Expert Analytics

From Enterprise Data to Strategic Data

Whether it’s ingested into a data lake or data warehouse, from visual analytics to predictive analytics, your enterprise data becomes strategically empowered with the right tools, systems, and processes in place.

Our expertise addresses these capabilities with a broad array of strategic data services.

Like most growing and forward-looking organizations, one client found itself at a crossroads a few years ago.  They realized a big transformation was needed for them to view and analyze their customers in new and more powerful ways. They had been growing rapidly through a steady hand and hard work, including a substantial number of small to mid-size acquisitions and franchise conversions, which further clouded already confusing enterprise data stores and any type of analytical environment.  Users were looking at all kinds of information and creating countless ad hoc reports and spreadsheet downloads (i.e. “death by spreadsheet”).  Data visibility existed but it was disjointed, argued over, and rarely gave an accurate, comprehensive picture of their customers’ identity, needs, and/or satisfaction. A single source of truth was out of the question.  Technical direction and strategy were needed.

 In 2017, Expert Analytics was brought in to initially start prototyping a direct cost allocation model for thousands of complex customer projects.  It was not easy due to those complicated data sources and silos, but Expert Analytics built a working prototype in two months.  After a lot of hard work by all involved, the numbers tied to the general ledger and for the first-time revenue, true costs, and profit by customer was visible. The CFO was ecstatic and sensed his vision could now become a reality with the potential to evolve into a real corporate analytics culture, where data was trusted and useful.  His involvement was exemplary and a key factor for additional project successes.  His commitment included meeting every week with all the business teams and Expert Analytics.

“Understanding the data” improved rapidly as subsequent projects solidified, and a solid foundation was built to model and implement the client’s first EDW (enterprise data warehouse).  A two-year roadmap was put in place by Expert Analytics and the client management team—with measurable mileposts and clearly stated results.  The EDW took less than a year to build and test and was then rolled into production.  The environment included full Azure cloud implementation, with the SQL Server database as the data engine, and Power BI driving the reporting, business visualizations and dashboards.  This strategy and direction of an Infrastructure and Platform-as-a-Service (i.e. IaaS, PaaS) allowed maximum power for lower and more manageable costs.

Project managers began to fully understand the business value brought to the table by Expert Analytics.  They became real believers that a handful of “real experts” gets the job done right and on time versus a lot of less experienced people that literally get paralysis by analysis, and a lot of second-guessing on tools, data models and platforms.  The transformation of IT services into an agile, fluid, business-focused organization was now well underway.

The result of all this work: the business partners were thrilled.  New project funding and ongoing enhancements continue because Expert Analytics clearly provides technology of high value to the business units individually and to the company as a whole.  Senior management and business managers now see what is happening on a comprehensive basis.  The secure analytics models and Power BI dashboards are seen as critical tools for all leadership levels.  With the finance needs well in hand, the company now looks to expand Expert Analytics efforts to new business users, including Sales and Operations.

 The Company has also been pleased with Expert Analytics data scientists and expert analytics professionals to help to change behavior by providing training and “train the trainers” to help shorten the learning curve of dashboards, analytic “cubes”, Power BI features, and the use of advanced Excel exports as needed.