How DataValue Strategy delivers EPM projects 20% faster with Dust

Industry: Consulting
Company Size: 51-200
Department: Sales

Key Highlights

~70% time saved on meeting notes, delivered to clients the same day instead of 1–2 days later
~50% time saved on training documentation, from 3–4 man-days to ~1.5–2 man-days per guide
~80% time saved on newsletter production, from a week of multi-consultant effort to a one-day draft
100% of the 42-person team adopting Dust as a mandatory tool starting September 2026

This story was written by Idoption, a Dust Platinum Partner with strong expertise in the EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) consulting industry. It shows how DataValue Strategy transformed the productivity of its consultants by deploying Dust across the full project lifecycle. With Idoption's support, DVS went from a structured pilot to a company-wide AI deployment, with 100% of its 42-person team onboarding Dust as a mandatory tool in September 2026.

About Datavalue Strategy

DataValue Strategy (DVS) is a pure-play EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) consulting firm founded in 2019. In seven years, it has grown to 42 consultants, served 30+ active clients, and delivered 300+ projects. Their specialty: helping companies manage financial and operational performance through platforms like Anaplan, Board, and Pigment, covering the full value chain from business scoping to solution integration and long-term maintenance. DVS operates entirely within the Microsoft ecosystem, relying on Teams and SharePoint as its daily backbone.

The firm recently expanded internationally with the opening of a Casablanca office. Two of its associates, Julien Canonge and Nicolas Langlais, took an early lead on its AI transformation. What makes DVS a particularly strong fit for AI is the structural consistency of its work, every EPM engagement follows a repeatable methodology, scoping workshops, design documents, training guides, go-live handovers. That predictability is exactly what makes AI such a natural fit.

Challenge: when client pressure meets consultant bandwidth

EPM consulting is a sector where clients expect more, faster, year after year. For DVS, this wasn't a distant trend. It was shaping every renewal conversation and every new proposal.

The pressure was concrete: clients expect efficiency gains from their consulting partners on an annual basis. Hiring more people wasn't a scalable answer. DVS needed a way to produce more without growing headcount proportionally.

Meeting notes, training guides, and newsletters: the three tasks that drained the most consultant time

The core of the problem was structural. Consultants spent a significant portion of their time producing deliverables that were critical but formulaic, meeting notes after workshops, functional design documents, training guides for go-live handovers. Valuable work, but work that followed a repeatable pattern every single time.

Take meeting notes, after each client workshop, a consultant would spend hours writing up a formal summary, then send it to the client one or two days later. Across multiple weeks of workshops, the time drain added up fast.

Training documentation was another pressure point. At the end of every implementation, DVS delivers user and admin guides. Each guide required 3 to 4 man-days to produce. On multi-module projects, that's a full week of consultant time, just for documentation.

And then there was the newsletter, an external and internal publication that required multiple consultants to coordinate across a full week of production. The output mattered. The process was painful.

Meanwhile, the market was shifting. RFPs were beginning to include explicit questions about how firms use AI in their projects. DVS had a perspective on AI, but not yet a concrete, operational answer they could point to in a proposal..

Solution: eight ambassador consultants, four use cases, and a phased rollout before opening access to the full team

Why Dust won the evaluation: multi-LLM flexibility and native Microsoft integration

DVS discovered Dust at a breakfast event organized by Idoption. What followed wasn't a decision made on a demo alone, it was a peer-validation process. Idoption introduced them to other EPM consulting firms that had already adopted Dust, whose concrete results and workflows were decisive.

Three factors sealed the choice:

"What convinced us was the multi-LLM approach offered by Dust. We didn't find any other solution on the market with an equivalent offer." — Nicolas LANGLAIS, Associate, DataValue Strategy

Beyond multi-LLM flexibility, two other criteria mattered: the ease of building and iterating agents, and native Microsoft integration. DVS's Teams and SharePoint environment was already its operating backbone. Dust connected to it directly, inheriting Microsoft's access governance automatically, with no separate permission layer to manage.

A phased, ambassador-led rollout

DVS didn't open Dust to all 42 consultants on day one. They started with 8 expert ambassadors, hand-selected and trained by Idoption, who tested and validated four high-impact use cases across the project lifecycle. Governance rules were established before broader access was granted.

The four priority use cases:

Meeting notes: from workshop transcript to same-day client delivery
Functional and technical design documents: structured specs generated from workshop transcripts
Training documentation: user and admin guides for go-live handovers
Commercial proposals: first-draft generation from RFP inputs

Today, around 10 consultants are active users — a deliberate phasing decision not a friction problem. The full 42-person team onboards in September 2026, with Dust becoming part of the standard toolkit for every new hire from that point forward.

"The platform is intuitive enough to make you want to explore it, and quickly see results. These are concepts that sound intimidating , LLM, agent,but you take control of them rapidly." — Julien CANONGE, Associate & Director, DataValue Strategy

One “Pod” (a shared conversation in Dust) per project: all transcripts, documents and outputs in one shared place

At the structural level, DVS is formalizing a practice that emerged naturally from the pilot: one Dust Pod per project, mandatory. Every project team centralizes transcripts, documentation, and agent outputs inside a shared Pod. The knowledge lives in one place, accessible to the whole team, regardless of who was in the room at the time.

Results: 70% faster meeting notes, 50% less time on documentation, and a new argument in RFPs

Quantified impact across use cases:

Meeting notes: ~70% time saved on writing, with same-day client delivery (previously 1–2 days)
Training documentation: ~50% time saved, from 3–4 man-days to ~1.5–2 man-days per guide
Functional design documents: gains described as "very significant", full quantification in progress as deployment scales
Newsletter production: ~80% time saved, from a week involving multiple consultants to a ready-to-review draft in one day

"On meeting notes, I'd say we save nearly 70% of writing time using an agent. And there's also a quality dimension: the client doesn't wait one or two days for their meeting notes — they can have them immediately." — Julien CANONGE, Associate, DataValue Strategy

The quality improvements are as tangible as the time savings. Dust produces cleaner first drafts with better grammar, more consistent structure and terminology. Fewer client review rounds means faster project progress overall.

DVS now has a concrete AI answer for clients who ask about it in RFPs

Beyond time savings on individual tasks, something more strategic happened: AI became a topic in client conversations, and DVS now has real answers.

"Today, this is a real differentiator in conversations with our clients. We've moved from theory to practice. When clients ask how we use AI in our projects — we have a concrete answer." — Nicolas LANGLAIS, Associate, DataValue Strategy

Clients are explicitly asking in RFPs how their consulting partners use AI. DVS can now point to specific agents, documented workflows, and measurable time savings. That's a real edge in a market where many competitors are still defining their strategy.

"We have a 15-minute head start. Not everyone has made the Dust choice — some have made more complex choices, and AI isn't fully deployed yet in large enterprises." — Nicolas LANGLAIS, Associate, DataValue Strategy

When a team member changes mid-project, the knowledge stays

One outcome that wasn't anticipated at the outset was the impact on knowledge continuity. EPM consulting, like most technical consulting, deals with consultant turnover and project transitions. When a team member changes mid-project, institutional knowledge can be disrupted.

With one Pod per project, that knowledge stays. A consultant joining mid-engagement can immediately access all relevant documentation, workshop transcripts, and outputs. The learning curve shrinks. Continuity is built into the system by design.

What's next: scaling to 42 consultants and launching three new expert AI agents

The full team onboards in September 2026. Structured training sessions are planned: tool presentations, live agent demos, hands-on practice, governance rules, followed by use-case-specific coaching for different project roles.

Three agents currently in development will go live alongside the broader rollout:

Expert solution agents — one dedicated Dust agent per EPM platform (Anaplan, Board, Pigment), each connected to full product documentation. Consultants will query the agent during development instead of searching through manuals.
TMA maintenance agent — trained on the full history of support tickets for EPM applications inherited from third-party firms, accelerating incident investigation and getting smarter with every new resolution added.
Knowledge continuity system — a structured approach to capturing and preserving senior consultant expertise, ensuring institutional knowledge persists regardless of team changes.

Beyond the pilot: consultants now asking "can Dust help?" before starting any task

"Before starting anything, we ask ourselves: can Dust help us here?" New use cases have emerged organically beyond the initial four — contract analysis, RFP go/no-go support, technology watch on platform updates, scenario studies.

"AI is a real vector of innovation and transformation. To truly benefit, we need to break information silos. And ultimately, we don't do AI for AI's sake — we use it to be better in our projects, deliver faster, at lower cost. It's a vector of efficiency for a consulting firm like ours." — Julien CANONGE, Associate, DataValue Strategy

Key Lessons for EPM consulting firms

DataValue Strategy's rollout offers a replicable playbook for consulting firms facing similar pressures:

Start with quick wins. Meeting notes and training guides have obvious ROI and low implementation complexity. Prove value fast, then move to more sophisticated use cases.
Use the 80/20 rule. Dust handles 80% of the formulaic, time-intensive work — freeing consultants to focus their expertise on the 20% that requires real judgment. That's the point.
Govern before you scale. An ambassador-led pilot with clear governance rules produces better outcomes than open experimentation. Structure first, scale second.
Multi-LLM flexibility removes the "which AI?" anxiety. Not having to commit to a single model eliminates a real adoption barrier. You pick the right model for each task, without betting on one technology.
Don't overthink it. As Julien CANONGE puts it: "Just start. You learn by doing. The intelligence is in the process itself."

"Dust, I think, is the main innovation driver for the firm this year." — Nicolas LANGLAIS, Associate, DataValue Strategy

Interested in learning more about how Dust can help your team? Visit our solutions page or reach out to our sales team.