Home › Insights

Insights

Notes from forty years in enterprise data.

Practical writing on mid-market analytics readiness, getting your data house in order before a sale, and building complex systems fast — the hard, useful parts, without the jargon.

Guide

Mid-Market Analytics Readiness: The Complete Guide

The five signals of readiness, the failure modes that surface too late, and the fastest path to analytics that actually move the numbers.

Build vs. Buy

Analytics-as-a-Service vs. an In-House BI Team

A straight cost and time comparison for mid-market leaders — headcount and ramp against a governed outcome, and the cases where each one genuinely wins.

How It's Priced

Hourly or Fixed Fee for Data Consulting?

An hourly rate is the only number in the deal with a public comparable — and buyers benchmark it against the arrangement that already failed them.

Exit & Diligence

Data Readiness Before You Sell Your Company

What acquirers actually check about your data — and why the work you do years before a sale determines your leverage at the table.

Buy-Side Diligence

Data Due Diligence for Acquisitions

Before you buy: whether the target's numbers trace to source, who the reporting depends on, and what integration will actually cost — from a founder who sold.

The Engagement

What a Fractional Chief Data Officer Actually Does

Senior data leadership for a mid-market company — the accountability of a CDO, how the engagement is structured, and when you actually need one.

The Companion Role

What a Fractional Data Architect Actually Does

The hands-on architecture work that folds into a fractional CDO engagement — what it does, and when the problem is the shape of your data, not another tool.

Company History

What Happened to Dobler Consulting?

The database practice was sold to Spinnaker Support in 2021 — the company founded in 2000 was not. The accurate story, from the founder.

Free Resource

The Mid-Market Analytics Readiness Checklist

Twelve honest questions to tell you whether your data is ready to drive decisions — or whether you've quietly outgrown spreadsheets.

Get the checklist