Services
A data platform your whole organisation can rely on — built to last, not to demo.
The Data Platform Build is for organisations where the data problem is no longer about one system or one report — it is structural. Data sits in multiple systems, owned by different teams, with no reliable way to bring it together. Until that is solved, your teams will keep compensating manually — and the gap will keep growing.
This is end-to-end implementation: pipelines, structured data models, governance foundations, and a reporting layer. Designed for the whole organisation. Built to scale with it.
When this is the right engagement
You have probably already tried something. A platform, a junior hire, a short engagement with a consultancy. It helped partially, or it did not last — because the problem was bigger than the solution.
This engagement is right when:
- Reporting needs span multiple departments and systems — a single warehouse is not enough to serve the whole organisation
- Data governance, ownership, and quality standards need to be built into the platform, not added later
- You are ready to invest in a foundation the whole business will use — not just one team or one report
- You have internal capability to maintain what is built, but not to design or implement it
If you do not yet have a clear picture of what the problem actually is, the Data Strategy Accelerator is the right starting point. It is designed to answer that question first.
What the engagement involves
This is strategy and delivery in a single engagement. There is no handoff between an advisor who defines the plan and an implementor who builds something different. The approach is agreed at the start — then delivered incrementally, so you see working output before the full platform is complete.
Discovery
Every organisation arrives with a different set of constraints — legacy systems, decisions already made, lean teams with limited capacity to absorb a long implementation. Before any build decisions are made, I spend time understanding yours: the systems you run, the data they hold, what your teams actually need from it, and the constraints you are working within. The right architecture follows from that understanding, not from a default template.
Architecture
The platform design is based on your actual situation. What systems to connect. How data should be structured. Where validation and quality controls need to be built in. What the governance model looks like. These decisions are made with you, not for you.
Build
Delivered incrementally, so the organisation is not waiting months to see any output. Each stage delivers working capability your teams can use, while the full platform takes shape.
Governance foundations
Ownership, definitions, and documentation are built in from the start — not added at the end as an afterthought. The organisation should be able to maintain and build on what has been delivered without depending on external support to explain it.
Handover
The engagement ends with your team confident in what has been built: documented, tested, and understood. If ongoing support is useful beyond that, that is a separate conversation — not a necessity.
What you get
- A scalable data platform that consolidates your key systems into a single, trustworthy source
- Automated pipelines that keep data current without manual intervention
- Structured data models that produce consistent outputs — for decisions, operations, payroll, funder returns, and any reporting your teams need
- Clear data ownership across the organisation — so the platform does not quietly degrade the moment the engagement ends
- A documented, tested platform your internal team can maintain and build on — without needing external support to explain what was built or why
What this is not
- Not a large-scale enterprise programme requiring a team of consultants — this is senior-led, hands-on delivery throughout
- Not a fixed specification written before the engagement starts — the right approach is agreed based on understanding your organisation
- Not a reporting-only engagement — if dashboards are the immediate need, the Warehouse QuickStart is a better fit
- Not the right starting point if you do not yet have a clear picture of your data problems — start with the Data Strategy Accelerator
Evidence
Linaker — a £25m engineering business running Joblogic across 200+ engineers — came to us with what looked like a payroll automation problem. What we found was structural: inconsistent data across multiple systems, undocumented business rules, and no single reliable source of truth.
The engagement involved building a data warehouse from the ground up, designing the architecture to handle multiple validation stages, automating pipelines from Joblogic and payroll systems, and putting in place a governance feedback loop so operations could catch and fix data problems before they reached payroll. The result was two full-time positions freed in the accounts team, accurate automated payroll, and board-level management reports produced monthly — without manual intervention.
Paddle UK, the national governing body for paddle sport, had data flowing in from membership, qualifications, and performance programmes — but no reliable way to bring it together for funder reporting or strategic decisions. The engagement ran from data strategy through to platform delivery, ending with daily-updated membership reporting that the organisation had not been able to produce before. The outcome was less about the technology and more about confidence: leadership now had a single, trusted source they could act on and report from, without manual consolidation every time.
“Their help was crucial in digitising part of our timesheet process, which freed up two full-time positions in our accounts team and increased our engineers’ productivity. He also created management reports that are used at board level every month.”
Jennie Davies, Performance Director, Linaker
Ready to talk?
Engagements at this level start with a structured discovery conversation — to make sure the approach is right before any build decisions are made.
Not sure if this is the right starting point? The Data Strategy Accelerator is designed to answer that question.