Power Query Experts

Asset of GPP (Private Equity)

• B2B, Provider of cooled packaging solutions for the pharmaceutical industry
• €20m in revenue, 50 employees, 2 locations

Responsibilities:

• Responsibility for all commercial and financial activities
• Establishment of a finance and reporting structure
• Carve-Out / Post-closing transition management

Achievements:

• Preparation of investor reporting package (sales, financials, cash) using Power BI
• Development of a sales funnel
• Business process redesigns and implementation of regular business reviews

• Leading enterprise BI transformation across Power BI & Microsoft Fabric, delivering scalable data models, automated reporting, and high-performance analytics solutions for commercial and operational leadership.
• Building and optimizing Power BI Dataflows, Fabric Lakehouse datasets, semantic models, and automated reporting pipelines to improve data scalability, governance, and reporting performance.
• Driving dashboard modernization and KPI governance by translating complex business requirements into executive-level insights, interactive visualizations, and decision-ready analytics.
• Designing end-to-end Microsoft Fabric architectures integrating data ingestion, transformation, virtualization, and enterprise reporting across cross-functional business domains with SAP BW to Qlik to Power BI migration.
• Delivering AI-enabled reporting capabilities, threshold-based alerting, and automation frameworks within the Power BI ecosystem to accelerate business decision-making.
• Partnering with commercial leadership, analytics teams, and IT stakeholders to standardize KPIs, optimize BI strategy, and deliver scalable, business-critical reporting solutions.
• Recognized for combining strong stakeholder leadership, technical architecture expertise, and business-driven analytics to deliver impactful enterprise BI transformation initiatives.

• Led a 16-person finance and accounting organization during a restructuring phase; strengthened closing discipline, financial control, cash transparency and accountability.
• Supported cost programs with approximately €2 Mio. in annual savings; established regular KPI reviews for P&L, working capital, POC and cash topics.
• Responsible for monthly, quarterly and annual closing under HGB/IFRS, management/group reporting, audit, tax and GoBD compliance.
• Finance automation with clear business benefits: 13-week liquidity planning, cash flow reporting, P&L versus plan, variance analysis and bank reconciliation; reduced manual work by 40–60 %.
• Improved accounts payable processes through OCR-supported invoice processing and three-way matching with exception handling.
• Sparring partner to management on restructuring, liquidity, working capital, risks and process simplification.

Most mid-sized companies already have their numbers. What is missing is the translation: a dashboard with forty tiles does not answer a single question that is actually asked in management.

Analysis

• Evaluation of existing data with Python and SQL
• Checking data quality and methodology before making a statement
• The result is an analysis that leads toward a concrete decision

Preparation

• Reports in Power BI and Tableau
• Interactive calculators and visualizations on the web
• Presentations and specialist texts for customers, sales and the public
• Analysis and communication from one source — that

• Analysis of the existing reporting platform, including processes and governance topics, with stakeholders from Sales and Marketing.

• Detailed analysis and evaluation of customer-defined requirements for existing reporting and new dashboards to be established.

• Support for stakeholders in managing sales processes and identifying KPI trends at an early stage.

• Use of Microsoft Power BI as the central analysis and reporting platform.

• Development of a proposal for the required further development of processes and the Power BI platform.

• Documentation of AS-IS business processes and derivation of company-wide KPIs, including coordination with stakeholders.

• Analysis and assessment of the customer's Power BI platform.

• Analysis of processes and data governance.

• Documentation of AS-IS business processes.

• Development of recommendations for further developing processes and the reporting platform.

• Design and implementation of dashboards in Power BI.

• Development of company-wide KPIs and coordination with stakeholders.

• Microsoft Power BI.

• Data analytics.

• KPI definition and reporting.

• Dashboard design and data visualization.

• Stakeholder management and requirements management.

Embedded Analytics & AI-assisted BI

Design and development of an integrated analytics solution based on ASP.NET Core, Power BI Embedded, and LLM services to provide context-based business information.

Development of an AI agent with Function/Tool Calling for the secure orchestration of REST APIs, SQL data sources, and technical services within defined business processes.

Building automated BI workflows including workspace management, deployment processes, and scheduled refresh via the Power BI REST API.

Implementation of secure service-to-service communication with Microsoft Entra ID and Service Principal, and integration into existing enterprise system landscapes.

Technologies: ASP.NET Core, C#/.NET, Power BI Embedded, Power BI REST API, LLM API, AI Agents, Function/Tool Calling, Entra ID

Enterprise Analytics Modernization – Germany-based enterprise reporting platform for operations and management analytics, used by 1,000+ internal users across multiple departments.

• Lead end-to-end Power BI and Microsoft Fabric reporting initiatives, delivering scalable dashboards and semantic models supporting daily operational and strategic decisions, achieving 30% faster decision turnaround and 25% reporting efficiency gains.
• Designed unified enterprise datasets using Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse and OneLake, automating historical data processing and reducing manual reporting effort by 40%.
• Built and maintained automated ingestion pipelines using Fabric Dataflows Gen2 and Data Pipelines, improving data refresh reliability to 99.8% uptime and ensuring consistent data quality.
• Implemented enterprise reporting governance, including Row-Level Security (RLS), workspace strategy, deployment pipelines, and documentation, increasing dashboard adoption by 35%.

Technologies used: Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, DAX, Power Query, SQL, Azure Data Fundamentals, Semantic Modeling, RLS, Agile

Scope: Embedded as FP&A Data & AI Architect within the Finance function of a major European refrigeration manufacturer, leading the transformation of manual, fragmented financial reporting into an automated, governance-driven intelligence platform. Driving the shift from Excel-based controlling to structured data architecture, Power BI analytics, and AI-assisted financial operations.

Financial Data Integrity & ERP Governance

• Initiated and led GL vs. subledger reconciliation investigations, identifying and resolving structural mismatches between General Ledger and subledger data that had gone undetected prior to engagement
• Conducted asset analysis to identify items missing from General Ledger postings, surfacing gaps in fixed asset tracking and period-end completeness
• Validated SAP reports, establishing baseline data quality standards for Finance team consumption
• Established systematic SAP data validation framework ensuring ongoing integrity between ERP postings and downstream reporting outputs

Finance Reporting Transformation

• Designed and implemented a structured Transformation Project approach for converting manual Finance reports into fully automated processes
• Created and owns the Data Reporting Audit Log; a centralized tracking system capturing report owners, stakeholders, data sources, manual effort estimates, and automation opportunity scores across the Finance function
• Mapped the full reporting landscape identifying quick-win automation targets and strategic Power BI migration candidates
• Actively reducing manual Excel and PowerPoint dependency across FP&A workflows; replacing point-in-time snapshots with live, governed data models

Power BI & Analytics Enablement

• Introduced and presented Power BI as the strategic reporting platform to Finance leadership, building internal buy-in for the BI transformation roadmap
• Designed initial Power BI architecture aligned with SAP, Salesforce and Oracle data structures and FP&A reporting requirements
• Established report ownership, governance documentation, and data lineage standards enabling sustainable self-service analytics across the Finance team

Transformation Infrastructure & Collaboration

• Configured and deployed Jira as the transformation project management hub, establishing structured sprint workflows, backlog management, and progress visibility for Finance IT initiatives
• Proposed and initiated a dedicated FP&A Communication & Transformation Hub, a structured cross-functional forum aligning Finance, IT, and business stakeholders around the reporting transformation roadmap
• Positioned the Finance function as an active driver of data governance and digital transformation within the broader organization

Outcomes

• GL/subledger reconciliation gaps identified and investigation framework established within first two weeks of engagement
• Data Reporting Audit Log deployed; first structured inventory of Finance reporting landscape in company history
• Power BI transformation roadmap presented and approved by Finance leadership
• Jira-based project governance live; Finance transformation now tracked with full sprint visibility

Technologies: SAP FI/CO · Power BI · DAX · SQL · Excel (advanced) · Power Query (M) · Power Automate · VBA · Jira · Microsoft 365 · SharePoint · Salesforce (Sales Data) · Oracle HCM · Python

• Led enterprise reporting modernization by migrating legacy SSRS reporting solutions to Power BI, supporting 500+ business users while ensuring full GDPR/DSGVO compliance.
• Designed and optimized Power BI and Microsoft Fabric semantic models using star schema, dimensional modeling, advanced DAX, and performance optimization techniques, reducing query latency by 25%.
• Delivered 20+ executive and operational dashboards featuring KPI scorecards, drill-through, bookmarks, and row-level security, improving reporting efficiency by 20%.
• Enabled self-service analytics through governed Power BI datasets, dataflows, and gateway architecture, increasing business-led reporting adoption by 35%.
• Configured an incremental refresh policy and query folding for a 50+ million row sales dataset, reducing daily report refresh times by 85%.
• Deployed automated ETL/ELT pipelines using Azure Data Factory, Microsoft Fabric, and Snowflake, reducing reporting delivery timelines by 40% through workflow automation.
• Spearheaded Microsoft Fabric analytics modernization initiatives including lakehouse architecture, OneLake integration, and centralized data platform development, reducing data latency from 2 hours to 20 minutes.
• Translated business requirements from 15+ stakeholders into scalable Power BI semantic models and dashboards, improving reporting consistency and reducing ad-hoc reporting requests by 25%.
• Applied Microsoft Copilot and generative AI tools to accelerate SQL development, DAX authoring, technical documentation, and testing activities, reducing development effort by approximately 15 hours per week.

Project, Strategic Consulting – building the Data Strategy and Data Governance Policy for the German branch, client (private bank Julius Bär, headquarters Zurich), March 2026 – present

• Design and negotiation of the data strategy with key stakeholders, including obtaining board sign-off (strategic consulting) – in this context, regulatory advice on data regulations in the EU and specifically for Germany. The data strategy includes: Data Lifecycle Management: data capture, data storage, data usage, data retention policy, data quality incident management
• Definition of milestones and technical feasibility for implementing TOM for the data strategy, data quality checks, metrics, and a metadata inventory to ensure the bank’s compliance with DORA, BCBS239, and MaRisk requirements.

Core project data change, client: (ING Bank, Frankfurt am Main), March – December 2025

• Concept development and solution design for new end-to-end processes including technical interfaces
• Definition of synchronization logic and data flows between legacy and target systems (decommissioning of legacy systems)
• Analysis and validation of data models
• Stakeholder communication with product owners, feature engineers, UX designers, and operational teams for decision-making
• Analytics and impact assessments, e.g. to assess downstream effects and regulatory requirements
• Documentation and comments on technical and business requirements to support implementation in agile squads

Project digitalization of a user group, client: (ING Bank, Frankfurt am Main), as Interim Product Owner, Jan 2025 – present

• Co-shaping key decisions on data architecture and process logic in the context of historized data and user login functionality
• Development of business solution concepts for migration to the target system, including system integration and data flows
• Support with analytics and impact analyses, especially regarding the ability to provide information to law enforcement authorities
• Active coordination with stakeholders from different squads to support decision-making and ensure regulatory requirements are met
• Creation of test scenarios for operational teams and backend systems in the area of API management using Postman and Bruno.

Architected and maintained data products for renewable energy operations, covering wind turbine, grid-meter, and weather data. Built scalable ETL/ELT pipelines in Azure Databricks using Delta Lake (bronze/silver/gold layers) and processed data in various formats, including structured and semi-structured data. Contributed to a data quality framework supporting table and column documentation, outlier detection, and completeness metrics across all datasets within a data product. In addition, implemented a DORA KPI Databricks dashboard used across all data products. Optimized CI/CD processes in Azure DevOps to streamline deployment across development, test, and production environments.

Technology stack: Azure Databricks, PySpark, SQL, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Azure Data Lake, APIs, Dremio, Azure DevOps, YAML, Git, Databricks Workflows, Application Insights, Terraform, OpenAI API, Codex, LLM-assisted workflows

• Advising companies on building, migrating and optimising BI and reporting landscapes (Power BI, SQL, Python, ETL)

• 5 client engagements in real estate and finance since 05/2025: taking over and stabilising existing reporting, automating recurring standard and management reports, building cash-flow models

• Proposal and feasibility assessments for BI and reporting projects

• Using AI-assisted development (Claude Code) to accelerate automation, tooling and web/app development

• Custom ERP system

• Problem: A client's core processes ran on scattered, siloed Excel files with no central data storage – error-prone, hard to scale and impossible to analyse end-to-end.

• Approach: Captured the business processes and requirements, modelled the data and developed iteratively together with the business team.

• Implementation: Built a tailored, web-based ERP system with a central database, role-based modules and automated reporting – delivered using AI-assisted development in Claude Code.

• Timesheet app

• Starting point: Time tracking based on an overgrown, macro-heavy Excel template – maintenance-intensive, single-user and error-prone.

• Implementation: Migrated all functionality and VBA macros into a standalone web app with central data storage, multi-user support and automated reporting.

• Cash-flow modelling

• Starting point: The existing cash-flow model covered standing investments only; project developments were missing from steering.

• Implementation: Built and extended the CF model to include project-development cash flows.

• Optimisation: Reviewed and optimised existing CF models and expanded the KPI outputs for reporting and steering.

• Developed & maintained customer analytical reporting solutions to identify revenue trends, performance drivers, risks & optimization opportunities to ensure data driven decision making across Sales, Finance, Product, Data Engineering & Controlling.
• Defined & analyzed customer trends & performance metrics to identify root causes behind variances, anomalies & emerging risks across business domains to deliver actionable recommendations.
• Developed & owned analytical data models & reporting layers to ensure scalability, performance & analytical robustness to support executive & operational reporting across business domains.
• Planned, tracked & executed projects by ensuring adherence to timelines, data accuracy, consistency, deliverables, reliability & data quality standards through rigorous validation & reconciliation processes.
• Raised the analytical maturity by formalizing analytical workflows, documenting data processes & standard operating procedures (SOPs) & conducting training sessions to drive adoption of self-service analytics & embed a data driven culture across operational and business teams.
• Took ownership of the end-to-end lifecycle roadmap from requirement gathering, collection, transformation, developing robust business logics to data storytelling & stakeholder delivery.
• Converted complexity into structured clarity by translating requirements & business processes into analytical recommendations to ensure alignment between non-technical & technical stakeholders.
• Conducted advanced SQL based analysis of complex business datasets to uncover trends, correlations & performance improvement opportunities.
• Drove process automation & efficiency improvements by leveraging Python, SQL optimization & AI assisted tools to reduce processing time & increase reliability across analytical & operational workflows.
• Standardized KPI definitions & reporting logic to ensure consistency & trust across reporting solutions.
• Developed process monitoring dashboards & analyses to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks & compliance deviations across end-to-end business processes to derive actionable recommendations for process improvement & automation.

Manufacturing business

Annual revenue: €6 million

Employees: 25