Data and Analytics Solution Architect — Kerv (formerly Inciper)

Engagement

Inciper is a consultancy specialising in Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementation, now part of Kerv.

Solution Architect in the Data and Analytics team, designing and delivering the data platforms and reporting that sit alongside the consultancy's D365 implementations, placed with its clients.

Savills — Europe reporting

Savills is a global real estate services provider. The European business spans Spain, Italy, Poland, Ireland, France, Germany and Portugal, and was implementing D365 Finance and Operations as its ERP with a finance reporting platform alongside it.

First project of the engagement. Ran requirements sessions with the Finance Director of each country. The goal was an individual Profit and Loss for every country and a consolidated Profit and Loss for Central Finance. Played the design back in February 2022.

• Defined the reporting requirements as user stories with agreed acceptance criteria, covering Profit and Loss, Receivables and Payables reporting.
• Created nominal account mapping files for each country, feeding a single chart of accounts dimension that carries both local and conformed central attributes. Each country sees its Profit and Loss in its own familiar structure. Central Finance consolidates across every country through the conformed attributes on the same dimension.
• Designed the dimensional model. A set of conformed dimensions shared across the platform, with fact tables for each reporting area, tied together in a bus matrix.
• Wireframed the Power BI reports, including drill through to transaction level detail, and gained stakeholder approval.
• Implemented dynamic row level security with three roles. An All role sees everything, used by Central Finance. A Country role sees all data for a given country, used by Finance Directors and managers. A Legal Entity, Department and Office role restricts users to their own combinations of the three.
• Implemented multi currency reporting with accounting and reporting currencies on the Company dimension, using Tabular Editor to create calculation groups with dynamic format strings. Central Finance in the UK switches to reporting currency to see everything in pounds across the board, while each country uses accounting currency to work in its own local currency. Measures and currency formats switch seamlessly.

Technical solution, end to end

• D365 Finance and Operations exports its tables to Azure Data Lake Storage as CSV files through the Export to Data Lake service, with Common Data Model metadata describing each entity.
• Built the orchestration as a data driven, configurable Azure Data Factory framework. An orchestration database holds the configuration as a parent and child hierarchy, defining what runs and over which entities. Parent pipelines read the configuration and invoke child pipelines, with audit logging and error trapping built into the pipeline structure itself, so every run is recorded and failures are handled once, centrally.
• The orchestration builds the Synapse Serverless SQL views over the exported files dynamically from that configuration. The views form an operational data store over D365, giving a near real time picture for reporting that requires fresh data.
• The orchestration then materialises the serverless views into staging tables in a Synapse Dedicated SQL pool.
• Stored procedures build the conformed dimensions and fact tables from staging, cleaning and typing the data into the dimensional model.
• A centralised Power BI data model sits over the dimensional model, built once and shared by every report. It carries the conformed dimensions, the Profit and Loss, Receivables and Payables measures, the currency calculation groups and the row level security.
• Every report connects live to this single semantic model, so each country and Central Finance work from the same measure definitions, hierarchies and security. A single version of the truth.
• Set up CI/CD for the Synapse Dedicated pool, the Azure Data Factory and the orchestration database, deploying all three through the environments from Azure DevOps source control.

Savills UK — AX to D365 migration strategy

Savills UK ran its finance reporting estate directly over Dynamics AX 2012, the last classic version before D365. With the business migrating to D365 Finance and Operations, every downstream consumer of AX data needed a defined route to the new platform.

Commissioned by the UK business, following the European delivery, to author the Data and Analytics solution architecture for the migration. Designed the solution and led the team of four consultants that delivered it.

• Defined the data requirements of every downstream consumer of UK finance data.
  • Financial Tools, the in house web portal to a suite of nine SSRS reports, serving 6,500 internal users at around 170 report executions a day. The reports previously queried the AX tables directly with zero latency.
  • TM1, the planning tool. Budget, forecast and cost centre roll up flow out of TM1 into the platform. Nominal ledger actuals flow back into TM1.
  • Hyperion, the group consolidation tool, importing nominal ledger actuals.
  • CRL, the legacy data warehouse, which needed to continue running through the migration. Its integration point is a set of SSIS packages, so the interfaces had to keep working and keep consuming the same data.
  • Power BI, the analytics reporting over the new platform.
  • Atlas, the Excel based reporting add in, and its cache.

Technical solution, end to end

• Reused the patterns proven on the European platform, with one key difference. The UK business wanted a 30 minute refresh, so there is no Synapse Dedicated pool. The warehouse is a virtual data warehouse, built entirely in Synapse Serverless over the lake.
• D365 Finance and Operations exports its tables to Azure Data Lake Storage as CSV files through the Export to Data Lake service, with Common Data Model metadata describing each entity.
• The Synapse Serverless views are nested and deployed as code. The CI/CD pipeline builds them during deployment, so there is no run time view generation. Orchestration is light. Its main job is refreshing the Power BI data models.
• Built ODS views integrating CRL and the other external systems with the new platform.
• Built the dimensional model in the virtual warehouse to feed the analytics.
• Rebuilt the existing SSRS report suite on the same report templates, replacing the direct AX queries with DAX queries against the central semantic model. The reports consume the same single version of the truth as the analytics.
• Built additional Power BI data models for Profit and Loss reporting, following the European design.
• Set up CI/CD from Azure DevOps source control for the Azure Data Factory and the Synapse workspace. The DevOps deployment pipelines deploy the nested serverless views through the environments by running create or alter scripts held in source control against Synapse Serverless.

Wakefield District Housing — finance reporting platform

Wakefield District Housing is a social housing provider implementing D365 Finance and Operations as its ERP.

Won the work at presales. Led demonstration sessions with the practice lead, showing the platform delivered for Savills Europe. Wakefield District Housing wanted the same.

• Reused the Savills Europe patterns wholesale, exactly as described in the Savills Europe technical solution above. The D365 export to the lake, the metadata driven orchestration framework, the serverless ODS views, the dimensional model and the centralised Power BI semantic model all carried across.
• Extended the reporting pack with a Balance Sheet alongside the Profit and Loss.
• Remapped the design to Wakefield District Housing's organisation. All UK legal entities, with their own set of financial dimensions.
• The General Ledger holds in excess of 25 million transaction records.

AX (Accident Exchange) — finance and HR reporting platform

AX (Accident Exchange) is a UK accident management and credit hire business, providing replacement vehicles for non-fault accidents, repair management and claims handling for dealerships, insurers and brokers. The business was implementing D365 Finance and Operations.

A direct placement. Delivered the platform solo, end to end.

• Reused the Savills Europe patterns wholesale, exactly as described in the Savills Europe technical solution above.
• The main difference was scope. Built a set of HR reports alongside the finance reporting, drawing on the Human Resources module built into D365 Finance and Operations through the same export and platform.

A2Dominion — D365 reporting platform

A2Dominion is one of the UK's larger housing associations, with more than 38,000 homes across London and southern England. The group was migrating to D365 Finance and Operations and needed its existing report estate brought across. A previous delivery attempt had failed, so stakeholders were not forthcoming.

Solution Architect on the programme.

• Analysed the existing report estate with a guarded business. Winning stakeholder confidence was as much of the work as the design.
• Designed the dimensional model. It covers Procurement, Fixed Assets and Finance, with an extensive custom area for the group's leases, treasury and lender covenant reporting.
• Mapped every report column through the model back to the D365 source. That mapping was the specification that enabled the technical build.
• Synapse Link feeds the D365 data to the lake. The platform is a medallion architecture on the Synapse data lake, with Spark notebooks for transformation.
• Migrated the existing report estate onto the new platform.

Savills — BAU leadership

Savills requested the placement specifically, for two consecutive twelve month contracts at two and a half days a week.

Effectively led the Savills data platform BAU through that period, including supporting the Savills offshore team. No other Inciper consultant held an engagement of that length.

Savills UK and Europe — Synapse Link migration

Microsoft retired the Export to Data Lake service in favour of Synapse Link, so both Savills platforms had to move.

Migrated the UK and European platforms to Synapse Link. The landing views act as a stable interface between the source and the platform, so everything downstream, the warehouses, models and reports, was unchanged.

Savills EU — Fabric migration

Migrated the Savills Europe data platform from Synapse to Fabric. Designed the architecture around the existing estate rather than an optimal from scratch Fabric build. The priorities were minimal downstream impact and reuse of as many existing SQL artefacts as possible.

• Designed and built a medallion architecture across two workspaces. A Bronze Lakehouse, a Silver Lakehouse and a Gold Warehouse.
• The Bronze Lakehouse has three feeds.
  • OneLake shortcuts to the original Synapse Link Delta tables in Azure Data Lake, exposing the D365 data with no duplication.
  • Mapping data loaded by the original Azure orchestration framework, with its sink changed from the Synapse Dedicated pool to Bronze Delta tables.
  • Fabric pipelines, developed to load the remaining non D365 sources, such as the IBM Planning Analytics data.
• The Silver Lakehouse recreates the original Synapse layers through SQL endpoint views.
  • Landing views emulate the original Synapse Serverless views over the source.
  • Staging views emulate the Dedicated pool staging area, shaping the data for the Gold loads.
  • Spark notebooks materialise the slow running views as Delta tables.
• The Gold Warehouse carries the Dedicated pool forward.
  • Migrated the Dedicated pool stored procedures that build the dimensions and facts into the Fabric Warehouse. The Warehouse is a materialised dimensional model.
  • Views over the Warehouse provide the semantic layer for the data model, the stable interface to everything downstream. The same principle as the Synapse platforms.
  • A Power BI semantic model in TMDL sits over those views.
• Fabric pipelines replace the Azure Data Factory orchestration.
• Git integration underpins deployment. Each workspace is linked to a Git branch, and changes merge into main through pull requests before any deployment can take place.
• Four environments, Dev, UAT, Support and Production, promoted with native Fabric deployment pipelines and post deployment configuration scripts.

Gamma — billing data at scale

Gamma Communications is a FTSE 250 unified communications provider with revenue above £600 million. Its billing systems generate millions of lines every month. The business needed its Monthly Costs and Revenue reporting at the lowest level of granularity, but the volume and dimensionality made loading it all into D365 prohibitively expensive.

Architected the Data and Analytics solution, working mainly solo with some support from a technical data and analytics consultant.

• The metadata driven Azure Data Factory framework moves the billing data from on premise to a landing area in a Synapse Dedicated SQL pool.
• From landing the data goes two ways.
  • An integration table of two sided journals, aggregated to the D365 financial dimensions, loads into D365. The ledger gets balanced journals without the volume.
  • The same data loads into a dimensional warehouse at the most granular level.
• The loop closes through Synapse Link. The journals posted through the integration flow back out of D365 with everything else, and the integration journals are excluded from the reload so nothing counts twice.
• The result is a dimensional data warehouse that can generate a fully balancing Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss at billing line granularity.

Turner & Townsend — greenfield Fabric platform

Turner & Townsend is a global professional services business with more than 22,000 people in over 60 countries and a turnover above £5.7 billion. The engagement is a greenfield build, a new Microsoft Fabric reporting platform over D365 Finance and Operations.

Led the delivery and built nearly all of it in VS Code with Claude.

• Built and documented the Product Backlog Items for the build with Claude, providing the requirements documents and project artefacts as context. Reviewed each PBI one at a time to sharpen the language and improve accuracy.
• Designed a new workspace architecture. Bronze, Silver and Gold Lakehouses, each in their own workspace.
• The Bronze Lakehouse.
  • A OneLake shortcut to the Synapse Link Delta files in Azure Data Lake.
  • A single Spark notebook accepts a list of tables and materialises them as Bronze Delta tables, copying twelve in parallel.
  • Workspace identities handle data access, and variable libraries hold the environment specific settings.
• The Silver Lakehouse runs from a single configuration file.
  • The configuration defines every Silver table. Column level descriptions, source lineage, data types, partitioning and quality checks.
  • One Spark notebook reads the configuration, builds the Silver Delta tables and writes a data dictionary.
  • Quality checks run as part of the load. The results and the data dictionary are surfaced through dedicated Power BI reports.
  • Built a Create Silver Config Claude skill that generated and extended the configuration file on demand.
• The Gold Lakehouse is the dimensional model.
  • A configuration notebook defines the structure of every Gold table. Columns, data types, defaults, descriptions, source lineage and quality checks.
  • The build notebooks create the tables from that configuration. A shared function library provides the reusable boilerplate, so every fact and dimension builds the same way with consistent metadata columns. The library also generates the role playing dimensions.
  • A Spark notebook builds each dimension. A Create Dimension Claude skill generated new dimension notebooks to the defined pattern.
  • A Spark notebook builds each fact. A Create Fact Claude skill generated new fact notebooks to the defined pattern.
• The Mart workspaces. User access is through individual marts.
  • A create shortcut notebook runs against a configuration file and the variable library, creating OneLake shortcuts to the Gold layer.
  • Each mart has its own Direct Lake semantic model and reports, so no model refresh is required.
  • Row level security and user authentication are managed at the mart.
  • Marts include Management Accounts, Work in Progress and Project Costing.
• The Claude AI workflow.
  • Each Fabric workspace is linked to the main branch of its repo. The repos are cloned locally and open in VS Code.
  • Claude takes a feature branch and reads the PBI.
  • Claude proposes a plan. The plan is negotiated until the implementation is agreed.
  • Claude builds the change on the branch and pushes it to Azure DevOps.
  • A manual pull request and approval merge the change into main.
  • Main syncs back into the workspace and the change is live.

Savills — Master Data platform

Savills master data lives across multiple systems, with an integration layer holding the identity mappings between them. The platform masters the shared entities and serves a single view back to the estate.

It is the keystone of a wider strategy. Mastered keys and attributes enrich each of the other medallions, and in time a single global warehouse is to be built, combining UK, Europe and CRM.

Built within the BAU leadership period, working mainly alone.

• The integration database was already mirrored into OneLake as Delta through Fabric Mirroring. A single schema level shortcut surfaces the whole mirror in the Bronze Lakehouse.
• The integration data supplies every system's key for each entity instance.
• Config driven OneLake shortcuts bring in the source system tables. Mastering rules decide which system masters each entity instance, and the platform reads the master data from it.
• The output is one table per entity. Each row holds an entity instance, its key in every system and its mastered attributes.

Savills — Reapit agency platform

Reapit is the estate and lettings agency platform behind Savills' residential business, an end to end CRM for sales, lettings and client accounts. Its data lives in Snowflake, outside Fabric, with fourteen years of history. The platform is currently in build.

• An orchestration database drives everything. One row per source table holds its schema, the exact column list, flags and a watermark.
• Bronze pulls only the rows newer than each table's watermark from Snowflake into a staging Lakehouse. Deleted rows are captured in their own run. Currently daily, moving to hourly.
• Silver is the persistent history, a cleaned operational data store. Spark notebooks clean each table and merge the incremental rows into the history. Packed columns are reassembled and JSON columns split out into their constituent columns for easier querying. Deletes are processed and the watermark advances only after a successful load.
• Gold currently exposes views over the operational data store for reporting, with a dimensional model to follow.

Savills — CRL migration to Fabric

CRL is the Savills legacy data warehouse, kept running as a consumer through the UK migration. Built on older technology with SSIS at its core, its move to Fabric was a re-engineering rather than a lift.

Built in conjunction with a developer expert in the original implementation.

• Bronze is shortcuts only. OneLake shortcuts point at the sources CRL always drew from, UK Finance, CRM and Reapit, all already in Fabric.
• Silver is Spark notebooks, cleaning and presenting the data ready for the fact builds.
• Gold is a Fabric Warehouse with the dimension and fact loads.

Turner & Townsend

To capture. Known projects from Claude Compass: FeeFlash and the gold reporting workspace.

• Renewed 7 consecutive times across the engagement, from the initial six month work order in December 2021 through successive annual work orders under Inciper to assignment schedules under Kerv, spanning the acquisition.Corerenewals
• Engaged by Inciper for the third time, having previously delivered engagements in 2018 and 2020. The 2020 engagement ended early only because of Covid.Corerenewals
• Maintained 100 per cent chargeability throughout the engagement, the consultancy's key commercial KPI, mainly through client specific requests.Corerenewals
• Requested specifically by Savills for two consecutive twelve month contracts at two and a half days a week, effectively leading their data platform BAU and supporting their offshore team. The only Inciper consultant engaged at that length.Corerenewalsleadership
• Designed the Savills Europe enterprise data and analytics blueprint on Azure. Azure Data Factory orchestrates ingestion from D365 Finance and Operations, the Tagetik planning tool and off system budget and forecast sources into Azure Data Lake Storage. Azure Synapse Analytics curates and presents the data. Power BI serves analytics and paginated reports, consumed inside D365 and through the Power BI portal.Corearchitectureazured365power-bi
• Ran requirements sessions with the Finance Directors of seven Savills European countries, defining user stories with agreed acceptance criteria for Profit and Loss, Receivables and Payables reporting. The goal was an individual Profit and Loss for every country and a consolidated Profit and Loss for Central Finance.Corebusiness-analysisfinanceleadership
• Designed a single chart of accounts dimension carrying both local and conformed central attributes, fed by nominal account mapping files agreed with each country. Each country views its Profit and Loss in its own structure. Central Finance consolidates across every country through the conformed attributes.Supportingconformed-chart-of-accountsmdmkimballfinance
• Designed the dimensional model for the platform. A set of conformed dimensions with fact tables for Profit and Loss, Receivables and Payables, tied together in a bus matrix.Supportingkimballarchitecturefinance
• Wireframed the Power BI reports and gained stakeholder approval, including transaction level drill through, dynamic row level security and multi currency reporting.Supportingpower-bibusiness-analysissecurity
• Implemented multi currency reporting with accounting and reporting currencies on the Company dimension, using Tabular Editor to create calculation groups with dynamic format strings. Central Finance in the UK switches to reporting currency to see everything in pounds across the board, while each country uses accounting currency to work in its own local currency. Measures and currency formats switch seamlessly.Supportingcurrency-calculation-groupspower-bidaxfinance
• Commissioned by the Savills UK business, on the strength of the European delivery, to author the Data and Analytics strategy for its migration from Dynamics AX to D365.Corestrategyd365architecture
• Authored the Savills UK reporting solution architecture for the AX to D365 migration. Defined the data requirements of every downstream consumer, a nine report SSRS suite serving 6,500 users, TM1, Hyperion, CRL, Power BI and the Atlas cache. Designed the environment architectures and the D365 Data Lake Export configuration.Corearchitectured365power-bistrategy
• Designed the Savills UK solution and led the team of four consultants that built it.Coreleadershiparchitectured365
• Delivered the Savills UK platform as a virtual data warehouse built entirely in Synapse Serverless, meeting the 30 minute refresh requirement without a dedicated pool. Rebuilt the nine report SSRS suite on the same templates with DAX queries against the central semantic model, and added Profit and Loss data models following the European design.Corevirtual-data-warehousearchitectureazuresqlpower-bid365
• Built reusable solution patterns adopted across the consultancy's clients, including the metadata driven orchestration framework, the conformed chart of accounts design and the currency calculation groups.Corearchitecturestrategyleadership
• Won the Wakefield District Housing engagement at presales, leading demonstration sessions with the practice lead that showed the platform delivered for Savills Europe.Corestrategyleadership
• Delivered the Wakefield District Housing platform by reusing the patterns proven at Savills Europe, extending the reporting pack with a Balance Sheet and remapping the design to all UK legal entities with their own financial dimensions. The General Ledger holds in excess of 25 million transaction records.Corearchitectured365power-bifinance
• Delivered the AX (Accident Exchange) reporting platform solo, end to end, reusing the patterns proven at Savills Europe and extending the scope with a suite of HR reports over the Human Resources module built into D365 Finance and Operations.Corearchitectured365power-bi
• Designed the enterprise dimensional model for A2Dominion's D365 migration, covering Procurement, Fixed Assets and Finance, with an extensive custom area for the group's leases, treasury and lender covenant reporting. Mapped every column of the existing report estate through the model back to the D365 source, producing the specification that enabled the technical build.Corekimballarchitectured365finance
• Recovered stakeholder engagement after a failed previous delivery attempt at A2Dominion, drawing requirements out of a guarded business.Supportingbusiness-analysisleadership
• Migrated the Savills UK and European platforms from Export to Data Lake to Synapse Link. The landing views act as a stable interface between source and platform, leaving everything downstream unchanged.Supportingstable-interface-viewsazured365etlarchitecture
• Migrated the Savills Europe data platform from Synapse to Microsoft Fabric. Designed the architecture around the existing estate rather than an optimal from scratch build, prioritising minimal downstream impact and maximum reuse of existing SQL artefacts. Bronze reads the Synapse Link data in place through OneLake shortcuts, Silver recreates the original Synapse layers as SQL endpoint views, and the Gold Warehouse is the materialised dimensional model, with semantic layer views keeping everything downstream unchanged.Coremedallionfabricarchitectured365power-bi
• Promoted the Fabric platform through Dev, UAT, Support and Production with native Fabric deployment pipelines and post deployment configuration scripts.Supportingfabricarchitecture
• Led the greenfield build of Turner & Townsend's Fabric platform over D365 Finance and Operations. Bronze, Silver and Gold Lakehouse workspaces with shortcut mart workspaces above Gold, Synapse Link feeding the core data, all transformation in metadata driven Spark notebooks, and Direct Lake semantic models with no refresh.Coremedallionfabricarchitectured365leadership
• Delivered nearly the entire Turner & Townsend build in VS Code with Claude.Coreaifabric
• Architected the Gamma Communications billing data solution, working mainly solo. Millions of billing lines a month aggregate into balanced two sided journals on the D365 financial dimensions for the ledger, while a dimensional warehouse keeps every line. Posted journals return through Synapse Link with the integration journals excluded, giving a fully balancing Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss at billing line granularity.Corearchitectured365azurefinance
• Built the Savills master data platform on Fabric, working mainly alone during the BAU period. The integration layer supplies every system's key for each entity instance, mastering rules decide which system masters it, and the platform outputs one conformed table per entity with its keys in every system and its mastered attributes.Corefabricmdmarchitectured365
• Delivered the A2Dominion platform over Synapse Link with a medallion architecture on the data lake and Spark notebooks, migrating the existing report estate to D365.Coremedallionazureetld365architecture

D365 Finance and Operations, Microsoft Fabric (Lakehouses, Warehouse, Pipelines, OneLake shortcuts, Direct Lake, variable libraries, deployment pipelines), Synapse Link, Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Synapse Analytics (Serverless and Dedicated), Spark notebooks, Azure SQL Database, Power BI (models, TMDL, reports, paginated reports), DAX calculation groups, Tabular Editor, Azure DevOps (source control and CI/CD), Claude and Claude Code, Tagetik and IBM Planning Analytics (sources).

For interview walkthroughs only. Not for the rendered CV or public distribution.

• EUR Reporting Workshop Playback v0.2 (PowerPoint) — the February 2022 Savills Europe playback deck. Requirements, data models for Profit and Loss, Receivables and Payables (titled Debt and Settlement in the deck), report wireframes and the Azure solution blueprint.
• Savills UK D365 ERP Reporting Solution Architecture v1.0 (Word) — the migration solution architecture. Consumer data requirements, the Power BI Paginated versus SSRS appraisal with recommendation, TM1, Hyperion and consolidated reporting layer designs, and the Data Lake Export configuration.
• Savills UK D365 ERP Reporting Technical Architectures v1.0 (PowerPoint) — logical architectures per consumer and technical architectures per environment (DEV, QA, UAT, production).
• A2Dominion design workbooks (Excel, four files) — the dimensional model and report designs for Finance (fixed assets), Procurement, Treasury (lender covenants) and Rent Increase.

Matthew's walkthrough (6 October 2026), the LinkedIn experience capture of 5 October 2026, the contracts register (renewal chain DIS-WO-002 to DIS-WO-006, then MD001 to MD003), and the Savills and Turner & Townsend project documentation in Claude Compass.