Eurowag built a data lake in the cloud in under a year

source systems  

1000+

tables 

12+

databases incorporated into a single data lakehouse

Sales, customers and the financial statements for completed acquisitions are immediately integrated into reports to the stock exchange.
As soon as a new client service is launched, the key indicators can be analyzed right away.
Product and service offers for partners are optimized according to current truck movements and traffic on the major European routes.
Personalized analytics shift focus from the general customer to the needs of a specific role (Dispatcher, Driver, Accountant) or even to the level of individual trucks.

All this is now possible at Eurowag thanks to a new data platform and solution in the cloud.

No more compromising and waiting for reports

Eurowag Group is a holding company that is continuously growing, innovating and progressing to boost its strong position as a leader on the European market. Eurowag seeks to do this in a number of ways:

Acquiring new companies into the Group,
Digitalizing processes for partners and customers,
Streamlining internal and external processes,
Introducing modern technologies,
Regularly launching new products and services.

The on-prem solution that Eurowag had been operating was now longer able to handle any one of these activities effectively. The result was business’ frustration with:

The inability to combine data sources at the Eurowag Group level,
The unanswered need for personalized analytics reflecting the corporate strategy,
Long delivery times for reports,
Problems with accelerating financial closes,
Forced compromises in data analysis,
The expanding number of reports and the lack of transparency among individual metrics,
The growing costs of connecting additional data sources, etc.

A cloud solution combining a data lake and data warehouse based on Microsoft technologies

And as technology alone isn’t everything, Adastra’s mission was simultaneously to migrate the data and all reporting from the on-prem platform. The solution included:

Rapidly migrating the previous solution to maintain continuity,
Completely revising and reimplementing the data models,
Simplifying and streamlining corporate reporting to support data democratization,
Analyzing data quality issues and implementing a data governance program:
- Analysis and suggestions for optimizing data lineage and the overall data architecture,
- Design adjustments to corporate processes,
Implementing Enterprise Level KPIs

“All the data models that we used to have in the on-prem are now in the cloud, so we can scale and do everything precisely onclick. And because we have the single source of truth data lake, we’re now able to take a step towards data democratization and say to people: you can find all the data here and you don’t need anybody’s help to click on what you need.”

Václav Dorazil, Head of Data, Eurowag

Data Platform won Microsoft Awards 2022

The Adastra project for Eurowag started with a data strategy, followed by migration to the cloud, the basics of data analytics for vehicles and the fundamentals of corporate reporting, and finally, the data lake.

For a large-scale project that is bearing fruit and will reach many more fruits to come, Adastra received a Microsoft Award in 2022.

A new data platform in the cloud launched within a year

The project’s initiation took about a year. In that time, Eurowag and Adastra together were able to:

Design, approve and implement a company-wide data architecture,
Build a data platform in the cloud,
Migrate the original on-prem solution to the new environment,
Launch personalized analytics,
Begin implementing new Enterprise-Level KPI reporting, and
Begin optimizing data management processes.

Gradually, various technical and business challenges were overcome – from scaling the environment’s performance correctly, to convincing key business users to let go of some deep-rooted ideas about reporting in order to open the door to much more modern data analytics. The demands on the knowledge and experience of internal and external data teams have changed.

A company-wide data science discipline has been established at Eurowag, aimed at democratizing data across the company.

Adastra is our data-savvy partner

According to Václav Dorazil from Eurowag, teamwork is crucial for completing the project. However, internal IT is strong enough to keep communication transparent so everyone knows what is happening and the next steps.

As an implementation partner, Adastra helped Eurowag through the challenging changes throughout the project.

Eurowag has a production version of the platform available

...and can immediately utilize the first results

It is possible to interpret the results of the first analyses from the new KPI reporting.

Many of the shortcomings of the original on-prem platform have been removed, especially those related to administration and performance.

The existing reporting remains in place for now, but already uses a modern, elastic solution that will be able to grow with the entire holding in the future.

Company processes are gradually being smoothed out with regard to data quality.

The cloud and the data lake will allow us to create data models quickly and easily

Initially, there was a data strategy, followed by migration to the cloud, the basics of data analytics for vectors, and the basics of corporate reporting. Before completion, there is a data lake, and everything is moving toward data democratization.

How to define a proper data strategy?
How to successfully migrate from on-premise to the cloud?
How do the cloud and data lake help companies?
What are the benefits of data democratization?

Listen to the podcast (in Czech) with Václav Dorazil, Head of Data at Eurowag, or read it as an interview (in English).

Read the interview

Eurowag on the way to data democratisation

Still to come on Eurowag and Adastra’s common journey:

Revise, redesign and implement data models to simplify and streamline the original corporate reporting, focused primarily on the financial/accounting view.
Connect a plethora of new data sources, bringing disparate data to the people who need them for their daily work. There is already a huge appetite for high-volume data from GPS sensors on individual clients’ trucks, tachograph data, etc.
Implement a new BI (reporting) tool that will support the company’s vision of data democratization, allowing everyone to use guaranteed data sources and create their own reports in just a few clicks.
Complete company-wide reporting whose goal is not only to measure key KPIs but also to give all departments and teams the ability to track and analyze their progress against those KPIs.

64+

internal systems must be migrated

4+

PMI and Eurowag Group acquisitions still await migration

Gradually roll out Data Governance:
- Steadily building and defining a data catalog,
- Defining and measuring data quality,
- Proposing changes to the overall technology architecture to improve data quality,
- Defining individuals’ and teams’ rights, responsibility and ownership for the data entity lifecycle,
- Analyzing and adapting business processes.

“Data democratization is a brilliant concept – we’re moving towards that too. But we need to work hard on it first, sit down with everyone, clarify what a customer means, what an active customer means, what customer churn is.”

Václav Dorazil, Head of Data, Eurowag

“It’s always important to maintain some continuity. We’re basically going to copy the solution that we have now into the cloud, because no one can afford to suddenly come in and say: this and this is going to stop working.”

Václav Dorazil, Head of Data, Eurowag

“I’m a big proponent of data modeling: data modeling, data models, and a Single Source of Truth as the one play where everyone who needs the data can find them.”

Václav Dorazil, Head of Data, Eurowag

Six months would take us the truck analysis on-premise

We evaluate cloud costs in terms of long-term benefits and lost profits.

What motivated Eurowag to the cloud migration?
Why was a quick migration preferable to a gradual transition?
How was the cloud solution implemented within the company?
What was the cost of this strategy?
What was the key to a successful migration to the cloud?
What data models they can create now?
Single point of truth – is this an overrated concept?
What are the pros/cons of data democratization?
How is data quality being maintained?
What are the next steps for Eurowag?

Five steps to a successful data strategy according to Václav Dorazil

Have a long-term vision and architecture. Don’t do things randomly.
Create data models and have a single point of truth.
Invest in data quality.
Work as a team. Data is not just about technology.
Have fun with it, it’s not all work!

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