For BI consultants

Quote on your client's data without receiving it

For consultants and small BI agencies. Written from how we use it at 4optima.

The client wants a fixed price. You want to see the data first, because the price depends on how many sources there are, how they join and how messy they are. Then comes the answer every consultant has heard: legal won't let us send an export to a company we haven't hired yet.

Both sides are being reasonable. The usual result is a quote padded for risk, or a quote that grows halfway through the project. Neither helps you win the next one.

The workflow

1. Send the client the trial link, shiftmask.com/try. Seven days of the full product, no account. The interface is available in English and Polish.
2. The client masks a sample of their Excel or CSV files. Names, customer IDs, emails and tax numbers become stand-ins, and the same value gets the same stand-in in every file. Every date moves by one offset. Amounts are rescaled so proportions and totals still hold. The masking runs on their computer, offline.
3. They send you the masked copy with the brief. The map back to real values stays in an encrypted vault on their machine. You never hold it.
4. You quote on what the data actually looks like: row counts, keys that don't match, gaps, date ranges, how many files have to be joined.

If you win the project, you can keep building on the masked copy until handover. The report runs against the same columns and relationships, so switching its source to the real files is a step the client takes on their own machine.

What a masked sample tells you, and what it doesn't

It tells you about structure: which columns exist, which keys join and where the joins fail, how many blanks and distinct values there are, how far the dates span and how seasonal they are, what shape the amounts have. That is what a quote depends on.

It won't tell you whether a real number is right. Amounts are rescaled, so you can't check a customer's revenue against the finance report. Dates are shifted, so you can't tell which month the data really ends. And ShiftMask masks the columns it recognises: free-text fields such as comments or descriptions, and the names of files and sheets, need a look from the client before sending. Say so in your request, not after the files arrive.

A message you can send

Before I can give you a fixed price I need to see how your data is built, not what's in it. Please download ShiftMask (shiftmask.com/try, free for 7 days), run it on a sample of the files we discussed and send me the masked copy. The masking runs on your computer and the key to reverse it stays with you. Before sending, please check comment or description columns and the file names for anything that identifies a person or a customer.

How we use it at 4optima

ShiftMask is made by 4optima, which also delivers Power BI projects in Poland. We offer prospects exactly this: a paid quote on a masked sample. If they order the project, the quote fee is deducted from the project price and the ShiftMask licence is included. Our offer page is in Polish, but the structure is easy to follow. Copy the idea if it fits your practice.

Who pays for the licence

A Core licence is a one-time purchase per device, $39 at the founding price for the first 150 licences, with a year of updates included. The client can buy it, or you can buy it and fold it into your price: activation only needs the device ID shown on the client's screen, so the token can go to them by email.

FAQ

Does the client need administrator rights to install it?

No. It installs for a single user, with no service and no driver, and there is a portable build that installs nothing at all. If their IT department wants details, this page is written for them.

Do I need ShiftMask myself to open the sample?

No. The masked copy is ordinary Excel or CSV. You need your own licence only when you mask data yourself.

Can the client get real values back into something I built on the copy?

Yes. The vault on their machine puts real names and IDs back into results built on the masked copy. It deliberately does not reverse the date shift or the amount scaling, because in a file that came back from someone else there is no way to tell a scaled amount from one that was calculated.