Rochdale has a deeper manufacturing and engineering base than people give it credit for. Kingsway Business Park is full of distribution, food and engineering businesses, the town itself has a strong base of family run firms, and there is a growing professional services and tech presence along the tram line into Manchester. Most of those businesses run on a mix of Sage, an ERP or stock control system, a CRM and a healthy library of Excel workbooks. The data is there. It is just hard to see all in one place.
Our first piece of work is almost always a single report. Usually the one that takes someone half a day to put together every Monday. We rebuild it in Power BI against the source system, document it, and hand it back so it refreshes on its own. Once that is stable, the next step is usually obvious, whether that is more reporting, a proper leadership dashboard, or some Power BI training for the team that wants to take it on themselves.
A lot of Rochdale manufacturers ask about joining production and finance data together so margin is not a surprise at the month end. Distribution clients ask about stock turn, OTIF, pick rates and ageing. The pattern in both cases is the same. We connect to the operational system, agree the definitions with the people who own the numbers, and build a model that survives the next system upgrade.
For smaller teams who do not need a full retainer, we are happy with a few hours a month of ongoing support after the initial build. That tends to be enough to keep things moving, pick up small enhancements and answer the inevitable "can we add this to the dashboard?" questions without anyone needing to hire a full time analyst.
We also tidy up Power BI setups that have got a bit out of hand. Datasets nobody is sure are still refreshing, workspaces with thirty reports and no idea which ones are still used, gateways that fall over every few weeks. A short audit usually pays for itself in saved time within a couple of months.
We cover Rochdale and the surrounding boroughs in Oldham, Bury, Bolton and the wider Manchester area. If you would like to talk it through, drop us a line and we will come back the same working day with an honest first step.