Data & ontology
One vocabulary your systems and your people both use.
Four systems, four spellings of "customer"
Four systems, four spellings of "customer", and a reporting layer whose job is reconciling them. Every new question starts with an argument about which number is right.
One vocabulary, one authority per fact
One explicit vocabulary — the things your business actually has, how they relate, and which system is the authority for each — and the mapping from your existing systems onto it. Not a migration; a shared definition that the systems keep feeding.
The test of it is boring and decisive: two people asking the same question separately get the same number, and can both say where it came from.
What the data engagement leaves behind
- The vocabulary, written down and owned by you, in a form both your systems and your people can use.
- Provenance — every figure traceable to the system that asserted it.
- The reconciliation logic in one place instead of scattered across reports.
The honest limit: somebody with authority has to settle the definitions
Honest limit: this is only worth doing if somebody with authority will settle the definitions. Without that, you get a beautiful model and the arguments continue.
Where this starts
A week-long diagnostic, fixed fee, ending in a written assessment that names the decision, the measurable outcome and whether this is worth building at all.