See what a discovery pack looks like

1Estate health

A weighted average of six dimensions, each scored from 0 to 100 where higher is healthier. Coverage blends clean extraction with lineage resolution, and the overall score is capped when coverage is low, so an estate that could not be analysed cannot score as healthy. Every input traces to scan evidence.

2Executive summary

This discovery scan inventoried 47 reporting assets: 34 Excel workbooks, 5 SQL scripts, 5 SSRS reports and 3 CSV files. One asset is classified as critical and 7 as high criticality, based on cross-references, embedded logic, usage and corroborating naming. The scan produced 163 evidence-backed findings.

The most significant duplication risk is Gross Margin, defined 4 different ways across 15 assets. Three of those definitions share one calculation shape but use different constants. In total, 8 metric clusters show duplicate or conflicting definitions, the typical root cause of conflicting numbers reaching leadership.

The highest-severity risk areas are reports with no identifiable owner (45 reports), conflicting metric definitions (6 findings) and metric constant drift (4 metric clusters). Recommended first moves are listed under recommended actions, ordered by impact against effort.

3Critical assets

1 critical and 7 high-criticality assets. All eight are Excel workbooks. None has an identified owner, and all carry high owner risk.

4Top risks

• High

  Reports with no identifiable owner · 45 reports

  Important reporting may depend on one person or unclear ownership.

  No owner could be inferred.

• High

  Conflicting metric definitions · 6 findings

  Different definitions of the same KPI produce different numbers; this is the typical root cause of conflicting figures reaching leadership.

  Commission uses the same formula with different constants: =B2*0.07 in Old Commission Model.xlsx and =B2*0.1 in Commission Overrides.xlsx.

• High

  Metric constant drift · 4 metric clusters

  Metric definitions share the same calculation shape but use different constants or thresholds.

  Gross Margin appears as =B2*0.4, =B2*0.45 and =B2*0.42.

• Medium

  Formula-heavy workbooks · 17 findings

  Business logic may be embedded in spreadsheet formulas rather than governed models.

  Example: a workbook with 189 formulas.

• Medium

  Manual reporting processes · 10 findings

  Manual reporting steps increase error, timeliness, and key-person dependency risk.

  Example: an input-like sheet named Manual Adjustments.

• Medium

  Hidden worksheet logic · 7 findings

  Hidden worksheets may contain undocumented calculations or inputs.

  Example: a workbook with one hidden sheet.

• Medium

  Undocumented SQL logic · 5 findings

  Reporting logic in SQL scripts can be missed during BI migrations.

  Example: a script that reads crm.dim_customer and counts churned customers.

• Medium

  Duplicate reporting · 2 findings

  Duplicate reports can create conflicting KPI definitions and migration waste.

  Two copies of the FY26 board pack duplicate Board Pack - KPI Summary FY26.xlsx.

• Medium

  Critical reports with no traced dependents · 2 findings

  A business-critical report that nothing else references may be a hidden single point of failure, or its consumers and upstream lineage were not discovered, so its true blast radius is unknown.

  Example: Cash Flow Forecast 13 Week.xlsx is rated high, contains 26 formulas, and no upstream or downstream lineage was discovered.

• Medium

  Single-owner reports · 2 findings

  Important reporting may depend on one person or unclear ownership.

  Example: an asset in personal storage, with the owner inferred as sarah.chen.

5Duplicate reports

One family of three board pack files holds the same report.

Matched on the same content or the same normalised report name. Board Pack - KPI Summary FY24.xlsx is recognised as an earlier edition in a period-stamped series rather than a duplicate, and is marked for review. Structural similarity analysis found no further redundant-report groups.

6Conflicting metric definitions

The scan extracted 123 metrics in 29 groups. 8 groups have conflicting definitions, and in 4 the formulas match but the constants differ. The top 6 are shown, with differing constants highlighted.

7Readiness

Overall readiness for transformation: Low. Each dimension is rated by risk, so a lower rating is better.

8Coverage

Coverage score: 82 / 100. 47 of 47 assets were deep-extracted cleanly, with no degraded, skipped or failed files.

Caveat. 21 of 53 lineage references resolve to a discovered asset (40%), so dependency and referenced-by counts undercount. Coverage weights extraction quality at 70% and lineage resolution at 30%, and is reduced when a crawl is truncated or a source fails.

9Recommended actions

1. 1

   Consolidate Gross Margin reporting

   This metric is defined 4 different ways across 15 assets. Agree one definition, nominate one authoritative source, and retire or redirect the rest.

   Impact

   High

   Effort

   High

   Timeframe

   8-12 weeks

   Suggested owner

   BI lead / Finance

2. 2

   Document single-owner assets

   47 assets depend on one person or have no clear owner. Create runbooks and add secondary maintainers. Highest urgency relative to effort.

   Impact

   High

   Effort

   Medium

   Timeframe

   3-4 weeks

   Suggested owner

   Data team lead

3. 3

   Control manual reporting feeds

   10 assets rely on manual inputs, fragile local file paths, or email distribution. Replace the highest-traffic feeds with scheduled extracts or governed refresh.

   Impact

   High

   Effort

   Medium

   Timeframe

   4-6 weeks

   Suggested owner

   Data engineering

4. 4

   Retire stale reporting

   5 assets look stale or archived: 3 in archive-like locations and 2 in active locations. Confirm with owners, then archive them or leave them out of migration scope to cut effort and audit noise.

   Impact

   Medium

   Effort

   Low

   Timeframe

   2-4 weeks

   Suggested owner

   Department heads

5. 5

   Document SQL reporting logic

   5 SQL assets carry reporting logic with no documentation. Add comments and a data dictionary, starting with objects feeding daily reports.

   Impact

   Medium

   Effort

   Low

   Timeframe

   2-3 weeks

   Suggested owner

   DBA team

10Asset register

An excerpt of 12 of 47 assets. The full register exports as CSV and XLSX.