Case study · Data and reporting

Four systems, one picture.

An organisation's numbers were spread across a CRM, a registration platform, SharePoint lists and its ad accounts. Now they flow into Power BI on a schedule, and every department works from the same up-to-date picture.

The problem

Each system kept its own numbers and its own reports. Nobody could see the whole picture in one place, and putting it together by hand was slow.

What we built

Automated feeds from each source into one Power BI data model, refreshed on a schedule. Each department has its own report pages, built on the same numbers underneath.

The result

The marketing team said having the numbers in front of them made a big difference: they could adapt their plans and got better results than they had without that visibility.

How the data moves

Nobody exports anything

Each source is read on a schedule into one data model. Every department opens its own pages, with the same numbers underneath.

Diagram: a CRM, a registration platform, SharePoint lists and ad platforms feed a scheduled refresh and one data model, which serves report pages for leadership, marketing, membership, programmes and finance
For leadership

The whole organisation on one page

Headline numbers for each department against target, this year against last, and where sign-ups are coming from. Every number has one definition, and the page says when the data was last refreshed.

Northlight Group (demo)
Organisation overview: headline figures, registrations by week against last year, registrations by channel and a department scorecard against target
For marketing

Spend and results, side by side

Spend by campaign next to what each registration cost, week by week, from the first click through to attendance. When one channel starts costing more than another, the next refresh shows it.

Northlight Group (demo)
Marketing page: weekly spend by campaign, cost per registration falling after budget moved to search, a campaign table and a click to attendance funnel
Where else this fits

Any business with its numbers in more than one place

Sales in a CRM, jobs in a job management system, money in Xero, ads in Meta and Google. If someone exports reports and pastes them into a spreadsheet every month, the same approach applies: connect the sources once and let the reports refresh themselves.

Built by our founder in a previous role. Recreated with invented data: the real reports run in Power BI, and the organisation's name is removed.

More work

Other systems we've built

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