Find True North
Passionate about helping businesses leverage data to make confident decisions while navigating the path to success
What is BI?
Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the technologies, processes, and tools that help organizations collect, analyze, and present business data to support informed decision-making.
The process of analyzing your business can be challenging in a few ways…
Data Access
With data collected in multiple platforms accessed via report exports, and multiple spreadsheets stored in multiple folders, it can be difficult to get all your needed data in one spot for analysis.
Complexity
Data overload happens when there are multiple tables of information each containing specific details needed to be aggregated and calculated with complex formulas and spreadsheet formatting. Complexity issues can lead to inaccurate outputs.
Time Consuming
It can take days or weeks to find all the time needed to build one report. Multiply that time by the number of reports needed to measure your business over a year, and it can be costly!
TrueNorth BI’s process to navigate challenges…
Step 1 - Import & Transform Data
Importing and transforming data involves bringing information into a system then refining it to make it usable. It's the process of gathering data from various sources and converting it into a format that can be easily analyzed or integrated into a data model. This step is crucial for ensuring data consistency and relevance in decision-making processes.
Step 2 - Data Modeling
Data modeling is the organized creation of structures to store and manage information in a way that makes sense for a business. It involves understanding what data is needed, creating a detailed plan, and putting that plan into action in a user-friendly system.
Step 3 - Report & Dashboard Development
A data dashboard provides a visual overview of important information, presenting key metrics and insights in a condensed and user-friendly format. It allows users to quickly grasp trends, patterns, and performance metrics, facilitating informed decision-making at a glance.
Tools That Drive Our Insights
At TrueNorth BI, we believe powerful business intelligence doesn’t always require complex systems or expensive software. Many small and mid-sized businesses already have the most versatile analytics platform sitting on their desktop — Microsoft Excel.
Excel: The Workhorse You Already Own
We help you get the most out of Excel by designing structured, automated spreadsheets that:
Pull data from multiple sources and reports automatically.
Use Power Query to clean and combine information from CSVs, exports, or databases.
Apply formulas, tables, and data models to calculate performance metrics accurately.
Visualize results in clear, professional dashboards tailored to your goals.
Excel remains one of the most flexible tools for operational and financial analysis — especially when data is stored in files or smaller systems rather than centralized databases.
Power BI: When You’re Ready to Go Further
When your business needs a deeper view of performance or automated reporting, Power BI builds on the foundation already created in Excel:
Connects directly to your existing Excel models, accounting systems, or cloud apps.
Refreshes automatically — no more manual report updates.
Creates interactive dashboards accessible anywhere.
Allows teams to explore trends, performance, and forecasts with just a few clicks.
We’ll help you determine whether Excel alone meets your current needs or if Power BI can help scale your insights as your business grows.
Practical Business Intelligence
No data warehouse. No expensive IT build-outs. Just the right tools — applied strategically — to bring clarity to your numbers and confidence to your decisions.