Business intelligence that starts where the data actually lives.
Most BI work begins at the warehouse and assumes someone else got the data there. We cover the whole lifecycle — pulling it out of mainframe and legacy systems, landing it in modern databases, then building the dashboards, applications, and analytical tools your teams work in every day.
The lifecycle
Five stages, one practice.
Most organizations hire separately for each of these, then spend the project managing the seams between vendors. We carry the data the whole way.
01
Extract
Get the data out of the system of record — mainframe datasets, COBOL and report-writer logic, legacy databases whose rules exist only in code. This is the stage most BI firms quietly skip.
z/OS · COBOL · JCL · Datacom/IDMS · EZTrieve02
Land
Move it into modern databases with structure, history, and integrity you can rely on — reconciled against the source so the numbers match line for line, not approximately.
SQL Server · PostgreSQL · Python · Scheduled loads03
Model
Define each metric once. Business rules, semantic models, and tested logic, so two departments asking the same question get the same answer.
Dimensional models · Metric definitions · Data quality tests04
Build
Dashboards for the people who read numbers, applications for the people who enter and act on them, and analytical tools for the people who need to ask something nobody anticipated.
Power BI · Excel models · Internal applications · Ad-hoc analysis05
Enable
Documentation, runbooks, and training — including AI-assisted documentation of legacy code, so the knowledge outlives both the contract and the people who remember how it works.
Runbooks · Knowledge transfer · Automated COBOL documentationSelected work
What this looks like in production.
Four engagements, each tagged with the lifecycle stages it covers. Full write-ups — challenge, approach, and outcome — are on the portfolio.
Extract · Enable
Extract · Enable
Extract · Land · Model · Build
Enable
Client names and agency identities are withheld under contract. Engagements are described at the level our agreements permit. Read the full write-ups →
The Lab · two projects
Don't take our word for any of it.
The BI Lifecycle Lab runs a mainframe payroll extract through four stages in your browser — decoded from its copybook, reconciled, modelled, and built into reports. Synthetic data, nothing uploaded, no sign-up.
transactions analysed
excluded from the voucher
broken join found
contribution errors found
These are the findings the Lab reports when you run it — a build check keeps them in step with the dataset, so this strip cannot drift from what the Lab actually shows. A second project runs the same four stages on real public data — 4,858,943 City of Chicago payroll records, where every figure can be checked against the City's own API rather than taken on trust. A third reconciles that payroll against the City's enacted budget, two datasets that share no usable key until one is made.
Focus
Where we tend to be useful.
Narrow in what we do, not in who we do it for. Take one stage or the whole lifecycle — these are the situations where carrying the data the whole way is worth more than hiring a specialist for each stage.
The practice
About Canyonland
Canyonland Technologies Inc. is an independent business-intelligence practice. We work across the entire lifecycle — from systems of record that have been in production for decades, through modern databases, to the dashboards and applications people use to make decisions.
The distinctive part is where we can start. Plenty of firms will build you a dashboard once the data is clean and waiting in a warehouse. Far fewer can go into a mainframe, read the COBOL that defines what a number actually means, and bring it out intact. Most engagements come through prime contractors serving public-sector clients.
Rehan Ali — Principal Consultant
Rehan runs production payroll on z/OS for a statewide public-sector workforce: cycle execution across regular, overtime, and grant-funded payrolls, fiscal-year transitions, abend recovery, and the reporting programs behind them. He converts legacy report-writer logic to SQL, builds the analysis layer on top, leads knowledge transfer to client staff, and was selected for a cloud provider's innovation program to build AI-assisted documentation tooling for COBOL estates.
- Address205 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 810, Chicago, IL 60601
- Phone+1 (708) 765-6254
- Emailinfo@canyonlandtech.com
Get in touch
Tell us what's stuck.
Whether it's a mainframe nobody wants to open or a dashboard nobody trusts, describe it and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right people. The first consultation is free, and we usually reply within one business day.
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Prefer email? info@canyonlandtech.com · Enquiries are treated as confidential.