BI strategy, consulting and analytics
Advice that starts from the decisions your board, council or governing body must make and maps them to measures, source systems and a costed, phased roadmap.
Business intelligence advisors for data your organisation can trust
Arke Technologies (Pty) Ltd provides business intelligence advisors and data engineers from Johannesburg. We help South African organisations, government bodies and schools turn scattered records into a governed data warehouse and reports that auditors can trace, on Microsoft Fabric, Power BI or Google BigQuery, built and supported under one SLA.
What data analytics means for an organisation
Data analytics is the work of collecting, cleaning and examining data to answer a question or support a decision. In plain terms, data analytics means using the records you already hold, such as invoices, meter readings, learner marks and stock movements, to see what happened, why, and what is likely to happen next.
Business intelligence (BI) is the part of data and analytics that most organisations need first: a data warehouse, agreed definitions, and the reports and dashboards managers read every week. Done well, business intelligence is a discipline rather than a tool: every figure in a board pack traces to its source record, and finance, operations and audit all accept it.
Data analysis for business intelligence therefore starts with plumbing rather than charts: connecting systems, reconciling records that disagree and agreeing the meaning of each measure. That is why this work sits beside our systems integration and custom software development practices. For a primer, read what is business intelligence, and what does Power BI do.
What our business intelligence advisors do
We advise, build and run. Each service below is available on its own or as one programme under one contract, alongside our other IT services.
Data warehouse and pipelines
Pipelines that extract data from accounting, ERP, CRM, billing and HR systems, clean and match it, and load it with its history into a warehouse.
Business intelligence and reporting
BI reporting that replaces the month-end spreadsheet scramble: management accounts, KPI scorecards and exception reports, refreshed on a schedule.
Power BI dashboards and reports
Design, build, licensing advice, training and support. See Power BI consulting and dashboards.
A business intelligence portal
One secure place, such as a Power BI app or an intranet page, where each person finds the reports they may see, under your own name and logo. See SharePoint and intranets.
Data analytics and AI
Forecasts, anomaly detection and plain-language questions over trusted data, built with our AI consulting and implementation team on one rule: AI recommends, people decide, and every AI action is logged.
Data quality and governance
Data profiling, a data dictionary, a business owner for each measure, access rules and a change process, so the numbers stay right after go-live.
Support under an SLA
Refresh monitoring, fixes, new measures and user support, with incidents prioritised P1 to P4 and reported at a monthly service review.
Business intelligence for your industry
BI by industry differs less in technology than in the questions and rules that apply:
Municipalities
Collections reporting that reconciles billing, metering and valuation records and lists the exceptions. See municipal revenue enhancement.
Departments and public entities
Performance against the annual performance plan, with the audit trail PFMA reporting expects. See IT for the public sector.
Schools, colleges and universities
Enrolment, attendance and results dashboards from SA-SAMS exports and learning platforms, with learner data protected under POPIA. See IT for schools and education.
Finance and professional services
Management accounts, debtor days and profitability by client, from Sage, Xero, SAP Business One or Dynamics 365 Business Central. See ERP and accounting integration.
Distribution and retail
Sales, stock and route reporting across branches. See IT for agriculture, logistics and distribution.
ESG and sustainability
Our team built ESGnet, which collects environmental, social and governance performance data and reports it in line with GRI and SASB.
Groups across borders
International business intelligence for organisations operating in South Africa, consolidating entities that report in more than one currency, supported from Johannesburg.
Governance, compliance and risk
Reports help a board only if the board can rely on them. Every engagement includes:
- A written SLA, set to your needs, with incidents prioritised P1 to P4 (P1 a critical failure, such as the board pack not refreshing before a meeting, through P4 a low-impact request), response and resolution targets matched to the business impact, and a defined escalation path.
- Monthly service reviews with a written report for your steering committee, audit committee or governing body.
- Change control for measures. A new or changed definition is requested, assessed, approved by its business owner and recorded before it reaches a report.
- POPIA by design. Personal information stays out of reports that do not need it, row-level security limits each person to their region, school or cost centre, and access is logged. See POPIA compliance.
- King IV Principle 12. Directors can see how key figures are produced and who can change them. See King IV and technology governance and IT governance, risk and compliance.
- PFMA and MFMA. For departments, public entities and municipalities, a documented trail from each reported figure to its source record that internal and external auditors can follow.
- Security and reliability. Controls from our cybersecurity practice. Servers that host data gateways and pipelines sit under our monitoring, which checks them every 15 minutes and logs faults as tickets automatically; refresh failures are tracked under the SLA.
Procurement and continuity
Arke Technologies (Pty) Ltd has been a registered company since 2017, trading first as Fibre Boyz, and is a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor, which gives buyers 135% procurement recognition (sworn affidavit available on request). Company documents, our CSD supplier number, SARS tax compliance status and a bank confirmation letter are available on request, and we complete standard bidding documents (SBD forms) when a bid requires them. You can buy through a proposal and SLA, a purchase order or a tender response. See company facts and procuring from Arke.
Continuity is designed in. A certified team delivers remote-first under one contract, so adding a data source or a subsidiary changes the SLA schedule, not the supplier. The warehouse, models and reports are built in your own tenant or cloud account, so you own them, with the data, credentials and documentation; if the work moves, we hand everything over in an orderly exit. Everyone with access to your data is bound by confidentiality and our security controls.
What a business intelligence solution costs
Last reviewed: September 2026.
A business intelligence solution has three cost lines: licences, the build and the upkeep. Licences are the most visible, but the build, and above all the data work inside it, is usually the largest.
- Licences and platform. Power BI Desktop is free; sharing reports needs per-user or capacity licences, and warehouses are billed by capacity, storage or query volume.
- Source data. The number and condition of source systems drives cost most: one old database full of duplicate customers can take longer than several modern cloud systems.
- Reports and upkeep. How many reports, how finely access is controlled, and a yearly budget for support and new measures.
For market context, published hourly rates for IT project work in South Africa run from about R550 to R750 ex VAT (matnet.co.za, September 2026). We quote BI work per project, in phases, after a scoping session, and ongoing support under an SLA, with licence and platform running costs shown separately.
Data analytics skills, training and certifications for your team
Most organisations want their own people to own the numbers, so we plan the in-house roles alongside the build. An in-house team needs data analytics skills in SQL, data modelling, a BI tool such as Power BI and basic statistics, plus knowledge of the business; a short Python program helps with automation.
The roles differ: a BI developer (business intelligence developer) builds pipelines, models and reports; a business intelligence analyst turns managers' questions into measures; a data scientist builds predictive models. Routes into these roles include:
- Free data analytics training online, such as Microsoft Learn's Power BI and data analytics learning paths.
- Vendor certificates, such as the Google Data Analytics Certificate, or Microsoft's Power BI Data Analyst certification for teams on Microsoft BI.
- Courses and boot camps, such as ALX's data analytics programme or another data analytics boot camp, suited to people at data analytics entry level.
- University study, from postgraduate data analytics diplomas to a master's in data analytics, often a Master of Science (an MS or MSc); masters programmes suit people heading into data science.
A certification in data analytics shows study; experience on your own data makes it count. We work beside in-house analysts in a co-managed IT arrangement, document what we build and train your team at handover, so the capability stays with you.
How to choose business intelligence advisors
- One accountable team. Advisors who only recommend leave you to find builders. Choose a team that advises, builds and supports.
- Evidence of discipline. Ask for a sample data dictionary and service report, and how dirty data is fixed at the source.
- Data residency. Microsoft and Google both run cloud regions in South Africa; ask where each component stores data, and record it for POPIA.
- Governance you can audit. Ask how incidents are prioritised and escalated, what the monthly service report contains, and how a change to a measure is approved.
- Ownership, exit and procurement fit. Confirm in writing that you own the warehouse, models, reports and credentials, and check B-BBEE status, company documents and tax compliance before you shortlist.