Manager Paul on his project at a manufacturing company
Ready to work on projects where data, integration, and trust come together? At Eraneos, you work for clients who truly want to change something, and you build relationships that reach beyond a single engagement. Paul Schoondermark, Manager in our Data & AI team, talks about a project that started with an integration architecture and grew into a strategic partnership: “The client now calls us whenever a question comes up about IT or data strategy. I didn’t expect that at the start.”
From inspiration to engagement
Eraneos had already worked for this manufacturer. “Together with our Sourcing & IT Advisory colleagues, we helped set up an application strategy,” Paul says. Our Data & AI colleagues then ran a series of inspiration sessions on data centricity. That led to the question of whether we could help the organization manage its own software integrations. “Working data-centrically on integrations means something very specific: you think about your data definitions first, instead of immediately looking at which systems to connect.”
“After those sessions, the client asked us to come back with a concrete project. Two components were central: setting up the Azure integration architecture and training their own development team, so they could build cloud-based integrations themselves. Our long-term goal was clear: we wanted to become the data partner for this organization.”
Trust as the biggest challenge
The client’s maturity in data and software development was still low. There was also considerable skepticism about “consultants who come in, cost a lot of money, and then leave.” “During the hands-on trainings, the questions kept coming: Is this good enough? Is this really best practice? My personal favorite was: ‘Why do you use Google if you’re an expert?’” Paul laughs.
Show it, do it together, let them do it
The team stuck to a proven rule: first show it, then do it together, and finally let the team do it themselves. “Everything we built was based on solid enterprise architecture principles,” Paul explains. “That way, we didn’t just deliver an integration platform. We delivered, above all, a way of working for the future.”
The manufacturer now has a proven methodology for a data-centric integration strategy, and it is live. The organization also has a complete set of data, integration, and enterprise architecture principles.
Making real impact
The organization has always been proud of its “act first, think later” mentality. With data-centric integrations, that order has flipped. “Today, they first define their data object definitions and sources of truth, and only then do they develop an integration.”
There is a great follow-up for Eraneos as well. “In the Data Competence Center, several colleagues from our Data & AI team work to get value from well-managed data. The context we added to the data becomes even more valuable once the client starts with AI-powered conversational analytics.”