Swiss Sense

The Challenge

"We faced a double challenge," explains Chris van Lierop, Manager of Data & Analytics at Swiss Sense. "First of all, there was simply too much work, which put too much pressure on the team. We had to get our backlog under control as quickly as possible. Second, we had a huge project coming up: a completely new ERP program. That's one of the biggest projects you do as a company, a journey of at least three years, and it's going to revamp a very large part of our IT landscape."

If this workload was not addressed, the consequences were clear: "Then there is a good chance that business reports will fall over. With that, business direction becomes more difficult and people have to fall back on inefficient reports from source systems."

The Solution

"The solution was to augment our team of three data engineers with a fourth, external force: a Data Engineer [from DDBM]. He works directly in our sprints and uses our specific stack: Snowflake, Coalesce as a transformation tool, and Azure Data Factory (Fabric) for ETL. This engineer does not act as an external consultant on the sidelines, but rotates fully operationally into the team to pick up tickets and work."

The Results

"The pressure is off immediately. We measure our output in 'points per sprint,' and where in the beginning we cautiously rated the engineer at 25% of his capacity to boot, that has now built up to 100%. A day of this engineer is worth as much as a day of one of my internal people.

What is really a quality of this engineer is that he picks things up super fast. For example, he didn't have much experience with our transformation tool Coalesce, but he mastered that very quickly. The most important result is the confidence we have in him. It's important to me that I can trust that I can send the engineer to a colleague, without having to be there, and know that a good conversation will be had."

The Consideration

"Why we chose this partnership? That was a combination of factors. We needed someone quickly, and the speed with which you could switch gears was very important in this. We had also looked at other parties, but there the capacity was not always there, or it took longer.

What finally made the difference was the personal fit. We deliberately looked for someone who was on the same level as the team. We didn't want a junior who needed a full training program, but neither did we want an overqualified senior who 'knows it all better'. We were looking for someone who could work together, and we found that in this candidate."

Proven quality through intensive training

At DDBM, our Data Engineers go through an intensive four-month internal training program. This case at Swiss Sense proves the strength of that approach: our consultants are able to master new tooling and complex environments at lightning speed. As a result, they immediately deliver full quality and effectively participate in existing teams from day one.