Data analytics consulting in Houston

Start with the number you do not trust

Most businesses have reports and little confidence in them. Someone rebuilds the monthly numbers by hand, because the automated version disagreed with reality once and nobody ever found out why.

So we start without building anything. We take the number you argue about most and trace it back to where it comes from. That usually takes a few days, and it usually turns something up: a duplicated month, a filter nobody knew was leaving out a branch, or two definitions of "active customer" sitting in different systems.

Why we show our own data-cleaning work in public

You should not have to take our word for that, so we published an example on our own site. The Houston permits dashboard runs on the residential permit file the City of Houston publishes. In that file, 2019 is an exact duplicate of 2018: twelve months and three columns, identical.

The dashboard does three things about it, the same three we would do with your data. It detects the duplicate automatically, so nobody has to remember it. It drops every twelve-month window that touches the bad year. And it says so on the page, where a reader can see it.

What we build for a Houston business

One screen for one decision, with up to about six numbers that drive it, usually from three or fewer data sources. A handover guide, a recorded walkthrough and a month of fixes are included.

What we do not build first: a warehouse, row-level security for forty users, or a self-service portal. Any of them can be the right project later. As a first engagement, we will tell you so and not quote for it.

A worked example

Say a Houston professional services firm asks for "a utilization dashboard". The useful conversation happens before the build: the two partners mean different things by utilization, and the number has been argued over for a year because of it.

Settling the definition takes an afternoon and is most of the value. Once everyone agrees what the number counts, the screen is almost easy.

What you get at handover

A screen you can open without us, and the queries and code that prepare the data, kept in your repository or your account, not ours. A short written guide to what each number means and where it comes from, because the definition is the part people forget in three months. A recorded walkthrough, so the next person does not have to book a call. And thirty days of fixes for bugs and small corrections.

If a number on the screen cannot be traced back to its source in one step, it does not ship. The same rule put the caveat box on the permits dashboard.

Reading the same number in two languages

Definitions get harder when the operation runs in Spanish and the reports are in English. Terms like "active client", "completed job" and "on time" drift between languages the same way they drift between departments, and then people argue about the monthly number for a reason nobody can name.

When that is your situation, we write the definitions in both languages, in the same handover guide. It is dull work, and it is usually what stops the arguing.