Case Study: Tricor / Vistra – Data & AI Managed Services
Following Tricor’s acquisition by a private equity firm, the incoming leadership team faced an urgent need to understand performance across the business in new ways. The organisation lacked a unified view of financial, HR, sales, marketing, and operational performance, with much of the reporting still fragmented across Excel workbooks and siloed systems.
insightfactory.ai was engaged to deploy the Insight Factory platform, connect into core systems, and establish a line-of-sight program that would give executives rapid, reliable visibility into the levers driving business performance.
The Problem
When Tricor came under new private-equity ownership, the leadership team urgently needed clear and consistent visibility across finance, HR, sales, marketing, and operations. Instead, they encountered a landscape marked by fragmented data and inconsistent KPIs. Core systems were dispersed across regions, definitions varied, and much of the organisation’s critical information still lived in Excel. Reporting was largely manual and unreliable, with dashboards scarce and performance data often stitched together in ways that gave leaders little confidence in its accuracy.
Efforts to address these gaps were themselves siloed, with BI and automation initiatives duplicated across functions, reinforcing inconsistencies and consuming valuable resources. Critically, there was no scalable or governed platform to unify data, standardise reporting, or provide a secure foundation for AI. The challenge deepened further when Tricor merged with Vistra, compounding the complexity of unifying systems, harmonising data, and aligning KPIs across two large organisations.
The imperative was clear: establish a governed, production-ready platform at pace, deliver trusted executive KPIs quickly, and create a scalable foundation that could support ongoing integration and future growth.
The Solution
insightfactory.ai deployed the Insight Factory as Tricor’s enterprise data and AI foundation, operating as an embedded data team to accelerate delivery and establish early value. The platform was rapidly stood up, connecting to core systems, ingesting and modelling priority data, and delivering the first executive dashboards within weeks. This gave leadership a unified view across finance, HR, operations, digital, and sales, underpinned by certified datasets and trusted reporting.
Working as Tricor’s BI and engineering function, insightfactory.ai built reusable data models and delivery patterns that eliminated report sprawl and ensured consistency. As the program matured, new data sources were integrated, and the platform evolved into the backbone of a growing enterprise BI capability. When a GM of BI was appointed, the transition was seamless, the new leader was onboarded directly onto the platform, ensuring continuity and enabling expansion without disruption. This approach combined the agility of early delivery with the scalability required for long-term ownership within the business.
During the program’s lifecycle, Tricor merged with Vistra, significantly increasing the scale and complexity of the challenge. insightfactory.ai supported the integration by unifying Tricor and Vistra’s data sources into a consolidated foundation for the combined entity. The team also provided augmented engineering capability through embedded professional services, allowing Vistra’s internal teams to continue scaling delivery without losing momentum. Beyond BI, the platform was expanded to encompass automation, AI services, and master data management, creating a broad portfolio of reusable solutions and establishing a foundation that could grow with the business.
The Value Delivered
insightfactory.ai stood up and accelerated the data program at pace, deploying the platform rapidly, ingesting priority data, and delivering actionable insights early in the engagement. This fast start was complemented with strategic guidance and the development of a portfolio of reusable capabilities that the organisation now operates independently.
The rapid platform stand-up meant that priority data sources were landed and modelled quickly, with the first executive dashboards moved into production early in the program. This provided leadership with timely, trusted visibility across the merged business, enabling better decision-making through certified datasets and consistent reporting. Beyond insights, reusable patterns for master data management, AI use cases, and agentic workflows were embedded into the program, creating repeatable mechanisms to unlock value at scale.
Crucially, the approach also prioritised team uplift and a smooth handover. Through structured enablement and shadow-to-lead delivery, internal BI and automation teams were upskilled and empowered to take ownership of the platform and its outputs. By the end of the program, Tricor and Vistra not only had the required outcomes delivered but were equipped with a self-sufficient, future-ready Data & AI function capable of sustaining growth and innovation.
