We’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years. And for nearly 20 years, we have seen the same expensive mistake played out in businesses across the UK.
A company realises their reporting is slow. They can’t see which product lines are actually profitable. They panic.
So they go shopping.
They sign a six-figure deal for a cloud data warehouse. They roll out Power BI or Tableau to everyone in the building. Then, they pat themselves on the back for being “digital-first.”
Six months later, nothing has changed.
The Sales Director still keeps their “real” figures in a spreadsheet on their desktop. The Finance team still spends three days a month manually fixing the export errors from the ERP. And that expensive new dashboard? Nobody logs into it because nobody trusts the numbers it shows.
That isn’t a software problem. That is a strategy problem.
The "Shadow BI" Nightmare
You might think your data is secure. But if we walked into your office today, we’d bet good money that your most critical business decisions rely on “Shadow BI.”
This is what happens when you buy tools without a plan. Your staff can’t get the answers they need from the official system, so they build their own.
We worked with a manufacturing client who thought they had a handle on inventory. It turned out the warehouse manager had a physical notebook where he wrote down the actual stock levels because the system was always 24 hours out of date. The procurement team was buying stock based on the system, while the warehouse was overflowing.
That is the cost of skipping strategy. You end up with five different versions of the truth and a warehouse full of stock you can’t shift.
Strategy is Just a Fancy Word for a Roadmap
A data strategy isn’t a 100-page document that gathers dust. It is a practical answer to the questions that actually keep you awake at night.
- Why does the Board Pack take four days to produce?
- Why do Sales say we made £1m last month, but Finance says £850k?
- If our lead engineer leaves tomorrow, does he take the logic for our pricing model with him?
We don’t start by recommending software. We start by finding out where the bodies are buried. We look at your current state, warts and all, and map out exactly how to get to a point where you can trust what you see on the screen.
The Bridge Between IT and Reality
There’s often a massive wall between IT and the rest of the business.
IT cares about security, governance, and uptime. The C-Suite cares about profit, speed, and growth.
Without a strategy to bridge that gap, you get gridlock. IT locks the data down so tight that nobody can use it. The business side gets frustrated and goes back to Excel.
Our job is to align your technical architecture with the commercial goals. We ensure that when you do spend money on a new platform, it actually solves the specific business problems you have, rather than just creating new technical ones.
Stop Guessing
You wouldn’t build a factory without an architect. You shouldn’t build your data infrastructure without a plan.
We’ve spent nearly two decades fixing the messes left behind by “software-first” thinking. Save yourself the money and the headache. Let’s build a roadmap that actually works.
Contact us today to get started.
