Analytics Diagnostics — for leadership teams

Analytics Diagnostics

Reporting that is technically well built and quietly wrong is the normal state of a growing company — not a sign of a bad team. The numbers were defined years ago by different people for different questions, and nobody's job is to go back and check.

Why this matters

The numbers look fine until someone checks.

The symptoms are consistent. Two board meetings in a row open with fifteen minutes of reconciling conflicting figures. A retention number that flatters because churned accounts left both sides of the ratio. An "active account" definition that counts a login. Sixty dashboards and nine definitions of "customer".

None of that needs new tooling to fix. It needs someone senior enough to recompute the headline numbers, say plainly which ones will not survive, and rank the findings by the decision each one distorts.

A metric can be imprecise and harmless. It can also be precise, well-governed, and quietly steering a $3M budget the wrong way.

How the four fit together

Four services, one sequence.

Most engagements start with the audit, because it produces the evidence that tells you whether you need the rest.

Measures today

KPI Audit

Which numbers survive a recomputation, and which decisions they distort.

Defines the standard

North Star Framework

The metric system the audit recommends, with definitions that travel.

Answers one question

Performance Diagnostic

Why the number moved, and which part of it is yours to control.

Keeps it honest

Fractional Advisory

Standing senior judgment, monthly, without a full-time hire.

Read the sample report

Services

What each one is.

Measures today

Executive Analytics & KPI Audit

An independent read on the reporting layer leadership actually runs on. We recompute the headline metrics from the warehouse, interview the people who own them, and report which conclusions the current reporting supports — and which it does not.

Findings are graded on decision consequence, not on data-quality aesthetics, and each one names the decision it distorts and the effort to fix it.

  • Metric recomputation
  • Ranked findings
  • Severity by decision impact
  • Answerable-today table
  • 90-day remediation roadmap
  • Confidence & limits
  • Executive readout

See sample 03 — a full eight-finding audit →

Format~9 business days
InvestmentFixed price

Defines the standard

KPI & North Star Framework

The metric system the audit recommends: one North Star that is both leading and moveable, a driver hierarchy leadership can operate weekly, and definitions robust enough that the board number and the team number are the same number.

Built on one rule above all — every metric names a decision. If nobody can say what they would do differently at a different value, it is interesting, not operational.

  • North Star definition
  • Driver tree
  • Tiered scorecard
  • Metric definitions with owners
  • Exclusions & known limits
  • Escalation thresholds
  • Definition repository

See sample 01 — 61 dashboards to 20 numbers →

Format~3 weeks
InvestmentFixed price

Answers one question

Business Performance Diagnostic

One question, taken seriously. Why retention fell, where the funnel leaks, which segments actually drive revenue, whether a change worked. We decompose the move before diagnosing it, test the alternative explanations, and separate what is structural from what is market.

Comes with a one-page executive narrative: the bottom line, what the movement is made of, why it happened, and the specific decisions being requested.

  • Problem reframe
  • Full decomposition
  • Hypothesis tests
  • Controllable vs external split
  • Quantified recommendations
  • One-page board memo
  • What would change this view

See sample 02 — the diagnostic → · See sample 04 — its board memo →

Format~4 weeks
InvestmentFixed price

Keeps it honest

Fractional Analytics Advisory

Senior analytics thinking without a full-time hire: monthly metric review, prioritising the analytics queue, a second read on your analyst's work, vendor evaluation, and decision support before the board meeting.

Advisory hours cover live meetings, the preparation behind them, document and analysis review, and asynchronous strategic input. Implementation sits outside the retainer.

  • Monthly metric review
  • Analytics prioritisation
  • Review of internal work
  • Vendor evaluation
  • Executive decision support

FormatUp to 4 advisory hours / month
InvestmentMonthly retainer

In analytics engagements, we design the measurement, the diagnosis and the decision framework. Your team or implementation partner builds and runs the dashboards and pipelines.

Fixed price, quoted after a short scoping email. New engagements are scheduled from February 2027. Enquiries are welcome now.

Book a Discovery Call

Who we work with

Companies with real numbers and no one whose job is to question them.

Series A–C SaaS with a reporting layer nobody fully trusts Founder-led companies heading into a plan or a raise Teams with an analyst or two but no analytics leadership Companies where two teams report the same metric differently
B2B SaaSVertical SaaSE-commerceSubscriptionProfessional services

Method

The same four moves, every engagement.

This is what you're buying: a repeatable way of turning "it seems fine" into something you can measure, argue about with evidence, and improve on purpose.

01

Define

What does good look like? Written down, owned, specific enough that two people reach the same verdict.

02

Measure

Recompute or score it consistently against that definition, on a basis that supports a comparison.

03

Diagnose

Find the pattern underneath the individual numbers, and rank findings by the decision each one distorts.

04

Improve

A prioritised remediation with owners and windows — and a way to check it actually worked.

How we work

Small scope, senior judgment, deliverables built to be used.

Lean

Small projects with a defined scope and a named deliverable. Nothing open-ended.

Senior-led

The person who scopes the work does the work. No layers of junior consultants.

Practical

Deliverables designed to be picked up and used, not presented and filed.

Featured — Business Performance Diagnostic

The question you were asked is usually not the question to answer.

A leadership team asks why churn is rising and how many CSMs to hire. Decomposing the decline first shows churn is a quarter of it — and that the largest driver is a pricing term, not a relationship problem. Same data, different remedy, $1.1M not spent.

Step 1

Reframe the question

What is actually moving, and which part of it is ours to control? The framing usually arrives with a remedy already attached to it.

Step 2

Decompose before diagnosing

Most headline metrics are arithmetic identities. A fourteen-point move has to allocate fourteen points before anyone explains it.

Step 3

Separate structural from external

Which share is market conditions, and which share is a policy, a definition or a default that can be changed this quarter?

Step 4

Recommend with a number on it

Each recommendation carries the ARR it protects, the decision it unblocks, and what would change the view.

Typical format is three to four weeks, fixed price, with two interim readouts. The deliverable is a written diagnostic plus a one-page board memo — not a deck of generalities.

See the full sample diagnostic →

Sample work

Four complete sample deliverables.

Tidal Arc publishes full worked samples rather than describing the work in the abstract. Depth, format and standard of argument are visible before you buy anything.

Sample 01

KPI & North Star Framework

From 61 dashboards to 20 numbers that each decide something.

Sample 02

Business Performance Diagnostic

Churn was not the problem. Fourteen points of NRR decline, fully allocated.

Sample 03

Executive Analytics & KPI Audit

Eight findings on the reporting layer of a $31M ARR SaaS company. Three change a decision already made.

Sample 04

Executive Analytical Narrative

A retention diagnosis compressed to one page and two decisions for a board.

See Sample Work

Find out which of your numbers would survive a recomputation.

A 30-minute call. We'll tell you whether an audit is worth doing, and what it would cost.

Book a Discovery Call

Need your workflows checked instead? Explore Workflow Checks & Automation.