By John McDermott, CEO Stellar Consulting Group
The Seven Essentials Delivery Model: Where Data Strategy Meets Reality
Across almost two decades of helping organisations modernise their data and analytics capabilities, there’s one truth that has never changed: When it comes to driving business transformation through data, insight without impact is a missed opportunity. Stellar’s Delivery Model – the third pillar in our Seven Essentials Framework – is all about connecting analytics to outcomes, and data to decisions that move the dial.
Good ideas are easy. Delivery is hard.
Designing strategies, evaluating platforms, or discussing the potential of AI can feel inspiring. But sooner or later, every data initiative reaches the point where decisions must turn into systems, behaviours, and outcomes.
This is where the Delivery Model becomes the defining factor.
The Delivery Model is about how the work gets done – the methods, processes, governance, sequencing, risk management, and support structures that turn a programme into a success story rather than an expensive lesson. It’s both the machinery and the discipline behind a data and analytics initiative.
And in our experience – it’s the most activity-intense, cross-organisational, and misunderstood component of the Seven Essentials.
Why Delivery Is Where Programmes Fail (Or Succeed)
We are often invited into major system implementation programmes late in the game. The vendor is already engaged, the platform is already being configured, go-live dates are already announced – and only at that point does someone look up and ask:
“What about the analytics that keep this organisation running?”
By then, dashboards, data models, regulatory reporting, operational performance insights, and financial planning workflows have become afterthoughts. They are treated as “Phase Two” when they were actually core business capability all along.
Every time this happens, costs rise, deadlines stretch, and operational risk increases.
Not because people lack skill or effort – but because the delivery model was never built to account for all the moving parts.
The Delivery Model Needs To Start Early
When planning any major platform or system change, it’s essential to consider:
- The analytics and reporting currently relied on every day.
- The data flows that connect multiple operational systems.
- The migration effort required to rebuild trust in the data.
- The business processes that must adapt to new ways of working.
- The capacity of people to absorb change.
This is where Delivery Model planning belongs – at the beginning, not at the tail end.
Bring data and analytics specialists in early projects:
- Continuity of business performance.
- Data quality and lineage.
- The investment you are already making.
It also prevents the dreaded “everything was working before the cutover, and now nothing balances” scenario.
The Real Risks Live In The Gaps
The most costly failures we’ve remediated did not come from technical incompetence. They came from four preventable oversights:
- No structured risk and issue management discipline: Delivery requires relentless, boring, steady vigilance.
- Underestimating data migration complexity: System migrations expose every hidden data quality assumption the organisation has been living with.
- Not challenging scope: “Move every report” is rarely necessary, and often wasteful. We once saved a client millions by identifying entire reporting suites that were no longer used.
- Ignoring organisational change capacity: Technology can change overnight. People cannot.
These are predictable risks, which means they are avoidable ones.
Designing The Right Operating Model Matters.
Centralised. Decentralised. Federated. Hybrid.
There is no “correct” answer here. The right delivery model depends on organisational culture, maturity, and the strategic role that data plays in decision-making.
What matters is that the model is:
- Deliberate.
- Documented.
- Understood.
- And supported by leadership.
Because delivery is not a technical activity – it is a business capability.
What I Want Every Executive To Remember
If you’re leading or sponsoring a major data or system transformation, ask one question early:
“Who is thinking about how we’re going to deliver this, at scale, without breaking the organisation?”
If the answer is unclear, the risk is already present. The Delivery Model is not a project management artefact. It is the operating system of your transformation.
Get it right, and data becomes a performance multiplier. Get it wrong, and even the best strategy cannot save the programme. Call us on 0800 228 872 or email bi@stellarconsulting.co.nz if you’d like to find out more.
