Firm: Baker Tilly Product: In-house architected solutions using Microsoft Power BI, Tableau and Qlik. Background: Top 100 Firm Baker Tilly acquired data analytics firm Talavant in March 2020 and folded it into its digital practice. Dave DuVarney, who now serves as a principal at the firm, formerly was president of Talavant, which he co-founded. Selection: Typically, when a client seeks out Baker Tilly’s analytics services, they are prompted by one of two factors: general lack of visibility into their data, or the need to get data insights on a frequent basis. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, DuVarney said, companies need to see their financials in real time instead of 10 days after close. DuVarney explained that there is a maturity cycle that organizations tend to go through in their analytical journey. They will often start out using Microsoft Excel and doing report-based analytics, which is slow and doesn’t offer a lot of detail. Then they may move to quicker operational reporting, extracting data, putting it into a consumable format, even with MS Power BI, Tableau or Qlik. Then, with the implementation of machine learning, they can try to look forward instead of backward. “There are a lot of solutions on the market that will get people so far, but lead to a dead end,” DuVarney said. “The way an organization looks at metrics may not even be standardized across the business. We help companies understand how they define their data, how they define themselves, and then build to the right level of detail and get the data to the right audiences.” Implementation: When Baker Tilly takes on a new client for analytics, the firm conducts a series of interviews that cover goals, what they’re trying to do as a business, and what metrics they are using to measure those goals. “We spend a lot of time discussing goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase margin, then you have to measure margin. In a dynamic costing example, you may have to go a step further. Can I look at cost per production run time to understand what it takes to make a product? Are there ways to pull extra margin out by shifting things around?” The idea is to use interviews to derive, from a client’s objective, what measurable factor Baker Tilly can use to drive to that goal. “We can do all the work, but we tend to be more collaborative,” DuVarney said. “We’re talking about an organization embracing data. We rely a lot on teaming with that org to do it. We want to work ourselves out of a job.” Highlights: “We would not go to a client and sell them the software,” DuVarney explained. “That’s the wrong approach. We have to understand, at its core, what the strategic value of implementing these things is, then we’ll go find the tool that will help them. There are pluses and minuses to every tool — it’s really about changing the culture of an organization.” For example, a CFO of one of Baker Tilly’s clients transformed his accounting department from 10 staff who put data together in Excel sheets and emailed them out, to 10 staff who found insights in the information and now help guide business decisions. Another client grew their accounting team from three to 14 people because the value provided by analytics was so apparent to them — and when the pandemic struck their company, they knew exactly what was happening with their business as it was happening, and were able to adjust in real time. Challenges: “A lot of times, the biggest challenge is the organizations themselves don’t have well-designed business processes.” DuVarney said. “If those are poor, the data they collect is poor. That becomes a consultation opportunity. Now that client moves into Baker Tilly’s transformation, change management, and project management services.” He also said that AI and data analytics are changing all the time, quickly. But at the core, the most important step in deployment of data analytics is understanding what it is you’re trying to measure and why you’re trying to measure it. REQUIRED: (1)Identify and describe the principal business risks relating to Baker Tilly.