Scrooge - A modern take of business data

Once upon a time in a capital city not unlike yours, there was a CEO named Ethan Scrooge. Ethan was the head of DataBeGone Plc, a tech company with the ironically profitable motto: "Gut Instinct Over Metrics." Ethan prided himself on running his business "the old-fashioned way" — by making decisions purely based on his intuition, which he boasted was "90% gut and 10% blind luck."

Despite his company's enormous potential, Ethan refused to invest in proper data systems. "Dashboards? Waste of money. Predictive analytics? Hokum!, Data lakes? Just glorified puddles!" he’d scoff at meetings. His employees, while talented, were constantly on edge, cobbling together makeshift Excel sheets to survive his whims.

The Prelude: Ignorance is Bliss

One snowy evening (or rainy if you don't get snow), as the office emptied for Christmas, Ethan sat alone in his corner office, reviewing a memo about declining customer retention rates. "Bah, retention!" he grumbled, crumpling the paper and tossing it into the bin basketball-style. "They'll come back when they miss us. No need to dig into reasons!"

But as the clock struck midnight, something peculiar happened. Ethan’s state-of-the-art office printer — the one neither he nor his team ever used — roared to life, spitting out reams of paper. The lights flickered, and through the haze of toner fumes emerged the ghostly figure of his former CIO, Marley Metric.

The Ghost of Reports Past

“Scrooge!” boomed Marley. “Your data negligence doomed me to an eternity of purgatory, troubleshooting rogue spreadsheets! Tonight, you’ll be visited by three ghosts. Learn from them, or DataBeGone Plc will meet a terrible end!”

Before Ethan could dismiss Marley as an indigestion-fuelled hallucination, the first ghost appeared — a youthful intern in oversized glasses and a hoodie branded “2010 Q4 Analytics Team.”

“I am the Ghost of Data Past,” she said, waving a tablet. “Let’s revisit the glory days when data drove innovation at DataBeGone!” She tapped the screen, and Ethan was swept back to the company's humble beginnings.

There he saw himself eagerly brainstorming with his first data analyst, generating insights that revolutionised the industry. “Look, Scrooge,” the ghost said, pointing to a graph showing explosive growth. “This was your peak! Then you axed the data team, saying ‘All these graphs made your head spin.’”

“Rubbish!” Ethan protested. But as he turned, he saw a mountain of unprocessed customer feedback. It screamed with words like “Frustrating UX!” and “Terrible support!”

“I get it,” Ethan muttered. “Can we move on?”

The Ghost of Dashboards Present

Before he could finish, the second ghost appeared — a harried, overworked employee juggling charts, databases, and a coffee cup labelled “Data Overload.”

“I am the Ghost of Dashboards Present,” he sighed, dropping a stack of malfunctioning PowerPoint slides. “Welcome to your current mess.”

Ethan found himself in his boardroom, observing a quarterly meeting in progress. His managers were awkwardly presenting guesses disguised as insights.

"How's customer engagement?" a director asked.

“Erm… trending upwards?” replied a nervous employee, his voice cracking.

“Trending?” Ethan shouted. “This is nonsense!”

“That’s what happens when you refuse to fund proper analytics tools,” said the ghost. “Your team is flying blind, making decisions on anecdotes and vague vibes. Look at the churn rate!”

The ghost shoved a pie chart at Ethan. “50% of customers are leaving after a month!”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?!”

“We did, boss,” said the ghost, rolling his eyes. “In memos. You called them 'nerd notes' and binned them.”

Ethan gulped.

The Ghost of Predictive Analytics Yet to Come

Finally, the third ghost arrived — a sleek AI robot, glowing ominously. It spoke in a monotone, its voice like a thousand unread SQL scripts.

“I am the Ghost of Predictive Analytics Yet to Come.”

Ethan was whisked into the future, where DataBeGone Plc was in ruins, replaced by a rival called DataKnowsBest. Ethan’s office was now a coffee shop, and he was miserably brewing lattes while his ex-competitors thrived.

“Wait!” Ethan cried. “Surely it can’t end like this!”

“Oh, but it can,” said the ghost, showing him a forecast model. “Had you invested in data strategy, you’d be leading the market. Instead, you’re trending towards irrelevance. Forever.”

The Redemption of Ethan Scrooge

Ethan awoke with a start. It was Christmas morning. His printer sat silently, and the shredded memo had somehow reassembled itself on his desk, now stamped with URGENT.

“Marley was right!” Ethan exclaimed. “I must change my ways!”

He rushed to the office, summoned his staff, and announced, “We’re going all-in on data! Dashboards, AI, predictive analytics — the works!”

From that day on, Ethan became a data evangelist, quoting metrics like gospel and championing the power of insights. DataBeGone rebranded to DataReborn and quickly reclaimed its market position, leaving its competitors in the dust.

The moral? A business without data is like a sleigh without reindeer — you’ll never make it to Christmas morning.

Second moral? Don't drag your team into the office on Christmas morning.