How Leapyear cut report creation time by 87% and increased client insights by 200% with AI-powered visualization.

The analytics bottleneck

Leapyear's challenge was common in the analytics industry but no less painful for being widespread. They had talented analysts who understood data, statistics, and business strategy. But these skilled professionals were spending the majority of their time on tasks that did not leverage their expertise—manually adjusting chart formatting, copying data between tools, and ensuring visual consistency.

The workflow was fragmented across multiple applications. Data lived in their warehouse. Analysis happened in Python and R. Visualization was manual work in Excel and PowerPoint. Each transition between tools introduced delays, errors, and frustration. Analysts joked that they were becoming PowerPoint experts instead of data experts.

Client reports followed a predictable but time-consuming pattern. An analyst would extract the relevant data, spending 30-45 minutes writing queries and exporting CSVs. Then came the analysis phase, which should have been the core work but often felt rushed because of looming deadlines. Next was the visualization phase—the real time sink. Creating 20-30 charts with proper formatting, consistent colors, and clear labels consumed 4-6 hours. Finally came the assembly phase, copying charts into PowerPoint templates and writing commentary.

Discovery and decision

The VP of Client Services first encountered Lumis at an industry conference. What caught her attention was not the marketing pitch—it was watching a live demo where a complex dataset was transformed into a publication-ready dashboard in under three minutes. She immediately thought of her team and their daily struggles.

The evaluation process was thorough but moved quickly. Leapyear set up a trial with five analysts, giving them real client projects to complete using Lumis. The instruction was simple: use it as you normally would work, and track your time. The results were striking. Reports that typically took 8-10 hours were completed in 2-3 hours. More importantly, analysts reported that they were enjoying the work again.

Implementation across teams

Rolling out new tools to a 45-person team requires more than just purchasing licenses. Leapyear took a methodical approach, starting with their most experienced analysts who would become internal champions. These senior team members used Lumis for two weeks, providing feedback and identifying best practices before the broader rollout.

The company created custom templates for each major client, encoding their brand guidelines, preferred chart styles, and reporting requirements directly into the platform. This meant junior analysts could produce client-ready work without needing to memorize dozens of different formatting rules. The templates became a form of institutional knowledge, capturing expertise that had previously lived only in senior analysts heads.

The transformation becomes visible

The change was not just internal—clients noticed immediately. Reports started arriving earlier. The visualizations were more polished and consistent. More importantly, the analysis was deeper. With analysts spending less time on formatting, they had more time to explore the data, test hypotheses, and uncover non-obvious patterns.

One client, a fast-growing SaaS company, received a report that identified a concerning trend in customer behavior that had been invisible in previous months. The Leapyear analyst had time to segment the data in multiple ways, testing different visualization approaches until the pattern emerged clearly. Previously, that level of exploration would have been impossible under deadline pressure.