What organisations say
after working with us
We let the engagements speak. Below are accounts from organisations that have worked with Sinar Counsel — in their own terms, as closely as we can represent them.
Back to HomeFrom the organisations we have worked with
"We had accumulated something close to forty reports over eight years. Some were used weekly; others I could not say when they had last been opened. The catalogue exercise surfaced this very clearly, and the written output gave us a practical basis for the conversation we had been avoiding. The retirement list alone was worth the engagement."
"We were at a BI platform renewal point and the internal debate was going nowhere — finance wanted one thing, IT was pulling in another direction. The platform paper gave us three scenarios written with enough rigour that we could have a productive executive conversation rather than a product pitch from a vendor. We ended up choosing the middle option, which no one had seriously considered before."
"The dashboard workshop was not what I expected. I had attended vendor training before — product-focused, optimistic about what the tool could do. This was different: it started with the reader, not the software. Our analysts came away thinking differently about why a dashboard exists, which turned out to be the missing piece. The dashboards they produced in the weeks after were noticeably better."
"The fixed price was genuinely what we paid. That sounds like a low bar, but with most advisory engagements I have been part of, the final invoice carries items that were not discussed at the start. There were none of those here. Scope was defined upfront, the work matched it, and the document was delivered as described."
"I attended the workshop as an analyst and came with my manager. Having both of us in the room at the same time was the most useful part — we ended up having a real conversation about what the dashboards I produce are actually for, and what decisions my manager needs to make from them. That conversation was long overdue."
"The catalogue review took about three weeks and produced a document I have shared with the new CFO, with the IT lead, and with an external auditor asking about our reporting controls. It travels well. The consultant was easy to work with and did not overstate what the engagement would deliver."
Three engagements in detail
A mid-sized manufacturing company in Selangor had 52 active reports across finance, production and procurement. Nobody had a complete view of what existed, who used what, or how much analyst time each report consumed each month.
Reporting Catalogue Conversation. Two and a half weeks. Involved interviews with 11 report producers and readers across three departments. The final catalogue documented all 52 reports against decision-context and production cost.
18 reports recommended for retirement, 9 for consolidation, 6 for substantive redesign. The finance team estimated a reduction of approximately 40 analyst-hours per month once recommendations were implemented over the following quarter.
A financial services organisation in Kuala Lumpur was approaching the end of a five-year Power BI Enterprise Agreement. IT favoured renewal; finance was pushing for a move to a different platform that a new hire had worked with previously. The discussion had stalled for several months.
BI Platform Advisory. Five weeks. Involved skills assessment across the analytics team, review of existing contract terms, and structured evaluation of three platform scenarios against the organisation's specific constraints and forward requirements.
The platform paper provided the board with a written basis for decision. The organisation chose to renew at a reduced licence tier while investing in improving the reporting layer above the platform — a scenario the internal debate had not previously considered.
A logistics company's operations team was receiving weekly dashboards from the analytics function that nobody reliably acted on. The analysts felt their work was being ignored; the operations leads felt the dashboards did not address the questions they were actually managing.
Dashboard Practice Workshop with five analysts and four operational managers attending together over two days. The mixed audience was central to the design — both sides needed to be in the same conversation.
Each analyst left with a redesigned dashboard for one of their operational counterparts, built during the workshop. A follow-up call three months later indicated that four of the five redesigned dashboards were being used actively and had replaced the previous versions entirely.
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Malaysian Institute of Accountants — Approved CPD Provider
The Dashboard Practice Workshop qualifies as a continuing professional development activity for MIA members. Certificates of completion are issued to all attendees on request.
The first conversation is always brief
If what you have read here sounds relevant to a situation your organisation is navigating, we would be glad to hear from you. A short note is enough to start.
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