A client hands you a Power BI report that already exists and asks you to reproduce it, exactly, inside a new platform. Most consultants would block off weeks for that. For Claire Bester, a Consultant at Acumen in South Africa, it took far less.
Before working with Timextender, Claire's data challenges centered on the parts of the job nobody enjoys: transforming, cleaning, and organizing data. In her words, it was an absolute nightmare.
Where the Time Actually Went
Claire works closely with Power BI, building reports and transforming data for clients. When she started using Timextender, what stood out first wasn't a single feature. It was the range of what became possible.
"Honestly, when I started using Timextender, I was really, really impressed with the amount of things you can actually do with it," Claire says.
Acumen chose Timextender over other options for two reasons: ease of use and functionality. Timextender let her build calculations and measures without writing them from scratch each time.
"The functionality of Timextender, where you click and drop and you drag, it's just so easy," Claire says. "You can do literally all your calculations and measures in there."
A Single Source of Truth
For Claire, the recurring problem across client engagements was fragmentation: different teams pulling from different systems, with no single, reliable view of the data underneath. Timextender changed that.
"I found with Timextender, it provides one source of truth. You don't have everybody linked to completely different data sources. You have one connection." - Claire Bester
That single connection also removed a manual step clients had lived with for years. Timextender's automated executions run overnight, so updated data is ready and waiting the next morning, with no manual refresh required.
"The fact that it's automated, you have executions that kick off your data updates overnight, so it's ready for you the next day for any adjustments to be done," Claire says.
Copying a Report, Not Recreating It
A client came to Claire with an existing Power BI report and set a condition before agreeing to move to Timextender: prove it could reproduce that report exactly.
"A client came to me with a Power BI report, and they asked me if I could copy exactly what was happening in Power BI into Timextender, then they'll go with the product. So that's what I did" - Claire Bester
Using Timextender's drag-and-drop functionality, Claire rebuilt the calculations and measures, merging the data into the same view the client already relied on. No rebuild from the ground up, just the existing logic carried over into a new platform.
The result: the client's uploads were automated, and the migration took a fraction of the time a full rebuild would normally demand. They went with the product. "It's just been absolutely fantastic. They were very impressed," Claire says.
The Same Pattern at GCX
Claire's experience isn't an isolated case. It reflects how Acumen approaches client data problems more broadly. When GCX, a sustainability data platform, outgrew the Power BI and SQL-based setup it had built with PowerQuery and SSIS, Acumen recommended Timextender based on prior experience with the platform. A proof of concept confirmed it could handle the job, and GCX moved to full-scale adoption soon after.
The shift gave GCX a single environment to normalize diverse environmental datasets, solving a scalability problem their previous stack couldn't, and replaced manual processes with automated ones. It's the same pattern Claire describes with her own clients: less time spent wrestling with data infrastructure, more time spent using it.
Support That's Actually There
Claire also points to the relationship with the Timextender team itself as a reason the work goes smoothly. When she or a client has a question, help is close at hand.
"If there's any question or anything that we need information on, there are ways available. They're helpful. They jump on a call with us if we need it, and assist us with webinars." - Claire Bester
"So yeah, absolutely love Timextender and the team," Claire says.
Curious What Your Existing Reports Could Look Like in Timextender?
Claire didn't have to convince her client to change platforms. She just had to prove the existing report still worked once it moved. If you're a partner or a customer with a data infrastructure project on the table, find out what's possible. Learn more →
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