You generate data every minute of your day. Every email you write, resume you upload, and timesheet you check leaves a digital trail. This is true for everyone else in your business, too. Every single consultant, manager, and staffer generates a mountain of data. What if you could learn to collect and interpret that data, harnessing it to your advantage? How could you transform your business with data-driven consulting?
The Value of Consultant Data
When you hear “data,” you might picture massive Excel spreadsheets, complicated dashboards, or server banks in a huge data center. Those are all forms of data – extremely valuable ones!
There’s also value in the data you accumulate through day-to-day activity. The emails you send to clients track the history of your relationship. Consultant CVs are an evolving record of skills and experiences. Skill matrices and time management software log practical information about who can do what and when.
Consultant data can generate tremendous value for your company. Data-driven consulting reveals opportunities you might otherwise miss. Perhaps you’re overlooking qualified consultants who are the perfect fit for a project. Or maybe someone on your team has just acquired a high-demand certification.
Good data also reveals inefficiencies in your process. You might notice that some consultants are over- or under-booked or not tallying as many billable hours as expected. Once you identify a problem, you can investigate and fix it.
Decision-making is faster with good data management. You don’t need to hunt for crucial information – it’s at your fingertips. You can respond to opportunities quickly and confidently. A clear record of what has and hasn’t worked for your company makes it easier to strategize. You have solid proof to support your plans.
How To Collect and Maintain Good Data
Becoming a data-driven consulting business requires ongoing effort. You need to organize your current data and create a plan for collecting and maintaining future data.
Countless tools come with built-in reporting. You can go high-tech, investing in the latest and greatest software, or low-tech, tracking data points in a spreadsheet. Whatever you choose, keep these principles in mind:
1. Centralization
How hard would it be to hang a picture if you kept your hammer and nails in different parts of the house? Keeping your tools in a toolbox makes problems easier to solve.
Companies often make the same mistake about their data. They collect information, but it’s scattered across a dozen software systems. Integrations are non-existent, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what’s going on. Consultants often dump CVs in a company SharePoint with haphazard file names. Resource Managers waste time chasing people down for resumes they can’t find.
Try to keep your data in one place as much as possible. This might mean setting up integrations or automating parts of your reporting. Or you might need to streamline your SharePoint, so your consultants know where (and how) to store their project histories.
When you need to make a decision, you should always know exactly where to find the information you need. If not, you have a problem.
2. Standardization
Standardization and Centralization are related. Both involve quickly finding the necessary information.
Data that isn’t standardized is hard to interpret. Try running a script on a disorganized spreadsheet, and you’ll see what I mean – the information is right there, but it doesn’t make sense. You can spend hundreds of dev hours automating your reporting systems, but your dashboard will be worthless if your inputs are a mess.
Naming and storage conventions also matter. Let’s return to the messy SharePoint example: Even if you keep all your consultants’ CVs in the same folder, it might not be clear whose CV you’re looking at or if the information within is current. Again, you waste time opening files and double-checking with your team.
For consultant data to be useful, it must be clean and easy to interpret. Once you’ve accomplished this, you can move on to the third principle.
3. Automation
This is where the magic happens. You can automate reporting when you keep standardized data in a centralized location.
Automation is the ultimate time-saver. You no longer need to download reports or send them to other decision-makers manually. You don’t need to check the analytics dashboards of a dozen different tools. Everything you need is scraped together and sent straight to your inbox.
You can also automate aspects of your interpretation, pre-programming routine calculations and error detection. Does something in the data look off? Flag it automatically. This saves you the time and effort of manually analyzing your data.
Most people think automation is about data, but that’s only half true. Automation is about attention. Everything you automate is one less thing you have to worry about. Instead, design scripts or buy tools that will immediately draw your attention to what matters most.
Becoming a Data-Driven Consulting Firm
In 2025, most companies know they must use data to inform decision-making. The problem is that they don’t know how to do it. They buy more software and hire experts, looking for a magic bullet.
The truth is that becoming a data-driven consulting firm comes down to the three principles outlined above – centralization, standardization, and automation. These principles are simple but powerful. That doesn’t mean that they’re easy to implement.
That’s where we come in. Our software solution will handle centralization, standardization, and automation for you.
decídalo is specifically designed for IT consulting companies, with built-in features to handle CVs, skill tracking, and timesheets in one place. We use cutting-edge automation technology to help you find everything you need when you need it.
Experience data-driven consulting – it’s free to sign up! You can also contact us to ask questions or schedule a demo.