Business Data Analysis
Management reports that arrive in time to act on
In a lot of organisations, leadership decides on figures that are three weeks old and were put together by hand. We start by asking which decisions you need to make, then build the reporting that answers them from the systems you already have.
At a glance
- First step
- A review of your current management reporting
- How long
- Usually one to two weeks
- Your team's time
- Three to five short interviews, plus some recent reports
- You receive
- A written summary of the gaps and what to fix first
- After that
- Building the fix usually takes four to eight weeks, in stages
Every stage is a fixed fee agreed in writing before it starts, and you can stop after any stage.
Signs this is the problem
When to call us about this
- The monthly report arrives too late to change anything.
- Skilled staff lose days every month copying figures between spreadsheets.
- Two departments bring different numbers for the same thing to the same meeting.
- Reports tell you what happened, but not why, or what needs attention.
- A simple question about a customer, branch or product takes weeks to answer.
What we do
A management team that can see what's happening and decide sooner.
- Management reports designed around the decision each one is supposed to inform.
- A dashboard for leadership with the handful of measures that matter, and problems made obvious.
- Analysis of performance 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 shows what's changed and where to look.
- A regular analysis service if you don't have an analyst of your own.
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
From first call to handover
- 01Understand
The reporting review. We look at what you produce today, who reads it and which decisions it should support.
- 02Diagnose
We go through your data sources and how the figures are put together, and find where time and accuracy are lost.
- 03Implement
We build the agreed reports, dashboards or analysis, with tools your organisation can keep running.
- 04Hand over
We document how it all works and train the people who'll run it.
What you receive
What you’ll have at the end
- A written summary of the reporting review, with what we found and what to fix first.
- One agreed definition for each key measure, so everyone works from the same numbers.
- The reports, dashboards or analysis in the agreed scope.
- Documentation and a handover session for the staff who'll maintain them.
Illustrative scenario: Commercial bank
A monthly return the team checks instead of rebuilding.
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
What often comes next
Questions
Worth asking before a first call
Do we need to buy new software?
Usually not, at least not at the start. We work with the systems you already have and only suggest new ones when there's a clear reason.
Our data is messy. Is that a problem?
Everyone's is. Part of the review is working out which data you can rely on now and what needs tidying first.
Do you just build dashboards?
No. A dashboard is one way of showing information. The real 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. If you'd rather not hire a full-time analyst, we can provide a monthly or quarterly analysis instead.
Request a reporting review
Start with one problem
Tell us which reports are causing trouble, or which decisions you can’t make with what you’ve got. We’ll reply to explain what a reporting review involves and whether it fits.
- Within two working daysAn email back from someone who’s read your message properly.
- A 30-minute callTo understand the problem and whether we’re the right people for it.
- Within a week of the callA written scope and a fixed fee. You’re under no obligation to go ahead.
By email
Write to info@asledatalabs.com with your name, organisation and role, and tell us: which reports or decisions are causing trouble?
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