Imagine a Monday sales meeting. The team wants to know which customers bought less than they did last month and which accounts deserve a call first. Invoices are in the business management system. Account ownership is in the CRM. Someone needs to bring the two together, so a report request goes to IT. The answer arrives on Friday, after the sales team has already planned its visits using the information it had.
We encounter that wait repeatedly in our assessments. A company records what happens but takes too long to turn those records into an answer someone can act on. Preparing the report consumes time. So does working around its absence while decisions still need to be made.
The reporting queue starts setting business priorities
A straightforward business question can require substantial work behind the scenes. The person answering it has to identify the right tables, check how they relate, apply filters and verify the result. If that person also maintains integrations and handles incidents, every request competes with other work. A sales question becomes another technical ticket.
As waiting becomes routine, departments build their own spreadsheets. Sales counts orders, Finance counts invoices and Operations counts deliveries. All three may label their number “sales.” The next meeting then spends time reconciling the totals before anyone can use them.
Knowledge also accumulates around whoever prepares the reports. They know which table is current, where duplicate customers appear and which adjustment makes the total match the close. That expertise matters. Requiring it for every routine question limits how much the rest of the organization can do.
Putting a value on the wait
Start by recording what people are waiting for: the question behind each request, how long it has been open and the decision that depends on it. That makes it possible to distinguish the work of producing a report from the consequences of receiving it late.
In one assessment, we documented 47 outstanding reporting tickets, with an estimated value of USD 300 to 600 per ticket: approximately USD 14,000 to 28,000 sitting in the backlog.
At an energy company, we found USD 128,000 in committed capital held up by reporting delays. Money the business had already committed and could not put back to work while it waited for the information.
Start with the requests accumulating in your own team: the work needed to resolve them, the decisions waiting on them and how long they have been open. Reviewing that list with the people who requested each report helps establish what to tackle first.
An answer people can check
With AskYourData, business teams query their data in everyday language. A sales manager can ask, “Which customers reduced their purchases compared with last month?” and explore the answer by territory, account owner or period, without writing SQL or opening a ticket for each routine question.
Answering that question correctly requires a definition of “purchases.” Does it mean confirmed orders, net invoicing or deliveries? Are we comparing complete months or equivalent periods? When the wording leaves room for interpretation, the assistant should ask for clarification or show the agreed definition it is applying.
A useful answer includes the period, filters and a way to inspect the underlying records. Someone receiving a customer list can then check what was counted before deciding whom to call.
The data's last update is part of the answer too. It lets the person decide whether the information is current enough for today's decision or whether the source needs to be checked again.
Agree on the meaning of the numbers first
The first task is to choose specific questions and agree with the business on how their answers are calculated. What makes a customer active? How are returns deducted? Which currency is used? Who owns each definition? This work gives the same question a consistent meaning across teams.
Next comes access to the required sources: reviewing record quality, configuring connectors and agreeing on how to keep the data current. That work prepares the sources the team will query.
IT and data teams remain responsible for sources, definitions and permissions. The aim is to give them more time to maintain that foundation and reduce repetitive query work. The assistant must operate within each user's authorized access. For a reporting use case, the starting point is read-only access with a record of the operations performed.
Existing dashboards also have a role. When a dashboard already answers a recurring question well, it should remain useful. A conversational interface can complement it when users need questions or breakdowns it does not yet cover. The choice depends on the specific need and the tools already working for the team.
Start with questions whose answers can be verified
At ZirconTech, we organize this work through ZirconTrace. Diagnosis selects priority questions and sources and records how the team answers them today. Design establishes definitions, access and acceptance criteria. During the build, answers are compared with results checked by the data team. Go-live includes user training, followed by operational review of errors, unanswered questions and changes in the sources.
We plan for a first production version in 4 to 6 weeks, using the sources, access and questions prioritized during diagnosis. We start with the queries that create the most work and expand coverage based on how the team uses the system.
To evaluate it, we measure the time from a question to a usable answer, the queries people can resolve without a ticket and the corrections required. We also check that each answer respects permissions and lets someone verify the calculation.
What our assessments show
Among the companies we assessed, 68% reported slow reporting as an active problem. In 65% of the cases examined for this problem, delays affected weekly commercial decisions. And 91% of AskYourData proposals were selected as an implementation priority, the highest selection rate in our portfolio.
Once companies put a value on the wait for information, access to data becomes a stronger priority in deciding what to address first.
The assessment identifies where to start: improving an existing report, cleaning up a data source or giving people direct access to the routine queries they currently send to IT. The priority follows the decisions the business needs to make.
The technology behind the approach
The reference architecture for AskYourData uses models available through Amazon Bedrock to interpret questions and compose answers from query results. The query engine depends on the sources involved. For example, Amazon Athena can query data in S3 and access other sources through supported connectors.
The combination is chosen during design. Calculations should run against approved sources with access controls, query limits and result validation. The model's explanation draws on those results, and the application needs to retain enough information for someone to check them.
A practical starting point
Choose a question your team needed answered this week. Record who asked it, which decision depended on it and how long a usable answer took to arrive. Tracing that one request gives you a concrete starting point for assessing the problem.
In a 60 to 90 minute diagnostic session, we review those questions, the available sources and the options for addressing them. The aim is to agree on an initial scope and how to verify its value. We can also assess whether AWS funding is available for the assessment.
