The Problem
Standard Group PLC operated across publishing and advertising with multiple disconnected systems. Financial reporting was manual, inconsistent, and slow — creating a significant lag between operational activity and the data available to decision-makers.
The SAP ERP system, advertising operations in Google Ad Manager, and publishing workflows ran in isolation with no automated data flow between them. Leadership had no single view of operational and financial performance, making evidence-based decision-making nearly impossible at speed.
The Approach
The work centred on integrating SAP ERP with Google Ad Manager and publishing datasets, then building an executive-level KPI dashboard in Power BI — creating a unified data environment that gave leadership a real-time view of operational and financial performance.
- SAP ERP optimisation — configured financial and operational modules to match the organisation's reporting structure, eliminating manual reconciliation and improving data accuracy by ~25%.
- Google Ad Manager integration — automated digital revenue tracking pipelines by connecting Ad Manager data directly into SAP, improving operational efficiency by ~35%.
- SQL data modelling — wrote structured SQL queries to extract, transform, and join data across operational and financial schemas into a unified reporting layer.
- Executive KPI dashboard — built a Power BI dashboard integrating multiple operational and financial datasets, enabling leadership to track performance metrics in a single view.
- Cross-functional alignment — worked with finance, editorial, and advertising teams to agree on metric definitions, reporting cadences, and dashboard ownership.
Outcomes
Integrating SAP with Google Ad Manager and publishing systems eliminated the manual handoffs that were creating reporting delays and errors. Financial reporting accuracy improved by ~25% and digital operational efficiency increased by ~35% through automated revenue tracking pipelines.
The executive KPI dashboard improved leadership visibility into performance metrics and accelerated data-driven decision making — reducing time to insight from days of manual compilation to a single, always-current view across data sources.
Key Learnings
- Dashboard value is realised through integration, not design — connecting multiple data sources created far more executive value than any single system could in isolation.
- Cross-functional alignment is the hardest part. Technical configuration is straightforward; getting teams to agree on definitions and reporting workflows is not.
- Automating revenue tracking shifts the conversation from data collection to data interpretation — freeing analytical capacity for higher-value work.
- An executive dashboard is only as useful as its adoption. Embedding it into regular review cycles is what turns a reporting tool into a decision-making tool.