If you’re a CFO, COO, or operations lead, you’ve likely heard this complaint: "We spend too much time on manual reporting."

And if your team is still chasing spreadsheets, copying and pasting across systems, and running the same reports over and over again, it’s not just a time sink, it’s a risk to your business.

As more Australian businesses embrace digital tools, cloud apps, and software as a service platforms, the challenge isn’t finding data, it’s bringing it together in a way that actually helps you run and grow your business.

Finance teams in small to medium businesses often juggle spreadsheets, local files and manual reports.

If you're a CFO or finance leader still relying on Excel to run critical reporting, you're not alone, but you’re also not set up for the speed and complexity today’s business environment demands.

Manual Excel reporting eats up time, introduces errors, and holds back decision-making. But there’s a smarter way forward.

If you’re a CFO, you already know the pain of relying on manual reports, inconsistent data, and teams spending hours each week chasing numbers. You want automated dashboards that are accurate, live, and meaningful. But building this in-house can feel impossible without adding another hire. The good news? You don’t have to.

If you’re a COO or CFO of a growing business in Melbourne, you already know how crucial data is to decision-making. But knowing you need a data strategy and finding the right partner to help you build one are two different things.

If you’re a marketing or growth leader, chances are you’ve got GA4 and HubSpot running side by side. But here’s the problem - they don’t talk to each other.

You end up toggling between platforms, trying to stitch together how your website traffic, conversions, and pipeline actually connect.

As mid-market and emerging businesses look to unlock more value from their data, many COOs are facing a familiar crossroads: should we hire a full-time data analyst or bring in a fractional data team?

At Pentify Insights, we help mid-market and emerging businesses take control of their data. That could mean setting a clearer strategy, building better reports, or reducing time spent chasing numbers. Our focus is on solving real problems and helping teams use data in a way that supports day-to-day work and longer-term decisions.

It has been over a year since the Chairman of the NRL boldly claimed that the NRL was the number one sporting code in the country, prompting the Pentify team to scrutinise this daring declaration in part I of King of the Codes. With the dust now settled on newly-established feature rounds in the form of Magic round and Gather round for the NRL and AFL respectively, we thought it would be a good time to revisit this topic with some updated data insights (obviously!) and restart the conversation, perhaps making a couple of courageous proclamations ourselves.

We’re thrilled to share a white paper we’ve developed in collaboration with BetaShares, focusing on how small to medium financial planning practices can get more out of their data and analytics in Xplan.

A new financial year means new objectives, new projects, and new budgets. However, one part of the business that rarely gets given new thought to is your data landscape, in particular the need to spend time assessing the quality and quantity of your data that is so imperative to your decision making. For mid-market companies who are competing for market-share like never before, this is an even-more essential task that should be factored into any strategic review, and there is no better time to commence interrogating your data than the new financial year.

How our sporting codes use data to lay claim to the throne

Growing up in Australia, it is almost impossible to not have at least some interest in sport. The warm climate driving our outdoor lifestyle, our competitive nature, all underpinned by strong funding structures (both public and private) and some of the best stadiums and training facilities in the world, you could say that sport is in our DNA. For a country with a tick over 25 million people (putting us around the 50th most populous nation in the world) we certainly punch above our weight on the global stage, regularly finishing in the top 10 on the summer Olympic medal table (we will ignore the colder version of the Olympics for the sake of our argument). This desire to be number one is a trait that runs deep in the Australian mentality. So, it hardly comes as a shock to see the passion and vitriol when the topic of Australia’s biggest sporting code is brought up.

At Pentify, we know in the dynamic landscape of today's business environment, data has become crucial for innovation, enhancing decision-making, and driving sustainable growth. As organisations leverage the power of data to gain a competitive advantage, the need for effective data governance becomes increasingly important. This month @ Pentify, we are going to look at how the key to successful data governance lies in the balanced relationship between the right people and the right process, rather than directly on the use of technology.

In an era where information is power, having the ability to turn data into information as seamlessly as possible has never been more important. It can provide sustained competitive advantage and propel business performance. However, without incorporating a data strategy alongside your broader corporate strategy, you risk causing irreparable damage to you, your company and your customers. This month @ Pentify, we are going back in time to discuss the Horizon IT scandal, and why in our view, much hurt and pain could have been avoided had those in power at Fujitsu (Horizon IT’s parent company) given more thought to data governance at the start of their engagement with the Post Office.