There Is No AI Strategy Without Data Strategy
Strategy and governance for data, BI and AI
Many organisations want to become more data-driven, but they are unsure where to begin. Montage helps organisations connect strategy, data, BI, analytics and AI through strong governance. This creates trusted foundations that support better decisions and long-term business value.
Through our Strategy and Governance services, we help leadership teams define a clear direction for their data and analytics capabilities and create a roadmap for delivering measurable results that align with your business strategy.
That foundation also determines how much value your organisation will get from AI. The organisations seeing real outcomes from AI are not the ones who moved fastest, they are the ones who built the right data structures, governance and strategy first.
Start building a clear data and analytics roadmap
If you are unsure where to begin with data, BI or AI, a Strategy & Governance engagement can provide the clarity and direction you need.
The problem organisations face
Organisations often struggle to unlock the value of their data because the foundations are not clearly defined.
Common challenges include:
Not knowing where to start with data, BI, analytics or AI
Poor trust and low value from reporting or analytics outputs
Uncertainty about which business problems AI should solve
Not working to a clear priority order aligned to business strategy
Disconnected systems and unclear governance structures
Difficulty turning insight into meaningful business action
Without clear strategy and governance, analytics initiatives can become fragmented, difficult to manage and disconnected from business priorities.
Our solution:
Discovery
Our Strategy and Governance service begins with a Discovery process.
Discovery helps organisations understand their current analytics maturity, define their desired future state and create a roadmap for improvement.
Through this process, we work with executives and key stakeholders to understand:
your organisation’s strategy and priorities
how decisions are currently supported by data
the strengths and gaps in your current BI and analytics environment
where AI fits within your priorities and what foundations are required to support it
The outcome is a clear and practical roadmap that guides how your organisation should develop its data, BI, analytics and AI capabilities, sequenced in the right order, for the right reasons.
Ready to define your data and analytics strategy?
Talk to the Montage team about how a Strategy & Governance engagement can help align your data, BI and AI initiatives with business priorities.
Our approach
Montage takes a strategy-led consulting approach, rather than focusing purely on technology.
We benchmark your current analytics capability against our BI Framework, based on experience with organisations of similar size, scale and complexity across multiple sectors.
From this, we define your desired future state and develop a BI roadmap that closes the gap between your current and future capabilities.
Our approach focuses on two key elements:
Content roadmap
We prioritise analytics initiatives based on business impact and value, balanced against scope and complexity.
This allows organisations to deliver meaningful outcomes quickly.
Capability roadmap
At the same time, we help organisations build long-term capability across:
- people
- processes
- technology
This dual focus allows organisations to deliver value now while improving organisational maturity over time.
As part of the capability roadmap, we identify where AI fits, what specific business problems it can solve and what data and governance foundations need to be in place before implementation begins. This ensures AI is approached with intent not experimentation.
The Montage BI framework
Our Discovery process benchmarks your organisation against the Montage BI Framework, which defines how successful analytics capabilities are led, implemented and supported.
Strategy and Governance work focuses on the 'Lead' layer, the foundation from which everything else follows. Without clear strategic leadership, analytics initiatives risk becoming misaligned, difficult to govern and slow to deliver value.
This is where Montage begins: establishing the direction, priorities and governance structures that allow your data, BI and AI capabilities to grow with confidence.
AI and the Role of Strong Foundations
Montage has been building the data foundations that make AI work for over two decades. The interest in AI has grown significantly but the underlying requirements have not changed.
AI tools perform best when the data behind them is clean, well-structured and governed. That is precisely what Montage builds.
These are not pilot programmes or proofs of concept. Both are live and in production with Montage clients.
Snowflake
Ask a question. Get an answer. That is how it should work and for Montage clients using Snowflake, that is exactly how it does work. Users query their own business data in plain English, the same way they would use ChatGPT, and receive contextual, meaningful responses. No technical intermediary. No delay. Just clean data, properly built, doing what it should.
Tableau Pulse
Traditional reporting is reactive. Someone notices something, runs a report, and investigates. By then, the pattern may have been running for months. Tableau Pulse flips that dynamic. Each day, it surfaces key metric changes with AI-generated commentary on what shifted and why. One Montage client uncovered a product performance issue that had gone undetected for years. The data was always there. Now it speaks up.
Both examples reflect the same principle: AI delivers more value when the data underneath it has been built properly. That is the work Montage has always done.
What we deliver
A Strategy & Governance engagement provides organisations with clear direction and a practical roadmap for improving analytics capability.
Key deliverables include:
Data, BI, analytics and AI strategy development
Governance frameworks and oversight models
AI use case identification and sequencing
Roadmap development (content and capability)
Maturity assessment and uplift planning
Executive and stakeholder alignment
These outcomes provide organisations with a structured plan for strengthening their data and analytics capabilities and a clear, governed path to AI that is built on solid foundations.
How the engagement works
Our Strategy & Governance engagement is delivered through a structured 4–6 week Discovery process at a fixed cost.
The engagement involves close collaboration with executives and key stakeholders to understand organisational strategy, priorities and current analytics capability.
Through workshops, analysis and strategic planning, we develop a clear data, BI and AI strategy along with a prioritised roadmap for improving analytics capability across people, processes and technology.
Technical environment
Our Strategy & Governance work supports modern data and analytics environments, including:
modern data platforms and BI ecosystems
governance frameworks aligned with enterprise data environments
alignment with future AI capability development
alignment with current and future AI capability development
Our approach is technology-agnostic and designed to integrate with the platforms already used within your organisation.
Strategy in action:
Sport New Zealand
Sport New Zealand partnered with Montage to strengthen how data and analytics support decision-making across the organisation.
Through a Strategy and Discovery engagement, Montage helped assess their existing BI environment, identify capability gaps and develop a clear roadmap for improving analytics maturity.
The result was a more structured approach to data, improved governance and greater value from their investment in analytics.
“Montage have stayed with us and have grown with us and stayed with us on the journey. They have given us guidance in how to do it and confidence we were doing it right. We now have a much better ROI on our investment into data gathering.”
Bria Sargent and Bridgette Lynch
Sport New Zealand, Group BI Manager and BI Specialist
Platforms we work with
Montage works with best-of-breed platforms that are proven in enterprise data environments and well suited to the New Zealand market.
Our approach is technology-informed but outcome-led. We recommend the right platform for your environment based on your needs, priorities and existing infrastructure.
Ready to align your data, BI and AI strategy with business priorities?
Speak with the Montage team about how a Strategy & Governance engagement can help your organisation build a strong foundation for analytics and AI.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a data, BI and AI strategy include?
A data, BI and AI strategy provides a clear roadmap for closing the gap between your current analytics maturity and your desired future state. The roadmap prioritises analytics initiatives based on business value delivering meaningful outcomes quickly while building long-term capability across people, processes and technology. Montage co-creates a structured programme that tackles capability and change in parallel with delivering real content value to your organisation.
How do we know if we are ready for AI?
A useful starting point is to look at your existing business processes. If you have processes that are data-driven, repeatable and largely consistent, there is a strong case for exploring how AI, generative AI, large language models and AI agents could support or improve them. A Strategy & Governance engagement will help you identify where AI fits within your priorities and what foundations need to be in place before you begin.
What governance structures should we have in place?
The most important starting point is having a clear sponsor within your organisation, someone who can champion the programme, make decisions and remove roadblocks. Beyond that, effective governance defines the roles, responsibilities and processes that keep analytics initiatives aligned, trusted and well-managed. Our engagement will shape a governance framework that fits your organisation's structure and priorities.
How long does a strategy engagement take?
Most Strategy and Governance engagements are completed within four to six weeks. This timeline reflects a structured process refined over more than 20 years of practice covering workshops, stakeholder engagement, maturity assessment and roadmap development.
Can you support implementation after the strategy is complete?
Yes. Montage supports organisations throughout the roadmap through our Lead, Enable and Support model. Depending on your priorities, this can include data architecture, data engineering, visualisation, analysis and analytics delivery, or project leadership, whatever is needed to move from strategy into outcomes.
Have another question?