01
Initial Interview
With you and the people who depend on the data. We establish the decisions, reports, and metrics that actually matter, and the data domains behind them.
For Business · 6 of 6
The Data
Audit.
You're making decisions on numbers you aren't sure you can trust. Two reports answer the same question two different ways. Nobody can quite say which one is right.
You don't really know what data you hold, where it lives, who owns it, or whether it's accurate. It's been good enough, until a migration, a board pack, a merger or an AI project puts it under a light it can't survive.
An independent audit of your data: what you hold, where it lives, who owns it, whether you can trust it. I look at your actual data, not a questionnaire about it, and hand back a plain-language report on which numbers you can rely on, where the risk sits, and what to fix first.
Independent data review · Fixed scope · Plain-language report
Book the AuditReport within 5 business days. If you don't leave knowing whether to trust your data, you don't pay.
What You Walk Away With
A verdict you
can stand behind.
A Data Map
What data you hold, which systems it lives in, how it flows between them, and who actually owns it. Often the first time it's been written down in one place.
A Quality Verdict
Accuracy, completeness, consistency, duplication, and timeliness, assessed against the data itself. Where it's clean, where it's broken, and how badly.
A Trust Rating on Your Key Numbers
For the reports and metrics your business actually runs on, a clear read on which you can rely on and which you can't.
Ownership and Governance Gaps
Who's accountable for what, where there's no owner at all, and the controls that are missing.
A Readiness Check
If you're about to migrate, build reporting, or start an analytics or AI project, whether your data is ready, and what has to happen first.
A Prioritised Remediation Plan
Each issue with its impact, the effort to fix it, and rough cost. Written so your board can read it without a translator.
A Readout Session
I walk your leadership team through every finding. Everyone leaves with the same picture.
How It Works
3 DAYS · ON-SITE OR REMOTE
From the data itself,
not opinions about it.
02
Data Profiling
I profile representative datasets directly for accuracy, completeness, consistency, duplication, and validity. The findings come from the data, not from opinions about it.
03
Owner Interviews
With the people who create, manage, and use the data: data leads, system owners, finance, operations. I ask the questions that surface where it really breaks.
04
Written Report
A full audit covering every domain in scope, with the quality findings and a prioritised plan. Delivered within 5 business days.
05
Readout
A working session with your leadership team to talk through what I found and what to do about it. Questions encouraged.
Scope
What's in.
What's out.
In Scope
- +Data inventory and mapping across your key systems
- +Data quality profiling: accuracy, completeness, consistency, duplication, validity, timeliness
- +Reliability assessment of your key reports and metrics
- +Data ownership and governance review
- +Migration, reporting, or analytics readiness assessment
- +A prioritised remediation plan in business language
Out of Scope
- ,Hands-on data cleansing or remediation (a separate engagement, delivered by Stratford Ellis)
- ,Building pipelines, dashboards, migrations, or integrations
- ,Formal certification or accreditation
Design Principle
Deep enough to tell you the truth about your data, focused enough to land in days, not months. I assess what your business actually depends on, not every field in every table. You get a clear verdict and a plan, not a data science project.
When to Book This
Before the numbers
have to hold up.
Before a System Migration or Replacement
Moving dirty data just shifts the problem into a more expensive system. Audit first, move it clean.
Before You Build or Rebuild Reporting
A dashboard built on data you can't trust is worse than no dashboard. Know what you're standing on first.
When Your Reports Disagree
Different numbers for the same question is a data problem, not a reporting one. The audit finds the source.
Before a Board Pack or Fundraise
If you can't stand behind the figures, it shows. Get the independent read before the numbers really matter.
After a Merger or Acquisition
Putting two data estates together turns up duplicates, conflicts and stray records nobody owns.
Before an Analytics or AI Project
Models are only as good as the data underneath. The audit tells you whether you're ready.
When You Suspect Data Debt
Duplicates, gaps, manual workarounds, spreadsheets holding up core processes. If it feels fragile, it usually is.
When No One Can Say Who Owns the Data
That answer alone is worth the audit.
Why Barbara
The technology
rarely fails first.
Over a decade of leading data migrations and reporting and analytics builds across sectors means I've seen exactly what poor data does to a go-live, a board pack and a budget. The technology rarely fails first. The data does.
I profile data directly and tell you the truth in plain language: what to trust, what to fix, what to leave alone. I run Stratford Ellis as Lead Data Consultant, so I also know what it actually takes to fix what the audit finds.
No product to sell. No platform, no tool, no referral fee. When I tell you something's fine, it's because it is.
Final Call to Action
Know what your
data is worth.
A clear verdict on which numbers you can trust, where the risk sits, and what to fix first. A written position you can defend to your board, your investors, and yourself.
FROM £4,000· SCOPED TO THE SIZE OF YOUR DATA ESTATE
Common Questions
What people
ask first.
- What is a data audit?
- A structured, independent review of your data: what you hold, where it lives, who owns it, and whether it's accurate, complete, and consistent. It tells you which of your numbers you can trust and which you can't, with a plain-language report in 5 business days and a clear plan for what to fix first.
- How is a data audit different from a data migration?
- A migration moves data from one system to another. An audit tells you, before you move anything, whether that data is worth moving. Auditing first is what stops you paying to carry old problems into a new system.
- Do we need a data audit before migrating?
- In almost every case, yes. The most expensive migrations are the ones that move dirty data at speed and discover the problems after go-live. An audit surfaces them while they're still cheap to fix.
- How do you assess data quality?
- By profiling the actual data, not by sending a questionnaire. I measure accuracy, completeness, consistency, duplication, validity, and timeliness against the records themselves, then tie the findings back to the reports and decisions that depend on them.
- We don't have a data team or a data warehouse.
- That's common, and it doesn't stop an audit. I work with the systems and exports you have. Often the absence of a single source of truth is exactly the finding that matters most.
- Will you fix the data too?
- The audit is diagnostic: it tells you what's wrong and what to do about it. The remediation, cleansing, building a single source of truth, fixing the pipelines, is a separate engagement, delivered by Stratford Ellis if you want it done.
- We're not data-heavy, or not regulated.
- Almost every organisation runs on more data than it realises, and most of the risk isn't about regulation. Wrong numbers in a board pack, a forecast built on duplicates, a key process held together by one spreadsheet: these are business problems whatever your sector.
- How long does it take?
- Most audits run 1 to 3 days of work, with the report delivered within 5 business days. The exact scope depends on how many systems and data domains are in play. I confirm it in the first call.
- How much does it cost?
- From £4,000, scoped to the size of your data estate. Set against the cost of a migration that goes wrong, or a board decision made on the wrong number, it pays for itself the moment it catches the first real issue.
VI · What People Say
Words from the room.
A handful of notes from leaders, founders and chairs I've worked alongside.
Barbs walked into a programme that had been stuck for nine months and had us all reading off the same page inside a fortnight. The plan we left with was the one we actually ran.
Helena Marsh
COOFolio & Field
She tells you what she thinks. No fluff, no vendor agenda. Our board got a read on our data we could finally act on, and a short list of fixes we could start on Monday.
James Okafor
ChairNorthstone Group
Having Barbs in the room changed how we made the call. She knew the context from month two and saved us from at least one expensive mistake on the systems side.
Priya Shah
Founder & CEOLoomwork