Data Sciencing Consultants

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Data Sciencing Consultants Dashboard and Spreadsheet designers: Businesses hire us when their data is a mess and their reports aren’t helping them decide anything.

When you define a KPI wrong from the start, your business can suffer greatly.Tracking the wrong number confidently is mo...
08/20/2026

When you define a KPI wrong from the start, your business can suffer greatly.
Tracking the wrong number confidently is more dangerous than not tracking anything at all.

I know a team who spent six months optimizing a metric that was measuring the wrong thing entirely.

The KPI looked fine on the dashboard. The problem was how the business had defined it two years earlier. How they defined the KPI wasn't what they actually wanted to track.

The team of stakeholders and managers made decisions based on their KPIs but rarely got the results they expected. They hired me to help fix their dashboard. Under the assumption the dashboard visual was wrong.

I looked at the whole data setup and went over the metrics and KPIs they were tracking. After listening to how they were using the dashboard, I realized there was a misalignment between the KPI's definition and how they wanted to use it.

After we adjusted the definition to what they actually needed it to be, I made the necessary changes to the dashboard to create alignment.

Now the team makes confident, data-informed decisions based on the KPIs on their dashboard.

Are the KPIs and metrics you use to make business decisions defined correctly by your company in the way you need to use them?

A dashboard that requires a walkthrough before anyone can use it is not a dashboard. It’s a presentation.I have seen das...
08/16/2026

A dashboard that requires a walkthrough before anyone can use it is not a dashboard. It’s a presentation.

I have seen dashboards with a dozen charts on one screen. Nobody was using any of them. They collected dust for months at a time.

One of the best dashboards I ever built had four charts on it. The client used it nearly every morning.

This is one of the reasons why, when a client hires me to design a dashboard for them, I don’t rush in and use generic templates and KPIs.

I take the time to understand what insights my clients want from the dashboard. What areas of business do they need to monitor often, and why?

Then I can design a useful dashboard that gives my client actionable insights. They don’t need to spend time and mental energy trying to figure out what the dashboard is telling them and how that can help their business.

Like a joke, if you have to explain your dashboard, it’s not a well-designed one.

Before building any dashboard, I take a look under the hood at the data underneath. What I find is usually the real prob...
08/12/2026

Before building any dashboard, I take a look under the hood at the data underneath. What I find is usually the real problem.

Before agreeing to a medium or large project, I offer to do a data assessment for my clients.

A client asked me to build them a better report. The assessment showed the report was fine. The data feeding it was not.

They weren’t properly tracking useful data. Nor had they fully defined all the metrics and KPIs they wanted to view. They were comparing apples to oranges.

This led them to miss out on potential cost-saving measures, as well as determine their most profitable items.

Most companies want a new dashboard. What they really need is a data audit first.

Working on getting your data setup correct can be a frustrating and tiresome task; however, it pays off in the end. Turning your business’s data into useable information.

Having a solid base for making data-informed decisions enables you to make confident, smarter business decisions. Combining industry expertise and reliable data.

With a data assessment, I develop a road map to get your data on track and design reports and dashboards that are usable and give you actionable insights.

Are you confident that your reports are reliable and useful?

At university I majored in math and minored in anthropology. Most people think that is a strange combination for a data ...
08/11/2026

At university I majored in math and minored in anthropology. Most people think that is a strange combination for a data analyst.

Some of the best data work I have ever done had almost nothing to do with the numbers.

My anthropology minor taught me something my math degree could not: how to actively listen to what someone needs.

When I was around 4, my passion for math was sparked. In my pre-teen years my family moved from Canada to Switzerland. This is when my interest in peoples, cultures, and anthropology developed and grew.

At university I decided to major in math and minor in anthropology. Everyone thought this was a weird mix. I didn’t have a clear idea of how I would use my two passions in a career, but I wanted to pursue them.

Most of my career as a data analyst relied heavily on my math and spreadsheet skills and experience. Eventually I got a job at a company that had me meeting and talking with a wide range of employees in various departments. Helping fix database issues throughout the company.

Here I started leaning more on my anthropology background. Learning how different departments and individuals operate within the company. Some people liked communicating through emails, others over the phone, or preferred I come to their desk.

By adapting to their communication styles and building good rapport, I gained more insights into deeper data issues going on in the company. From spelling errors in product names that caused pricing issues in the system to SKUs being miscategorized, causing inventory and warehouse problems.

My anthropology knowledge and experience really showed when I got into business data consulting. Learning about whole new industries, meeting new people, and adapting to different company cultures and ways of doing business.

I still rely on standards for data integrity and proven business intelligence techniques. But I don’t force a system or dashboard setup on a client. Instead, listening to my clients to understand where they currently are with their data and spreadsheets and where they want to be as business grows, has proven to be a very successful strategy.

One client was amazed how quickly I learned their industry terms and KPIs, took their chicken scratch scribbles of ideas on a white board, and turned that into a smooth data system and business dashboard they can easily use to track the health of their business.
Enabling them to make confident, data-informed decisions.

After 20 years and looking at hundreds of spreadsheets, I can usually tell within about five minutes how a business make...
08/10/2026

After 20 years and looking at hundreds of spreadsheets, I can usually tell within about five minutes how a business makes decisions.

Not how they say they make decisions. How they actually do it.

The spreadsheets and data setups tell you everything. Where the data entry is sloppy, that is where nobody owns the process. Where there are fifteen tabs but only two get used, that is where someone built something ambitious and the team quietly abandoned it. Where the same number is typed into three different places, that is where trust broke down and someone started keeping their own version.

I had a client once whose spreadsheet had a tab that no one was allowed to touch. No explanation. No documentation. Just a tab full of formulas that one person understood, and that person had left the company over two years earlier. Tabs and spreadheads that no one looks at collect dust.

The owner knew the spreadsheet was a mess. He was kind of embarrassed about it. But here is the thing: his business was doing well. He had good instincts, solid relationships with his customers, and a team that worked hard.

The spreadsheet was not the problem. It was a symptom. The way data moved through his company had never been designed. It had just accumulated.

That is what I see over and over again. The spreadsheet is not broken because someone is bad at Excel. It is broken because the process feeding it was never really planned. It just grew and became overwhelming for the owner and staff to fix.

Some of the messiest spreadsheets I have worked with belonged to some of the most successful owners I know. No need to be embarrassed about that. But at some point, the mess starts costing you time you do not have.

Do you have any messy spreadsheets?

Address

167 Lombard Avenue Suite 500
Winnipeg, MB
R3B0V3

Opening Hours

Monday 8:30am - 5pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 5pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 5pm
Thursday 8:30am - 5pm
Friday 8:30am - 5pm

Telephone

+12047706437

Website

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