CASE STUDY · TRUSTED DATA & EXIT READINESS
From answers that took weeks to evidence that stood up to scrutiny
How ABCL helped a PE-backed technology and managed services group connect its data, state the limits of its own analysis and build confidence in the numbers during an ownership transition.
Microsoft Dynamics · Azure · Power BI
BEFORE: difficult to substantiate
AFTER: clearer evidence and stated limits
ENGAGEMENT
AT A GLANCE
- Company and sector
- Technology and managed services group
- Sponsor
- PE-backed, during an ownership transition
- Size and dates
- Group-wide · 2024
- Delivery
- Founder-led by Tejas Parikh · Dynamics, Azure, Power BI
Days / weeks → minutes / hours
Typical time to answer a management or investor question
Stated exclusions
Customer cohorts with explicit exclusions and reasons
Nightly
Automated board and management packs, with refresh on demand
Response times varied by request and were not formally benchmarked. The range reflects the engagement lead's observation across the period, comparing answers that previously took days or weeks with answers typically produced in minutes to a few hours after delivery. Management judgement, commentary and approval remain human responsibilities.
The pressure
The group had implemented Microsoft Dynamics, but Finance still could not produce reporting it was able to explain and rely on. An ownership transition raised the stakes: questions about outstanding invoices, managed-service customer relationships and implementation profitability all needed detailed supporting analysis.
Some answers took days to assemble. Others took weeks. The difficulty went beyond extraction and consolidation. Incomplete records and inconsistent definitions sometimes produced information that did not make business sense.
Finance needed faster answers and a reliable basis for explaining what the numbers showed and where the supporting evidence remained incomplete.
What was wrong underneath
Incomplete source records
Gaps in the underlying information made it difficult to establish how long managed-service customers had been with the business, or to assess renewal prospects on a consistent basis.
Inconsistent definitions
Different interpretations of the same data weakened comparability and made results harder to explain to anyone outside the team that produced them.
Disconnected information
Dynamics, CRM, headcount, timesheet and project-management data had to be brought together before any of it could be analysed.
Unclear accountability
Data-quality problems were difficult to isolate and resolve when it was unclear who was responsible for completing or correcting a record.
Manual answers under scrutiny
Finance was combining information by hand while simultaneously responding to management, board and transaction-related questions.
What the team needed was a reporting environment in which it could trace the evidence, explain the exceptions and show how the remaining gaps would be closed.
Illustrative investor questions
- What is the outstanding invoice balance, and how long has it been outstanding?
- How long have our managed-service customers been with the business?
- What profitability are implementation engagements generating?
What ABCL changed
Tejas Parikh led the engagement and the ABCL delivery team built the technical environment. Wednesday stakeholder check-ins and Friday CFO reviews gave the work a fixed rhythm for reviewing progress and resolving issues while the transaction pressure was running.
01 · ALIGN
Connected the reporting requirements to the underlying information and established mapped definitions the team could work from.
The work deliberately exposed incomplete and inconsistent records rather than working around them, so the team could see where the analysis needed correcting and where it needed qualifying.
02 · DESIGN
Structured the Azure data environment around connected transaction tables and shared reference tables.
That created the relationships needed to analyse financial, customer, workforce, timesheet and project information together rather than one dataset at a time.
03 · BUILD
Brought the source data into Azure and built Power BI reporting for internal service-lead reviews, board reporting and sale-related analysis.
Nightly automated refreshes, with on-demand refresh available, made the reporting repeatable rather than a project that had to be rerun by hand.
04 · EMBED
Enabled customer cohort analysis with a clear statement of which accounts were excluded and why, so management could set out a roadmap for the remaining data improvements.
ABCL handed over documentation, recorded walkthroughs and structured training, so the client's team could maintain the environment and keep improving the data without ABCL in the room.
Before and after
Before
After
Business and decision impact
The managed-service customer analysis shows what changed. The group had struggled to establish how long customers had been engaged and to assess renewal prospects. The new architecture let the team define cohorts for analysis and state plainly which accounts had been excluded because the supporting information was incomplete.
The limitations stayed visible. Management could describe the next steps: locating contracts, updating systems and putting supplementary agreements in place where an agreement had lapsed while the service continued on a rolling basis.
Not every record was corrected during the engagement. The change was that the team could substantiate the analysis it presented, explain the caveats transparently, and show a credible route to closing what remained.
According to the engagement lead, initial investor scepticism eased as that transparency became visible. Being able to support the numbers and explain their limits earned credibility for the information and for the team presenting it.
Why this mattered in a PE-backed business
During an ownership transition, financial and commercial analysis has to withstand detailed challenge. An answer is more useful when the team can explain where it came from, which population it covers and what limits its interpretation.
This engagement built that basis while continuing to serve ordinary management reporting. The same connected environment supported internal service-lead reviews, board reporting and transaction-related analysis, for multiple reporting needs.
Portfolio relevance
The pattern repeats in investor-backed service groups whose systems are in place but whose data is incomplete or inconsistently defined. Better reporting depends on connecting the underlying records, agreeing how they are interpreted and making the unresolved gaps visible rather than leaving them to be discovered by somebody else.
TRUE FP&A impact
Trusted Data
Connected records, clearer definitions, explicit data gaps and a management roadmap to close them.
Responsive Planning
Not part of this engagement.
Up-to-date Insights
Automated board and management reporting, refreshed nightly and on demand.
Engaged Decision Support
Faster answers with supporting evidence and stated caveats for management, board and sale-related discussions.
The takeaway
Credible analysis is not analysis with no gaps. It is analysis where the team can show what the numbers mean, what supports them and where judgement or further work is still required.
By connecting this group's data and making its limits explicit, ABCL helped Finance answer faster, report more reliably and hold credibility during an ownership transition. A structured handover left the client's team able to maintain the environment and keep improving the data.
Can your team explain the evidence behind the numbers, and the gaps still being closed?
The Board Pack Health Check is a starting point for reviewing reporting quality. It is not a complete due diligence assessment.