sow-data-ellie

Marketing Data Foundations Sprint

Prepared by: Robert Tseng
Date: 11/4/2025
Audience: Allison Cromie

Executive Summary

Brainforge and Ellie Mental Health are evaluating a data strategy sprint to prepare for Q1’26:

1. Migrate Ellie’s data pipelines from GCP to Azure to ensure HIPAA compliance and internal ownership of data assets.
2. Lay out benchmarks and attribution operationalization across franchise locations, creating visibility into regional and partner-level marketing performance.
3. Lay the foundation for CRM and marketing automation readiness, connecting lifecycle, attribution, and engagement data to support retention initiatives in 2026.

Ellie’s 2026 marketing growth hinges on owning its data and reducing compliance risk. Today, marketing and web data still flow through non-HIPAA environments, causing delays and blind spots across 200+ franchise campaigns.

This proposal funds a 2-month sprint to migrate all analytics to Azure, establish baseline franchise benchmarks, and build the foundation for CRM and retention programs. These steps are the precondition for lifecycle automation and measurable marketing ROI next year.

We will operate under these given constraints:

• HIPAA compliance readiness: All data flows must remain within Ellie’s Azure environment. All third-party processing must be brought under BAA compliance.
• Maximize existing tools: Fully leverage Amplitude, Power BI, and Azure data warehouse before introducing any new vendors.
• Operator enablement: Deliverables must empower Allison’s internal team to self-serve insights without worrying about compliance risk and unusable data.

Our deliverables will strengthen Ellie’s analytics foundation, reduce technical debt, and prepare the team for scalable automation in CRM, lifecycle marketing, and franchise benchmarking.

Expected ROI: Compliance and Growth Readiness

The outcome of this sprint is a fully compliant, Azure-based marketing data foundation that consolidates Ellie’s fragmented reporting systems and equips the internal marketing team to scale marketing initiatives in 2026 with clear measurement frameworks.

Workstream 1: Compliance & Risk Mitigation

• Migrating from GCP and third-party tools to Ellie’s own Azure environment eliminates exposure of PHI and marketing data to non-BAA vendors.
• Ensures all analytics, tracking, and automation operate within HIPAA-aligned infrastructure.
• Eliminate long-term marketing data audit risk and legal exposure.

Workstream 2: Vendor Consolidation and Cost Reduction

• Streamlining Power BI, Amplitude, and internal Azure pipelines replaces multiple redundant vendor connections and manual exports.
• Expect +30% tooling cost reduction from retiring eliminating overrun data pipelining.
• Empower internal analysts to build reports and with limited engineering dependencies.

Workstream 3: Franchise Level Growth Measurement Framework

• Build internal network benchmark (lead volume, conversion rate, attendance rate, and cost efficiency) across all franchisees.

• Provide recommendations for outlier treatment: franchisees who outperform on low spend or underperform on heavy spend.

• Define cross-channel measurement logic to build out paid attribution roadmap for next 1-2 quarters.

Guiding KPIs

Metric	Definition	Target Outcome
Data Compliance Completion	% of marketing and analytics data fully migrated from GCP/3rd-party tools into Ellie’s Azure environment	100% migration to Azure
Vendor Footprint	Number of redundant or overlapping data vendors in use across marketing, analytics, and reporting	Reduce vendor spend by ≥30%
Franchise Benchmark Coverage	% of franchise locations included in standardized reporting (lead volume, conversion, attendance, spend efficiency)	>90% network inclusion
Channel Attribution Visibility	% of ad spend accurately tied to downstream appointment and attendance data	+25–30 pp improvement in attribution coverage

Risks & Mitigations

Risks	Mitigations
Azure migration delays due to IT bandwidth (Nick)	Use Brainforge-led migration with internal oversight; pre-stage via manual CSV validation if necessary
Budget constraints before FY rollover	Keep scope fixed at $5K monthly retainer through year-end; convert to 3–6 month roadmap in Q1’26
Ambiguity in deliverables / scope creep	Each sprint month will include a signed deliverable summary agreed upon at kickoff
Change fatigue or adoption risk	Deliver dashboards directly in Slack and Power BI with annotated “how-to” guides for Adam’s team

Team & Pricing

Brainforge typically staffs a 3-role pilot team:

• Strategist: Main client POC responsible for setting and executing against KPIs, aligns output operator objectives, builds roadmap for new impact areas.

• Engineer: Primary technologist to design and consolidate systems

• Technical PM: Drives project timeline, negotiates with vendors, focuses on client adoption and enablement

Fixed Price

Service	Fixed Fee / Monthly
Minimum Retainer	$5k/mo

Billing & Payment Terms

• Minimum Billing Unit: 1 hour, billed in 0.25-hour increments thereafter
• Email/Phone Response (15 mins or less): Not Billed
• Invoicing: Bi-weekly or Monthly (Net 15 or Net 30 terms)
• Retainers: Available for ongoing work, discounted based on volume
• Currency: All rates are in USD

Appendix

The Brainforge Approach

Today’s senior operators and growth leaders at $50M+ ARR companies face relentless pressure to scale faster, optimize resources, and navigate increasingly complex markets. While many organizations invest heavily in data analytics and AI tooling, holistic implementations fall short. Static dashboards remain underutilized, insights stagnate without clear pathways to action, and data-driven decisions continue to lag behind business urgency.

At Brainforge, we recognize that the enterprise analytics approach involving building dynamic dashboards and scheduling automated reports doesn’t mean the needs of how today’s leaders make decisions. Our unique approach bridges the gap between data and decision-making, embedding AI directly into the workflows that drive growth and profitability. Instead of adding another tool to your already complicated tech stack, we transform existing systems into intelligent copilots and decision architects that proactively surface insights and recommendations exactly when and where you need them.

This AI Deployment Framework outlines a clear, structured pathway from basic analytics assistance to sophisticated decision architectures. It emphasizes human-in-the-loop deployment opportunities, ensuring operators retain full control and trust, while leveraging AI to drive faster, smarter, and more profitable decisions. The ultimate goal: Move beyond data visibility towards a embedding data signals and recommendations in the core workflows of senior operators.

Our approach enables leaders across Growth, Marketing, and Operations teams at companies hitting <$50MARRtomakethedecisionsthatwillcatapultteamsto$100M+ revenue without needing to grow headcount. By clearly using AI to level up senior operators through the roles of Analyst, Copilot, and Decision Architect, we empower teams to unlock compounding growth.

Vendor Cost Benchmarks

Category	Example Vendors	Monthly Range	Notes
Business Intelligence / Reporting	Looker, Tableau, Mode, Metabase	$1K–$3K	Pricing depends on seats and hosting.
Attribution / Marketing Mix Modeling	Rockerbox, Measured, Recast	$3K–$5K	Often scales with ad spend.
AI Observability / Anomaly Detection	Metaplane, Montecarlo	$0.5K–$2K	Can start lightweight; alerts via Slack/Teams.
Segmentation / CDP-lite	Segment, RudderStack, Hightouch	$2K–$4K	Based on MTUs/events processed.
Experimentation / Lifecycle Tools	Optimizely, Braze, Iterable	$2K–$5K	Optional; depends on pilot activation scope.

Stack may include

• Data Warehouse (Comparisons)

• Data Modeling, ETL, and Orchestration (Comparisons)

• Business Intelligence (Comparisons)

• Integrations between tools & GTM tools (Comparisons)

• LLM/Chatbot/MCP Server (Comparisons)