How We Used Unified Reporting to Align Finance and Project Management for Clearer Profit Numbers

Our client often found themselves wrestling with two conflicting Project Profit figures every quarter. By deploying a single, centralised semantic model and shared data dictionary, we slashed reconciliation time by approximately 85 per cent and restored confidence in their overall reporting platform.

Background & Challenges

Each quarter, the Finance Director’s team produced one Project Profit number and the Project Management team another—and neither matched. Their largest discrepancy came when Finance reported £1.6 million on an accrual basis with full overhead loading, while Project Management insisted on £1.2 million, based solely on milestone billings and excluding shared services. The Project team also applied bespoke filters for project spend and depreciation, meaning anywhere between three and four days every month were consumed simply aligning figures—postponing decisions, frustrating teams and overloading IT with urgent data requests.

Solution Overview

We created a centralised semantic layer in the client’s cloud warehouse underpinned by a defined data dictionary. “Project Profit” was created only once in the model as invoiced revenue minus direct costs plus a fixed overhead rate and tied to the corporate financial calendar. Cost‑centre codes were harmonised to a master chart of accounts, and one set of calculations (or measures) was used in every report, dashboard and export. From executives’ dashboards to different staff members’ Excel downloads, every number now draws on identical logic. Business Benefits

• 100% reduction in variances between departmental reports

• Three‑day saving each month, cutting reconciliation from four days to below an hour

• 94% fewer ad‑hoc data requests, freeing IT to focus on other work

• ~25% improvement in forecast accuracy, thanks to reliable history

• Quarterly reviews shifted from argument to focused planning

Implementation Roadmap

The project began by securing executive buy‑in from Finance, Project Management and IT. We then facilitated Data Dictionary workshops to agree precise definitions for all measures (e.g. Profit, Costs and Overhead). We developed the semantic layer in Power BI, embedding hierarchies and measures whilst aligning cost centre mappings between the different data sources. Governance processes were established to preserve consistency. Finally, we rolled out the model across all reporting users and delivered hands‑on training, guiding users away from rogue spreadsheets to the centralised metrics.

Conclusion

With Finance and Project Management no longer disputing whose numbers are correct, the organisation gained speed and certainty in their decision making.