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Analytics Strategy & Advisory

Make the right data and analytics decisions before you build

Datazeb helps organisations assess their current reporting, data, automation, and AI environment and define a practical roadmap for what should happen next.

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Illustrative interface

The wrong first project can create years of technical debt

Organisations often begin with the visible symptom: another dashboard, another spreadsheet replacement, another data platform, or another AI pilot.

  • Leadership does not have a consistent view of performance
  • Multiple teams build overlapping or conflicting reports
  • Nobody has a complete map of where important data comes from
  • The organisation is considering Fabric, Azure, a warehouse, or another platform but is unsure what is actually needed
  • Power BI has grown without clear workspace, security, or governance standards
  • AI initiatives are being discussed before data readiness has been assessed
  • Manual reporting is increasing but there is no prioritised modernisation plan
  • Technical teams and business teams have different views of what should be fixed first

Advisory services

  1. Analytics Environment Assessment

    Review current reports, data sources, pipelines, platforms, processes, users, pain points, and ownership.

  2. BI & Reporting Strategy

    Define what should be standardised, automated, governed, retired, or rebuilt across the reporting environment.

  3. Data Architecture Roadmap

    Design a practical target architecture for integration, databases, warehousing, analytics, and future growth.

  4. KPI & Measurement Framework

    Align business definitions, metric ownership, calculation logic, and reporting priorities.

  5. Power BI Governance

    Define workspace structure, ownership, deployment, security, lifecycle, naming, and administration standards.

  6. AI Opportunity & Readiness

    Identify where AI can create value and what data, permissions, process, and control foundations are required.

  7. Automation Opportunity Mapping

    Identify repetitive processes that are suitable for workflow automation and prioritise quick wins.

  8. Technology & Platform Advisory

    Evaluate platforms and architectural choices based on business need, scale, capability, and maintainability.

From assessment to plan

A roadmap you can act on in the next 90 days

Advisory work ends in decisions and a sequence, not a slide deck of options.

Advisory sequence

  1. Current state
  2. Gaps and risks
  3. Target state
  4. Prioritised roadmap
  5. 90-day plan Result
  6. 12-month architecture Result

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Maturity assessment

    Where reporting, data and governance stand today, scored consistently.

  • Architecture recommendation

    The target data and reporting architecture and why.

  • KPI framework

    Agreed definitions, owners and sources for the measures that matter.

  • Governance model

    Ownership, standards and controls sized to the organisation.

  • Platform strategy

    Which tools to keep, consolidate or introduce.

  • Reporting roadmap

    The order in which reports and data products are delivered.

  • AI readiness

    Which AI use cases are realistic now, and what they depend on.

  • Operating model

    Who builds, who supports, and how requests are handled.

In detail

Explore the detail

Current-state assessment

Understand what you already have before deciding what to replace

A good strategy starts with an accurate picture of the current environment. Datazeb can review: The goal is to distinguish what is valuable and should be retained from what is creating unnecessary risk or effort.

  • Business-critical reports and recurring management packs
  • Power BI workspaces, datasets, reports, gateways, and refreshes
  • Excel-based reporting and manual processes
  • Databases, warehouses, and analytical tables
  • ETL / ELT pipelines and scheduled jobs
  • APIs and third-party integrations
  • Automation workflows
  • AI pilots, assistants, or knowledge solutions
  • Security, access, governance, and ownership
  • Known data-quality issues and recurring support problems
Business-priority mapping

Start with decisions, not technology

A technology roadmap is only useful if it reflects the decisions and outcomes the business is trying to improve. Datazeb can work with stakeholders to identify:

  • Critical management decisions
  • High-value KPIs and reporting questions
  • Operational blind spots
  • Processes consuming excessive manual effort
  • Data needed for growth, compliance, or service improvement
  • Analytics requests currently blocked by technical limitations
  • AI opportunities linked to measurable business tasks
KPI and reporting framework

A dashboard cannot resolve disagreement about what a metric means

Many reporting problems are definition problems disguised as technical problems. Datazeb can help structure a measurement framework that clarifies: This creates a stronger foundation for executive dashboards, departmental reporting, and self-service analytics.

  • What each KPI means
  • Who owns the definition
  • How it is calculated
  • Which source system is authoritative
  • How often it should refresh
  • Who should see it
  • Which level of detail is required
  • How exceptions should be interpreted
Power BI governance

Make Power BI easier to scale without losing control

As Power BI adoption grows, organisations often face duplicated reports, inconsistent metrics, unclear ownership, and uncontrolled workspace growth. A governance review can cover: The objective is not governance for its own sake. It is to make analytics easier to trust, maintain, and scale.

  • Workspace structure and ownership
  • Development / test / production approach
  • Semantic model reuse
  • Naming and documentation standards
  • Row-level security and access
  • Gateway and refresh ownership
  • Deployment and release processes
  • Report lifecycle and retirement
  • Self-service BI boundaries
  • Licensing and capacity considerations
AI strategy and readiness

Do not start with 'Where can we use AI?' Start with 'Which business problem is worth solving?'

Datazeb can help organisations evaluate AI opportunities based on business value, data readiness, workflow fit, risk, and implementation complexity.

  • Prioritise practical AI use cases
  • Assess whether trusted data or knowledge sources exist
  • Identify permission and privacy constraints
  • Determine where human review is required
  • Separate chatbot, RAG, automation, and agentic use cases
  • Define proof-of-concept success criteria
  • Map dependencies before production deployment
Explore AI & Agentic Solutions
Automation opportunity mapping

Find the repetitive work worth removing

A strategic review can identify workflows where automation will create meaningful operational value. Each opportunity can be assessed by expected value, implementation complexity, dependencies, and operational risk.

  • High-frequency manual processes
  • Repeated exports and data re-entry
  • Routine email and document handling
  • Recurring approvals and reminders
  • Cross-system hand-offs
  • Manual reporting distribution
  • Exception monitoring
  • AI-assisted tasks involving text or documents
Technology advisory

Choose platforms because they fit the problem – not because they are fashionable

Datazeb can help evaluate technology choices across analytics, databases, integration, cloud, automation, and AI. The recommendation should consider:

  • Existing technology investments
  • Data volumes and refresh expectations
  • Internal technical capability
  • Security and governance needs
  • Licensing and operating cost
  • Integration requirements
  • Expected growth
  • Vendor lock-in and maintainability
  • Implementation complexity
Prioritised roadmap

Turn a long wish list into a practical sequence

The output of an advisory engagement should make the next decisions easier. A roadmap may classify initiatives into: Each initiative should be tied to dependencies, expected value, and an appropriate delivery sequence.

  • Immediate risk or reliability fixes
  • Quick wins
  • Foundational data work
  • Reporting modernisation
  • Governance improvements
  • Integration priorities
  • Automation opportunities
  • AI pilots
  • Longer-term platform or architecture changes

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Do we need to know what technology we want before speaking with you?

No. Advisory is specifically useful when the organisation knows the business problem but is not yet certain what the technical solution should be.

Can you review our existing Power BI environment?

Yes. Datazeb can assess workspaces, semantic models, reports, gateways, refreshes, access, governance, and how Power BI fits into the wider data environment.

Can you advise on Microsoft Fabric or a data warehouse?

Yes. We can assess whether the platform is appropriate based on current architecture, expected scale, integration requirements, internal capability, and business need.

Can you help us identify AI opportunities?

Yes. We can evaluate potential use cases, data readiness, controls, dependencies, and which opportunities are worth piloting first.

Do you only provide recommendations, or can you implement them too?

Datazeb can provide advisory only, remain involved as a delivery advisor, or implement selected roadmap initiatives.

Learn it yourself · Datazeb Training

Learn Power BI with Datazeb Training

When the strategy is agreed, your team can learn to build and run it – live online courses from Datazeb Training.

Explore Power BI training Training for your team

training.datazeb.com

Before investing in another platform or project, make sure you are solving the right problem

If your reporting, data, automation, or AI environment has become difficult to prioritise, Datazeb can help clarify what should happen next and why.

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