The quick answer: Most consulting firms handle this with either an informal template (a shared Excel checklist that lives in one person's head) or, at the other extreme, an enterprise data governance platform built for permanent in-house data teams — not project-based client work. The middle option that actually fits a consulting firm's structure — different consultants rotating through the same account, confidentiality constraints, and a documented bar that has to travel with the engagement, not the person — is a lightweight, shared rule set with an objective score, like Sohovi's Workflows.
Why This Is a Real Problem, Not a Soft One
The pattern is consistent across firms of very different sizes: a partner scopes the engagement and sets the client's expectations. A first-year or second-year associate does the actual data work. If "clean enough" lives only in each individual's judgment, quality visibly drifts between who's assigned to the account — and clients notice, even when they don't say so directly.
It gets worse across a handoff: when one consultant rolls off an account and another rolls on, the incoming person often re-discovers data issues the client already paid to have surfaced once, because the account's quirks lived in one person's inbox rather than anywhere documented.
The Options
1. A Shared Excel/Template Checklist
What it is: A manually maintained checklist — dedupe, check completeness, standardize formats — passed around as a document or a firm wiki page.
Sohovi profiles every column in your dataset for completeness and flags the exact rows where values are missing — free to try.
Where it breaks down: It's only as good as whoever remembers to open it, and it produces no objective, comparable output. Two consultants can both "follow the checklist" and land on visibly different results, because the checklist describes a process, not a measurable bar.
2. Enterprise Data Governance Platforms (Collibra, Informatica)
What they're built for: Permanent, in-house data teams managing a fixed set of internal data assets over years, with dedicated administrators.
Where they break down for a consulting firm: The setup and administration overhead assumes a stable, ongoing data estate — not a rotating set of client engagements that each start and end. Onboarding a new client file into one of these platforms for a six-week engagement is rarely worth the setup cost, and per-seat/per-connector licensing is built for enterprise headcount, not project teams.
Sohovi gives you the data quality picture you need to make the case for fixing it — and to track improvement over time.
3. Sohovi — Reusable Rule Workflows With a Shared, Documented Score
What it does: A rule set built once — the firm's own definition of "clean enough" across the 5 core DQ dimensions — saved as a Workflow (Pro/Business) and reused on every new client file. Anyone on the account, regardless of seniority, runs the same Workflow and lands on the same DQ score and the same list of breaking records, because the standard lives in the Workflow, not in their judgment.
Why it fits a consulting firm specifically:
- Account memory across handoffs: saved Workflows and historical trend charts mean an incoming consultant opens the account's existing standard instead of a blank spreadsheet.
- Confidentiality by construction: because raw files never leave the browser, more than one consultant can independently validate the same client file without ever centralizing a copy on a shared drive — which is exactly the kind of access-limiting language most client NDAs already require.
- A documentable deliverable, not a subjective judgment call: the score-transparency panel and PDF export turn "we checked the data" into an artifact that goes in the deliverable itself.
Dealbreaker: Workflows, PDF export, and the Sandbox needed to test a rule set safely before running it on a live client file are Pro and Business-tier features — not part of the free tier.
Comparison
| | Shared checklist | Enterprise governance platform | Sohovi Workflows | |---|---|---|---| | Produces an objective, comparable score | No | Yes | Yes | | Setup time per new client engagement | None, but inconsistent | Weeks | Minutes | | Built for project-based, rotating teams | Somewhat | No | Yes | | Confidentiality: file stays out of a shared server | Depends | Depends | Yes (browser-only) | | Cost fit for a small-to-mid firm | Free | Enterprise budget | Per-seat, mid-market |
How to Choose
- Do multiple consultants rotate through the same client account over time? If yes, the standard needs to live somewhere outside any one person's head — a saved Workflow, not a personal habit.
- Do your engagements start and end (rather than a permanent internal data estate)? If yes, an enterprise governance platform's setup overhead is very likely not worth it for a project that ends in a few months.
- Does your NDA language restrict who can access a client's raw file? If yes, a tool where the raw file never leaves the browser satisfies that constraint by construction, rather than by policy you have to enforce and audit separately.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can we build a single Workflow and use it across every client, or does each client need its own? Both are common. Some firms build one baseline Workflow (the firm's default 5-dimension bar) and clone it per client, adding a scope condition or extra rule specific to that client's data. The baseline stays the same; the client-specific tweaks are additive.
Q: Does this replace our engagement methodology or SOW language? No — it's the evidence layer underneath it. A SOW that promises "we'll review data quality" is a vague governance promise; a SOW that references hitting a target score, backed by an exported report, is a verifiable one.
Q: What happens when an audit reveals the data is much worse than what was quoted? That's a scoping conversation, not a data quality tooling problem — but running the profiling pass in the first session, before the fixed fee is locked, turns "trust me, it's bad" into a number the client can see for themselves, which makes that scope conversation a lot shorter.
If your firm's data-quality bar currently lives in one senior person's judgment, build it once as a Workflow instead — every consultant after that opens the same standard, not a blank spreadsheet. Try it free at sohovi.com.
Sohovi gives you a full quality report on any spreadsheet in seconds — upload your file and see exactly what needs fixing.