EXTRA_

BI Strategy & Roadmap Consulting

A business intelligence roadmap built around decisions — not just dashboards

Most organizations have BI tools. Few have a business intelligence strategy that connects those tools to measurable outcomes. NDW’s Decision-First BI Framework™ gives you the architecture, governance, and KPI ownership map to make every dashboard drive action — not just display data.

Microsoft-certified Power BI team

Senior-led delivery

Dallas, TX — serving nationwide

Book Free Assessment See client results ↓

15×

best annualized ROI (freight client)

87%

less weekly reporting time (freight client)

$1.2M

annual savings (construction client)

100%

dashboard adoption at 30 days (finance client)

The Problem

Why most business intelligence strategies fail before they start

A BI roadmap is not a list of dashboards to build. It is a strategic plan that connects your data assets to executive decisions, assigns KPI ownership, defines governance, and sequences investment for maximum early ROI. Without that foundation, every dashboard you build is a guess — and many become shelfware within months.

Signs your BI strategy is missing

⚠

Scattered reports and conflicting KPIs — Finance and Ops are running different numbers from the same source system

⚠

Low Power BI or Tableau adoption — dashboards were built without understanding how executives actually make decisions week to week

⚠

Manual reporting cycles persist — analysts spending 40%+ of their time building reports instead of analyzing them

⚠

No data governance in place — ownership of metrics is unclear, definitions drift between teams, trust in the data erodes

⚠

Unclear analytics ROI — leadership cannot quantify what they have spent on BI tools or what they have gained from them

⚠

BI transformation stalls at pilot — proof-of-concept dashboards delivered, full rollout never happens, tools sit unused after 60 days

What a structured BI roadmap changes

Single source of truth — one definition per KPI, one owner per metric, one place every executive goes to find the answer

Decision-aligned dashboards — every page built around a question an executive actually asks on a weekly basis

Governance that scales — CoE setup, refresh cadence, role-level security, and adoption tracking built in from day one

Quantified ROI — a BI Value Scorecard™ that tracks reporting time savings, adoption rates, and downstream business outcomes quarterly

Sequenced investment — a 12-month business intelligence roadmap that prioritizes quick wins first, earns executive buy-in, then scales

The NDW Business Intelligence Blueprint™

Our 4-phase BI strategy consulting framework

Every business intelligence roadmap we deliver follows the same proven sequence. We do not start with architecture. We start with the decisions your executives make — and work backwards to the data, tools, and governance they need to make them faster and with more confidence. Phases 1–3 are the Business Intelligence Blueprint™: $7,500 fixed, 3–4 weeks, applied to your build if you start within 60 days. Phase 4 runs during the build and Managed BI.

Phase One

Discovery & Alignment

We talk with your leaders and the people who use the reports, and score where you are today.

Deliverable

BI maturity baseline · Decision inventory · Quick-win list

Phase Two

Opportunity Mapping

We tie each business goal to the numbers that track it, then rank what to build by value and effort.

Deliverable

KPI dictionary with owners · Opportunity matrix

Phase Three

Strategy Blueprint

We turn the priorities into a 12-month roadmap, sample dashboard screens and a fixed build price.

Deliverable

12-month BI roadmap · Wireframes · Fixed-price quote

Phase Four

Governance & Enablement

During the build and after go-live, we set owners, rules and training so people keep using the reports.

Deliverable

Governance plan · Adoption tracking · Team training

BI Maturity Model

Where does your organization sit on the BI maturity curve?

Every BI strategy roadmap starts with an honest maturity assessment. Most organizations overestimate where they are — and underestimate how quickly they can advance with the right sequencing. The four stages below are a quick self-check. In the Blueprint we score you in more detail: five areas, 1–5 each, with a target for each.

Level 1

Reactive

Data exists but is not trusted. Decisions are made on gut feel or late-arriving spreadsheets. BI tools may be licensed but sit unused.

›Reports built manually each week

›Multiple conflicting KPI versions

›No defined data ownership

›Dashboards abandoned in 30 days

Level 2

Descriptive

Basic reporting is in place. Analytics are retrospective — leaders see what happened, not why or what to do next.

›Static dashboards, limited filters

›Weekly or monthly reporting cadence

›Some KPI standardization, gaps remain

›Self-service limited outside IT

Level 3

Diagnostic

Leaders drill into root cause. Data is trusted and governed. Reporting is automated. BI is embedded in weekly decision rituals.

›Real-time or daily refresh cadence

›Role-based dashboards with RLS

›KPI ownership matrix in place

›80%+ executive dashboard adoption

Level 4

Predictive & Prescriptive

Analytics anticipate problems and recommend actions. AI and ML layer on a trusted data foundation. BI drives competitive advantage.

›Forecasting and scenario modeling

›Automated alerts and anomaly detection

›Data products shared across units

›BI Value Scorecard™ reviewed quarterly

Not sure where you sit? Start with a free 30-minute reporting assessment.

We look at your current reporting and send a one-page summary of what to fix first within one business day. Yours to keep.

Book Free Assessment →

KPI Architecture

Decision-aligned KPIs across every business domain

A business intelligence roadmap without a KPI ownership map is just a technology plan. We align every metric to a business question, assign an owner, define the data source, and set a refresh cadence before writing a single DAX measure or building a single visual. Here is how that looks across the six domains we most commonly structure.

📈 Finance & Accounting

›Revenue by business unit, period, and customer

›Gross margin by product line and channel

›Month-end close duration and variance

›AR aging, DSO, and collections pipeline

›Budget vs actual by cost center and GL

›Cash flow and working capital visibility

⚙ Operations

›On-time delivery rate and SLA attainment

›Cost per unit or cost per output by process

›Asset utilization and capacity headroom

›Defect rate and cost of rework

›Cycle time and throughput by line

›Vendor scorecard and supplier performance

👥 Sales & Revenue

›Pipeline by stage, rep, and product line

›Win rate, average deal size, and velocity

›Sales cycle length by segment and channel

›Customer acquisition cost (CAC) by campaign

›Net revenue retention and churn analysis

›Quota attainment by rep, team, and region

📋 Projects & Delivery

›Schedule performance index (SPI)

›Cost performance index (CPI) and EAC

›Change order volume and resolution time

›Resource utilization by project

›Milestone completion rate and float

›Risk exposure by project and portfolio

👤 HR & Workforce

›Headcount and FTE by department and location

›Voluntary turnover rate and retention trends

›Time-to-hire and recruiting funnel

›Overtime hours and labor cost variance

›Employee engagement and eNPS trends

›Training completion and certifications

🏠 Executive & Strategy

›OKR and strategic initiative progress

›Cross-functional performance scorecard

›BI adoption rate and data literacy index

›Analytics ROI — time saved, decisions accelerated

›Board-ready KPI narrative with benchmarks

›Anomaly detection and exception alerting

Measurable Outcomes

What a structured BI roadmap delivers

Results taken from our published case studies — organizations that committed to a BI strategy before building dashboards.

⏱

Faster decision-making

Executives move from monthly discovery to same-day visibility. When data is trusted and dashboards are role-built, decisions happen in minutes — not after a three-email chain asking which number is correct.

Real-time

financial visibility, replacing month-end discovery (finance client)

📈

Eliminated manual reporting

Analysts stop building PDFs and start analyzing. Engagements deliver automated refresh, governed data pipelines, and a reporting layer that runs without human intervention every Monday morning.

87%

less weekly reporting time (freight client)

🎯

Sustained exec adoption

Adoption is an outcome of design, not training. We build each dashboard persona-first. The CFO's view is different from the Controller's, which is different from the Ops Manager's. Each person gets their own page.

100%

dashboard adoption at 30 days (finance client)

Before & after: what changes when your BI strategy is structured

What usually changes when the strategy comes before the dashboards

Metric	Before NDW	After NDW	Change
Decision turnaround time	Wait for month-end	Same week, from live dashboards	Faster
Manual report preparation	Hours of copy-paste each week	Automated refresh	Automated
Executive dashboard adoption	Dashboards rarely opened	Used in weekly leadership meetings	Higher
Conflicting KPI definitions	Multiple versions	Single source of truth	Eliminated
Analytics ROI clarity	Not measured	Tracked against the roadmap	Measured
Month-end close (Finance)	Slow, manual reconciliations	Automated reconciliations	Shorter

Client Result

From claims chaos to a single source of truth — $1.2M saved

General Contractor — $100M Revenue

The client had claims in Excel, schedules in Primavera P6 and costs in Sage 300, with no unified view and near-zero executive dashboard adoption. Disputes were aging past 90 days before leadership could step in.

We applied the NDW Business Intelligence Blueprint™ — starting with a decision inventory and KPI ownership map before touching any tooling. The result was a Power BI claims dashboard that joined all three systems, with role-based views for executives, managers, analysts and owners’ reps — and a clear BI strategy behind it.

$1.2M

Annual savings

37%

Faster claims resolution

80%

Exec adoption rate

Read the full case study →

What the BI Blueprint™ changed

✕Claims, schedule and cost data in three separate systems, with no shared view and no owners

↓ After NDW Business Intelligence Blueprint™ ↓

✓One Power BI claims dashboard joining Excel claims, Primavera P6 and Sage 300 — with a KPI ownership map

✓Role-based views for executives, managers, analysts and owners’ reps

✓$1.2M in annual savings and claims resolved 37% faster (120 → 75 days)

✓80% executive dashboard adoption

Engagement Options

Choose your BI strategy consulting engagement

Every engagement is powered by the NDW Business Intelligence Blueprint™. We meet you at your current maturity level, and every phase has a fixed price.

Start Here

Free Reporting Assessment

A 30-minute Zoom call with a senior consultant. We look at your reporting, your key numbers and where they don’t match.

✓
30 minutes on Zoom, no obligation
✓
Your current reporting and top KPIs reviewed
✓
Where numbers conflict, and why
✓
One-page summary within one business day
✓
The 2–3 fixes worth doing first
✓
Yours to keep, whether or not we work together

Most Complete

Business Intelligence Blueprint™

$7,500 fixed · 3–4 weeks. The fee is applied to your build if you start within 60 days. You own every deliverable.

✓
Stakeholder survey and workshop
✓
BI maturity baseline — five areas scored 1–5
✓
KPI dictionary with one owner per metric
✓
Data source map, plus a Power BI tech scan if you have it
✓
Opportunity matrix and dashboard wireframes
✓
12-month roadmap and fixed-price build quote

Ongoing Partner

Managed BI

A fractional BI lead who keeps your reporting healthy, governed and improving as the business grows.

✓
Monthly dashboard enhancements
✓
KPI stewardship and data quality checks
✓
New data source onboarding
✓
Quarterly BI strategy review against the roadmap
✓
Adoption tracking and coaching
✓
Named BI lead

Why NDW

What makes our BI strategy consulting different

Decision-first, always

Many BI projects start with the tool. We start with the decision. Before opening Power BI we ask: what does the CFO decide every Monday that would be 5× better with clean, timely data? That answer becomes Page 1 of the dashboard.

Senior delivery only

Every engagement is led by a senior consultant from discovery through handoff, with one point of contact the whole way. Based in Dallas, TX.

Fixed prices, no surprises

Every phase has a fixed price. No hourly billing and no surprise change orders — and the Blueprint fee is applied to your build if you start within 60 days.

Governance built in

Adoption is not an afterthought. In every BI roadmap, KPI owners are set in the Blueprint, and governance, CoE setup and adoption tracking continue through the build and Managed BI. The dashboard is the beginning, not the deliverable.

ROI before build

The Blueprint ranks every opportunity by value and effort before you commit to a build. You see the case for each initiative on your own data first.

Industry-tested framework

The NDW Business Intelligence Blueprint™ has been used across construction, finance, freight, tech and non-profit teams. The framework adapts to your industry — the rigor never does.

FAQ

Common questions about BI strategy roadmap consulting

What is included in a BI Strategy Consulting engagement? +

Strategy work starts with the Business Intelligence Blueprint™: a stakeholder survey and workshop, a BI maturity baseline (five areas scored 1–5), a KPI dictionary with owners, a data source map, an opportunity matrix with wireframes, and a 12-month roadmap with a fixed build price. Governance, CoE setup and adoption tracking continue during the build and Managed BI. It all starts with a free 30-minute reporting assessment.

How long does a business intelligence roadmap project take? +

The Blueprint takes 3–4 weeks, depending on the number of stakeholders and data sources. Builds then run 2–4 weeks for a Dashboard Accelerator or 6–12 weeks for an enterprise rollout.

Do you implement dashboards as part of the BI roadmap? +

Yes. The BI Strategy Blueprint is designed to flow directly into implementation. Once the roadmap and architecture are approved, we transition into our Power BI Consulting engagement to build the dashboards, data pipelines, and governance infrastructure the strategy calls for — with no re-onboarding. The Blueprint tells us exactly what to build and why, and its fee is applied to the build if you start within 60 days.

We already have Power BI dashboards. Do we still need a BI roadmap? +

This is the most common situation we encounter. Having dashboards is not the same as having a BI strategy. If your executives are not using them, if KPI definitions conflict across departments, or if your team is still spending 40%+ of their time building manual reports — the dashboards exist but the strategy does not. A free 30-minute assessment shows where to look; the Blueprint pinpoints exactly what is broken and what to fix first.

What makes NDW different from other BI strategy consulting firms? +

Three things: we start with decisions not data (our Decision-First BI Framework™ means every KPI traces back to an executive question), every engagement is senior-led with one point of contact, and every phase has a fixed price, with the Blueprint fee applied to your build if you start within 60 days.

What is the difference between a BI roadmap and a BI strategy? +

A BI strategy defines the why and what — which business outcomes analytics should drive, which KPIs matter, and what governance is required. A BI roadmap is the how and when — the sequenced 12-month plan that translates the strategy into milestones, investments, and measurable results. NDW delivers both as part of the BI Strategy Blueprint engagement.

Do you work with organizations outside of Dallas, TX? +

Yes — we are based in Dallas, and we deliver BI strategy consulting engagements nationwide. Discovery workshops are conducted remotely; on-site executive sessions can be arranged as part of the BI Strategy Blueprint engagement.

Get Started

Your dashboards deserve a strategy behind them

Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute reporting assessment. Within one business day you get a one-page summary of what to fix first — the first step toward a clear business intelligence roadmap, before you spend anything on a build.

Book Free Assessment Explore Power BI Services