Data Maturity Assessment
Where your data practice sits today, and what the next two strategic moves should be.
The Problem
You’re being asked to invest in data. You don’t know where to start.
The board wants an AI strategy. The CFO wants better forecasting. The product team wants a data warehouse. Someone is suggesting a Chief Data Officer hire. Every move on its own sounds reasonable. Together they are an expensive blur that could absorb a year of attention and produce a data team that nobody asked for.
This assessment gives you a calibrated view of where your organisation sits on a five-dimension maturity scale, and a specific, sequenced answer to the only question that matters at this stage: what are the next two strategic moves?
The Five Dimensions
What we measure
Data foundations
Sources, quality, ownership, lineage. Whether the basic plumbing is reliable enough to build on top of.
Analytics and decisions
How data actually changes decisions in your organisation. Or whether it produces dashboards no-one reads.
Product and partnerships
Where data is part of the value you sell or the partnerships you depend on. Often the most under-counted dimension.
Governance and risk
Classification, privacy, AI-tool exposure, regulatory alignment. The C1–C4 framework applied to your data assets.
Team and capability
Who owns this. Whether you need to hire, partner, or upskill. What the realistic first hire looks like.
The composite read
The five scores combine into a single maturity profile that maps to one of four investment patterns — Foundation, Insight, Product, or Governance-led.
What You Walk Away With
A short report and a board-ready slide
- A maturity score across all five dimensions with a one-paragraph justification each.
- Your composite investment pattern, named and explained.
- The two strategic moves I would make in the next six months, with sequencing and rough cost ranges.
- A specific position on whether to hire a Chief Data Officer, hire someone more junior, partner externally, or do nothing yet.
- A board-ready slide for your next investor or board meeting that summarises the position in plain English.
- An honest read on where current spend is producing nothing measurable.
How It Works
Two weeks, six conversations, one report
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Scoping · 30 minutes
We agree the five-to-eight people I will speak to, the documents I will read, and what specifically you are trying to decide.
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Discovery · week one
Six to eight conversations across leadership, product, operations and finance. Document review in parallel — board packs, system architecture, recent data hires, recent data tooling spend.
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Analysis and draft · week two
I produce the maturity scores, the composite pattern, and the recommended moves. A draft goes to you for sense-check before final.
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Final and board slide · end of week two
Final ten-to-fifteen-page report plus a board-ready one-pager. Followed by a 45-minute walkthrough.
Investment
From £5,000
Fixed fee. Includes scoping, discovery, written report, board-ready slide, and walkthrough call. Travel beyond Winchester / M25 charged at cost.
Decide before you spend
This assessment is most useful before any significant data investment — before the CDO hire, before the warehouse build, before signing the AI consulting engagement. It frequently pays for itself by stopping one decision that was about to happen anyway.
