Capability 03 · Analytics & Forecasting
The Monday report takes half a day.
The numbers still disagree.
A reporting flow for teams that rebuild the same dashboard every week from exports — and still walk into the meeting with two versions of the truth.
The situation
Everyone has the data. Nobody has the same number.
Finance exports from one system, sales from another, operations from a third. Each one cleans it their own way in Excel.
Before the meeting, someone assembles a report by hand. It takes hours. And when two reports disagree, the meeting becomes about whose number is right.
The data exists. Agreeing on it is the work.
The challenge
More dashboards don't help if nobody trusts the model underneath.
A chart is only as good as the definitions behind it. The hard part is deciding which source is trusted, how each metric is calculated, and how often it refreshes.
Without that agreement, a new dashboard is just another opinion on the pile.
So the work starts with the data model — not the visual.
The capability
One model, agreed definitions, read in seconds.
We connect the trusted sources, clean and structure the data, and agree the KPI definitions with the people who use them.
Then we build the reporting layer in Power BI on top of that model, with a scheduled refresh so the numbers are current.
Everyone opens the same view and reads the same number.
How the flow works
Before / after
Someone exports, cleans, and rebuilds the same report every week, then double-checks it before the meeting.
Finance and sales arrive with different totals and spend the meeting reconciling them.
The dashboard pulls from the agreed sources on a schedule. The meeting starts from one shared view.
Time goes to the decision, not to assembling and defending the numbers.
Controls
- Only trusted sources feed the model
- Each KPI has one agreed definition
- Refresh runs on a fixed schedule
- Source data is validated before it lands
- Missing data is flagged on the dashboard
- Ownership of the model is assigned
- Access is controlled and logged
- Definitions are documented for everyone
Where this applies
What changes
Questions about reporting
Why do our reports disagree with each other?
Almost always because each report defines the same term slightly differently. The fix is less about dashboards and more about agreeing the definitions once and wiring every report to the same model underneath. After that the Monday report is read rather than rebuilt.