work with the systems and tools you already have and recommend new ones only when there is a clear reason.
Our data is messy. Is that a problem?
It is normal. Part of the review is finding out which data can be relied on now and what needs to be tidied first.
Do you just build dashboards?
No. A dashboard is one way of presenting information. The work is deciding what management needs to see and making sure the figures behind it are right.
Can you provide analysis on an ongoing basis?
Yes. Some organisations prefer a regular monthly or quarterly analysis to hiring a full-time analyst.
Request a reporting review
Start with one problem
Tell us which reports or decisions are causing difficulty. We will reply to explain what a reporting review involves and whether it suits your situation.
Every enquiry gets a considered reply from a senior person, not a sales sequence