Start with the decision, not the dashboard

Most of the data work we inherit started from the wrong end. Someone bought a BI tool, connected it to everything, and produced forty dashboards. Six months later nobody opens them.

The reason is not complicated. Those dashboards answer questions nobody was being asked.

Work backwards from decisions that cost money

Pick the decisions where being wrong is expensive. Pricing. Which contracts to renew. When to add a shift. How much stock to hold ahead of a launch.

For each one, two questions. What evidence would actually change this call? And do you have it today?

The second question is where the real work shows up. Usually the evidence exists, sitting in three systems that quietly disagree about what a customer is.

Agree what the words mean before you automate anything

This sounds like housekeeping. It is the most common reason these projects stall.

Finance books revenue on invoice date. Operations counts it on delivery. Both are right for their own purpose, and it causes nobody any trouble until you put an agent on top. Then it produces confident numbers that neither team recognises, and you spend a quarter arguing about the output instead of using it.

So settle it first. One definition per metric, written down, with a named owner. An agreed refresh cadence. And a rule about which automated outputs may reach a customer or move money without a person signing off.

Then ship one thing

One workflow. Clean inputs. A number you can check in ninety days.

If it works, the saving funds the next one and you have an internal reference that is hard to argue with. If it does not, you found out cheaply.

We do this as a standalone engagement or inside a bundle. Either way the first conversation is about your decisions, not our stack. Start here.