Services Assessment Work Insights Resources About Contact Book a diagnostic
Work & Portfolio

What the work actually looks like.

Anonymized case studies from reporting modernization, KPI governance, and dashboard rebuilds — across healthcare, operations, finance, and nonprofit sectors.

All client details have been anonymized. Sector, size, and problem type are accurate; identifying details are not.
Healthcare & Research

From spreadsheet chaos to a trusted executive reporting system for an NIH-funded research program

~280 employees · Research organization · Washington, D.C. metro
Reporting Modernization KPI Design Power BI

The situation

A federally-funded research organization running multiple concurrent grant programs had accumulated 40+ recurring reports — most of them manual Excel builds assembled by individual program managers each month. Leadership had no consistent view of program health across grants, and funder reporting required significant manual reconciliation every quarter.

The core pain: the same headcount number appeared differently in three different reports, and nobody could say with authority which was right. Every external funder report required a full reconciliation cycle before submission.

The approach

Started with a full reporting inventory across all 40+ reports — documenting what each one was for, who owned it, how much manual time it required, and whether it was actually used to make decisions. Ran structured interviews with seven stakeholders across programs, finance, and executive leadership.

Identified 14 reports as retirement candidates (unused or duplicated), rebuilt the 8 highest-value reports as governed Power BI dashboards, and built a KPI dictionary covering all 23 program-level metrics. Implemented a formal report request intake process.

14
Reports retired — zero complaints from stakeholders
~12 hrs
Manual reporting time eliminated per week across the team
23
KPIs formally defined in a governed dictionary with named owners
Research Program Executive Dashboard Updated: Daily · As of 2026-06-07 ACTIVE PROGRAMS 7 of 9 funded TOTAL HEADCOUNT 284 FTE GRANT UTILIZATION 78% REPORTS NEEDING REVIEW 2 action required PROGRAM STATUS Program PI Utilization Status Grant A — Longitudinal Study Dr. Martinez 82% On Track Grant B — Outcomes Research Dr. Chen 61% Review Grant C — Clinical Trial Support Dr. Okonkwo 91% On Track Grant D — Workforce Study Dr. Patel 74% On Track Grant E — Community Outcomes Dr. Williams 58% Review GRANT UTILIZATION — 12M TREND 78% Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 60% 75% 85%
Illustrative only — styled to represent the type and quality of output, not actual client data.
We had project data available, but it was not organized in a way that helped us manage the business. The new dashboard gave us a much clearer view of project performance, team activity, and where time was being spent across the program.
— Operations Lead, Research Organization

Finance & Banking

Rebuilding a fragmented reporting environment after a core banking system migration

~180 employees · Regional financial institution · Southeast U.S.
Reporting Modernization Data Governance Tableau SQL

The situation

Following a core banking system migration, the organization's reporting had fractured: some reports still pulled from the legacy system, some from the new system, and some reconciled both. Finance and Operations were routinely presenting different loan portfolio numbers to the same executive team. The CFO had stopped trusting any report that came from the data team.

Fourteen months after the migration, the organization still had no single, trusted view of its loan book. The data team was spending roughly 60% of its capacity on reconciliation and ad-hoc requests instead of analytics.

The approach

Conducted a source-of-truth mapping exercise across all reporting — identifying which fields each report was pulling from which system and where the discrepancies originated. The root cause was a specific set of legacy accounts that hadn't been migrated cleanly and were being handled inconsistently by different report authors.

Rebuilt the six core portfolio reports in Tableau on a clean, documented data layer. Built a metric dictionary covering 31 risk and portfolio KPIs. Established formal data ownership for each reporting domain and created a documented data lineage diagram for the first time.

31
Portfolio KPIs formally defined with business & technical owners
60%→15%
Reduction in data team time spent on reconciliation
1
Source of truth for loan portfolio — for the first time post-migration
KPI Dictionary — Loan Portfolio Metrics Reviewed: Q1 2026 Net Portfolio Yield ACTIVE · REVIEWED BUSINESS DEFINITION Annualized interest income earned on the average outstanding loan balance, net of charge-offs and fee waivers, expressed as a percentage. SOURCE SYSTEM FIS Core Banking (new) — loan_transactions table GRAIN Monthly (annualized). Not meaningful at daily grain. REFRESH 5th business day of following month BUSINESS OWNER CFO — definition authority, dispute arbitration TECHNICAL OWNER Senior Analytics Engineer — pipeline, quality monitoring KNOWN CAVEAT Pre-2024 data from legacy FIS. See migration note. EXCLUDES SBA guaranteed portions · Fee waivers from relationship pricing exceptions · Accounts 90+ days past due (separately reported as NPL)
Illustrative only — represents the format and depth of a governed KPI dictionary entry for a financial institution.
We had data across multiple systems, but it was not organized in a way that helped us make decisions. The project gave us a single source of truth and a clear picture of where reporting was breaking down — for the first time since the migration.
— CFO, Financial Institution

Real Estate Operations

Standing up an analytics operating model from scratch for a growing property management company

~95 employees · 2,400+ units under management · Southeast U.S.
Data Strategy KPI Design Power BI Snowflake

The situation

A fast-growing property management company had scaled from 800 to 2,400 units in three years — but its reporting hadn't scaled with it. Occupancy, maintenance, and financial metrics were tracked in four separate tools with no integration. The COO was running weekly operations meetings from a manually-assembled spreadsheet that took four hours to build every Monday morning.

There was no agreed definition of "occupancy rate" — leasing, operations, and finance each calculated it differently, producing numbers that ranged from 91% to 96% for the same month.

The approach

Started with a Reporting Clarity Assessment to triage the current state and identify the highest-value first build. Ran the source-of-truth exercise across four property management platforms and identified Yardi as the authoritative source for financial and occupancy data.

Built a Snowflake data layer consolidating all four source systems. Designed and built a suite of five Power BI dashboards covering portfolio performance, maintenance operations, leasing velocity, financial performance, and an executive summary. Resolved the occupancy definition conflict by convening a 90-minute workshop with the three functions — produced a single agreed definition within the session.

4 hrs
Weekly manual reporting time eliminated — the Monday spreadsheet is gone
1
Agreed occupancy definition — replacing three conflicting calculations
5
Governed dashboards built on a unified Snowflake data layer
Portfolio Performance — May 2026 All Properties · 2,412 units Source: Yardi · Refreshed daily 6AM OCCUPANCY RATE 94.2% ▲ 1.1pp vs last month GROSS RENT $2.84M MTD collected NET OPERATING INCOME $1.96M 69% margin OPEN MAINTENANCE 47 12 past SLA LEASING VELOCITY 18 avg days to lease vacant unit OCCUPANCY TREND — 12 MONTHS Target 94% Jun Aug Oct Dec Feb Apr May OCCUPANCY BY PROPERTY Riverside Commons 97% Oakwood Flats 94% The Meridian 89% Lakeview North 77% Pinecrest Village 95%
Illustrative only — styled to represent the type and quality of output, not actual client data.
We had occupancy, maintenance, and financial data spread across different tools. The new reporting brought everything together and gave our operations team a real view of portfolio health — instead of rebuilding it every Monday morning.
— COO, Property Management Company

Nonprofit

Building a funder-ready impact reporting system for a workforce development nonprofit

~60 employees · Workforce development · Nashville, TN metro
KPI Design Impact Measurement Power BI

The situation

A workforce development nonprofit working with underserved communities had a genuine impact story to tell — but couldn't tell it consistently. Program outcomes were tracked in Salesforce, participation data in Excel, and financial performance in QuickBooks. Each grant report was built from scratch, by different program managers, with no consistent methodology.

The organization was losing grant renewal conversations not because of poor outcomes but because it couldn't present those outcomes credibly. Funders were asking questions the team couldn't answer quickly.

The approach

Designed an outcome measurement framework aligned to the organization's theory of change — identifying which metrics actually demonstrated impact vs. which were activity metrics. Built a Salesforce-connected Power BI solution covering program enrollment, completion, employment placement, wage outcomes, and 12-month retention.

Created a funder reporting template that could be customized per grant while drawing from the same underlying data layer — eliminating the rebuild-from-scratch cycle for each report. Trained program staff on how to interpret and use the dashboards in their own conversations with participants and funders.

3 grants
Renewed in the first cycle after new reporting was deployed
~8 hrs
Per-grant reporting time cut from ~12 hours to ~4 hours
1
Unified outcome framework replacing four disconnected tracking systems
Workforce Development Impact Dashboard — FY2026 Nashville Metro Area Source: Salesforce + Excel · Refreshed weekly PARTICIPANTS SERVED 847 YTD · of 1,082 enrolled COMPLETION RATE 78% Target 75% ▲ EMPLOYMENT PLACED 71% of completers · 601 total 12-MONTH RETENTION 64% 384 still employed ACTIVE GRANTS 4 3 renewals pending PARTICIPANT FUNNEL — YTD Enrolled 1,082 Completed training 78% 847 Employment placed 71% 601 Retained at 12 months 64% 384 COMPLETION RATE BY PROGRAM Target 75% Workforce Readiness 82% Digital Skills 81% Career Pathways 76% Job Placement Support 74% Financial Literacy 70%
Illustrative only — styled to represent the type and quality of output, not actual client data.
We needed a better way to present our program results to funders and board members. The final report made our impact easier to understand and gave us visuals we could use in presentations, grant updates, and internal planning.
— Program Director, Nonprofit Organization

Retail & E-Commerce

Consolidating Shopify, POS, and inventory data for a two-location boutique retailer with no unified sales view

~35 employees · 2 store locations + online channel · Southeast U.S.
Data Integration Dashboard Build Power BI

The situation

A boutique retailer with two physical stores and a growing online channel had sales data in three completely separate places: Shopify for online orders, Square POS exports for in-store transactions, and a manual inventory spreadsheet updated weekly. There was no way to see total performance across channels without building a new spreadsheet every time.

Buying decisions were being made without knowing which products were actually selling across all locations. The owner was spending three to four hours every week reconciling data before she could answer basic questions about the business.

The approach

Connected all three data sources to Power BI — Shopify via API, Square POS via scheduled CSV export, and the inventory spreadsheet via SharePoint sync. Built a four-page dashboard covering sales overview, product performance, channel and location comparison, and inventory risk.

Defined 12 retail KPIs with agreed calculation rules — including a single definition of gross margin that resolved a discrepancy between how the owner and her bookkeeper had been calculating it. Built a flagging rule for slow-moving inventory that automatically surfaced reorder and promotion candidates.

3–4 hrs
Weekly reconciliation time eliminated entirely
1
Unified sales view replacing three disconnected sources
23
Products flagged for reorder or promotion in first inventory review
Sales Performance Dashboard — Boutique Retail 2025 2 Stores + Online Source: Shopify + Square POS TOTAL REVENUE $1.24M YTD ▲ 12% vs prior year UNITS SOLD 8,847 all channels AVG ORDER VALUE $141 ▲ $8 vs prior year GROSS MARGIN 58% Target 55% ▲ SLOW-MOVING INVENTORY 23 items flagged MONTHLY REVENUE — IN-STORE VS. ONLINE In-store Online $0 $40k $80k $120k $96k $80k Jan Mar May Jul Sep Nov TOP PRODUCTS BY REVENUE — YTD Linen Wrap Dress $94k Woven Tote Bag $82k Silk Scarf $71k Denim Jacket $68k Knit Sweater $55k Canvas Sneaker ⚑ $28k ⚑ Slow-moving · flagged for promotion or markdown
Illustrative only — styled to represent the type and quality of output, not actual client data.
We were looking at online sales, in-store sales, and product performance separately. The dashboard brought everything together in a way that was simple to understand. Now we can compare channels, spot trends, and make decisions faster.
— Director of Operations, Retail & E-Commerce
Sample deliverables

What the outputs actually look like.

The Assessment produces ten specific deliverables. Here's a closer look at two of them — the kind of clarity they're designed to produce.

Assessment Deliverable 01

Reporting Inventory — extract

Reporting Inventory 47 reports audited REPORT NAME OWNER FREQ MANUAL HRS TRUST ACTION Weekly Ops Report J. Torres Weekly 4.0 hrs Low Rebuild Executive KPI Pack CFO Monthly 3.5 hrs Low Rebuild Finance Variance Report Controller Monthly 1.0 hr High Keep Q3 Pipeline Dashboard Unknown Ad hoc 0 hrs None Retire Sales Activity Summary VP Sales Weekly 2.0 hrs Med Improve 47 reports · 10 rebuild · 18 keep · 12 improve · 7 retire ~34 hrs/wk manual Trust rating: High Med Low None
Every report catalogued: owner, manual effort, trust level, and recommended action. Illustrative — not actual client data.
Assessment Deliverable 09

30/60/90-Day Modernization Roadmap — extract

Modernization Roadmap Priority · Owner · Effort Days 1–30 · Quick wins & foundation → Resolve "revenue" definition (Finance + Sales workshop) → Retire 7 unused dashboards · Document remaining 40 → Name business owner for top 10 KPIs Days 31–60 · Core rebuilds → Rebuild Executive KPI Pack in Power BI (owner: CFO) → Rebuild Weekly Ops Report — eliminate 4 hrs manual work → Publish first 20 KPI definitions to shared dictionary Days 61–90 · Governance & operating model → Implement report intake process (Notion template) → Complete KPI dictionary — all 31 metrics defined → First quarterly governance review — validate & adjust Each item includes: business impact · effort estimate · owner · dependencies · success criteria
Prioritized, actionable, built to hand to leadership. Illustrative — not actual client data.

Want to see what this looks like for your organization?

The Reporting Clarity Assessment produces outputs like these in 2–3 weeks. Start with a free diagnostic call.

Book a Reporting Trust Diagnostic →