This time in ''In the spotlight'' colleague Michael Klaassen. Michael has been part of the Solutions team focusing on Business Intelligence for more than 5 years.
Who are you?
My name is Michael Klaassen. I have been working for Districon as a member of the Business Intelligence team for more than 5 years. As a business intelligence specialist, I have a lot of experience with data and the possibilities for clients. In addition to building dashboards, I enjoy sharing my knowledge with colleagues or clients by providing training.
My experiences
After studying business administration with a specialization in human resource management, I never thought that I would mainly focus on data in my work. During my interview, my colleague Aleks Hoogendoorn showed a dashboard that he had created, and I knew immediately that I wanted to do the same.
The past 2 years I have been involved in the BigMile project. Participants of BigMile gain insight into their CO2 emissions. They are encouraged to reduce this in the coming years through the insights provided by the dashboard. The project started small and participants' data was processed manually in Excel and the results were shared by means of a PowerPoint presentation. Nowadays you no longer need the intervention of a consultant. Participants upload a file themselves, have the option of correcting errors in the data and can control the dashboard themselves in a hosted environment. They also automatically receive a report with the results. I’m proud of the steps that have been taken in this project.
Where BigMile is about providing insight into the data through strong visualizations, the M&G project did not deal with visualizations at all. M&G is the world’s leading manufacturer of flue gas venting and ventilation systems. The aim was to improve the master data. A very complex project because every machine had to be entered in the system in a different way. We tackled the project one machine at a time. Upon the successful completion of a machine, we first entered the production hall to get to know the new machine inside out and to get it successfully into the system with all its raw materials. A visualization tool can also be used for data enrichment.
You can not only gain great experiences in projects with large customers. For a number of years, I have been providing business intelligence training for both starting colleagues and more experienced colleagues. Districon employs experts in many disciplines and it gives me great satisfaction to answer the wide variety of questions during these courses. Everyone enters the course with different experiences and that always leads to great discussions about how they can apply the knowledge they have acquired in their field.
Vision for the future
I expect that data will become increasingly important in the future. Companies are storing more and more data from all their processes and increasingly have the need to gain insight into this. My expectation is that companies will increasingly outsource their business intelligence environment and have data analyzes carried out by specialists so that their own employees can use these insights to concentrate on improving processes in the business.
Which colleague will be in the next in the spotlight?
I would like to nominate Victor Ponsioen for the next spotlight. Victor has been involved in the re-branding of Districon and leads the fast-growing Solutions team. I'm very curious about the challenges that this entails.