The messy middle
When you've taken over and can't yet tell whether things are going well or falling apart. Clarity comes before optimization, and most firms skip straight to the second one.
Who you'd be working with
Alex Escoriaza
Fifteen years in analytics — pricing, platforms, teams, teaching — and a consulting practice since 2019.
I started without a niche. I thought the work was coaching organizations to be better at analytics. What actually kept arriving was narrower and more specific: someone had just taken over an operation and needed to establish what good performance looked like — not optimize what was there, but define it in the first place.
That's the practice now. The technical problems are usually straightforward. The hard part is definitional, and it doesn't get solved by a dashboard.
Where I do the most good
After the deal model stops being useful, and before anyone can say what good looks like.
Underwriting assumptions don't survive contact with daily operations, and the reporting that exists was built for whoever ran the place before you.
The pattern it took me years to see
Four different jobs, on paper. The same problem underneath.
A new CEO
Inherited a rebuild everyone had agreed on for two years, and nobody who could say where to start.
A CFO
Ran finance on one spreadsheet, reporting a board metric with four competing definitions.
An operating partner
Acquiring faster than anyone could report on, with every KPI pulled by hand once a month.
A head of claims
Measured on how fast the phone got answered, while the cost of each claim kept rising.
In every case the technical work was the easy part.
What nobody could do was say what "good" meant for that specific business. You can't build a dashboard for a definition that doesn't exist yet — which is why "just build us a dashboard" so often produces something nobody opens twice.
You're probably a fit
You've just stepped into operational opacity
New executive or management team, and asking for performance data has revealed that the systems can't actually tell you what's working.
You're an independent sponsor or operating partner
You need operational visibility across portfolio companies, and "just build a dashboard" hasn't worked because nobody can agree what belongs on it.
You're probably not
You already know exactly what to build
If the definitions are settled and you need hands, a development shop will be cheaper than me and just as good at it.
You want a team of ten
This is a small practice by choice. If the engagement needs a large bench, I'll tell you early rather than staff it thinly.
How the work differs
Define first, build second
What good looks like for your situation gets settled in writing before anything is built. It's slower for three weeks and faster for the year after.
Strategy and execution
Both the thinking and the building. A recommendation I can't implement myself is one I shouldn't be making.
Complex work, simple answers
The sophistication belongs in the model, not in the conversation. You should get straightforward visibility and measures you can act on.
Reconciled, not asserted
Every model gets checked against a number you already produce by hand before anyone is asked to trust it. It's the fastest way to earn a room's confidence.
Built to be left
Your tenant, your licenses, documented as we go. The measure of the work is whether it keeps running after I'm gone.
Before consulting
Most of fifteen years spent inside operations, not advising them from outside.
Pricing strategy, platform development, leading analytics teams and teaching, building teams, platforms and data products behind more than $500M in revenue.
It's the reason the first move on every engagement is reconciliation rather than architecture. I've been the person whose hand-built number got contradicted by a consultant's model, and I know which one the room believes.
If you've just taken the seat, the first conversation is free and usually useful.
Thirty minutes, no deck. Bring the number you don't trust.