Data analytics services in Cyprus: dashboards and models

Two different things get called analytics, and they answer different questions.

• A dashboard tells you what has already happened, and keeps telling you without anyone rebuilding a spreadsheet each month.
• A model estimates what is likely to happen next, or finds a pattern in your data too large to see by eye.

Both are worth having. They are not the same purchase, and knowing which one you are asking for saves a great deal of money.

What a dashboard is actually for

The value is not the chart. It is that nobody spends the first three days of the month assembling the figures, and that everyone in the argument is looking at the same number.

A good one answers a question you ask repeatedly — how did last month go, which service earns the most, where is the cash going — and it answers it the same way every time, without being asked.

What a model is for

A model is worth building when a decision repeats often enough that being right slightly more often adds up. Forecasting demand so you order the right amount. Spotting which customers are about to stop buying while there is still time to call them. Grouping customers by how they behave rather than by what you assumed. Scoring which enquiries are worth chasing first.

If the decision happens twice a year, a model is a poor use of money. If it happens every week, it is a good one.

The part that is most of the work

Data almost never arrives ready. It is spread across spreadsheets, two systems disagree about the same customer, dates are typed three different ways, and the one field you need was optional.

Cleaning, joining and automating that is usually the largest part of the job. It is also the part that keeps paying after the project ends, because once it runs by itself, the reporting is no longer someone's monthly chore.

Where it goes wrong

Asking for AI when the problem is a clean report. The word attracts budget, but a great many requests are answered by reporting that updates itself.

A dashboard nobody opens. Usually built for whoever commissioned it rather than the person who has to act on it.

A model nobody acts on. If nothing actually changes when it says a customer is about to leave, it was a hobby.

Starting before anyone agrees what a number means. Two departments defining "active customer" differently will produce two correct reports that disagree.

Sending customer data without agreeing the terms. See below.

Assuming the whole business must be rebuilt first. It rarely does. The first useful piece of work is often one report.

Before you send anyone your data

You stay the controller of your customers' data. Anyone who processes it for you does so on your written instructions, and that instruction has to exist on paper before the data moves.

Cyprus is under the GDPR, supervised by the Office of the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection. This is not a formality that can be added at the end, and it is worth settling before a customer list is attached to an email.

Where the work does not need personal data at all — and a surprising amount of it does not — the cleanest answer is not to send any.

What it costs

There is no price list, and any figure quoted before the requirements are known would be invented.

It starts with an introductory call about what you are trying to decide and what data already exists. That conversation frequently changes the brief, usually by making it smaller. After it you get a scope and a price, before anything is committed.

Work is charged monthly, by the day, or by the project, whichever fits what is being built.

How we help

We build both: the reporting that keeps itself up to date, and the models that estimate what comes next — forecasting, customer segmentation, scoring and the rest — along with the data work underneath that makes either possible.

If the company itself is not registered yet, company incorporation comes first, and a business built on its own software should read the IP Box before it starts paying full tax on the income.

We start with the call, because the most common outcome of it is a smaller and more useful piece of work than the one you rang about. Tell us what decision you are trying to make and what you currently have, and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth building.