AMBOSS - 173tech

Data Strategy

Cutting $175k in engineering costs through smarter data infrastructure

Objective

Review AMBOSS’s data tools, analytics processes and team structure to find clear efficiency gains.

Obstacle

Fragmented infrastructure and inconsistent processes were draining engineering time and blocking strategic work.

Outcome

Full migration to Google BigQuery, new governance in place, $175k savings in six months.

Background

AMBOSS is a leading medical eLearning platform used by over one million healthcare professionals across more than 180 countries. The company had a highly capable internal data team, but infrastructure had grown increasingly difficult to maintain. Engineering time was being consumed by upkeep, leaving little capacity for higher-value work.

AMBOSS brought in 173tech for an independent review of their data operations, covering tools, processes and governance. The aim: streamline systems, cut inefficiencies and free the team to focus on strategic work.

Strategy Review

Light Touch: Within weeks, our team completed a thorough review of AMBOSS’s processes, dashboards and tool usage. Where other agencies often take months to assess and recommend, we delivered a focused, effective review with minimal disruption to internal operations.

Actionable Recommendations: We identified key inefficiencies quickly and provided actionable guidance from day one. The focus was on changes AMBOSS could act on immediately, not blue-sky thinking.

Solution

New Processes: Hundreds of dashboards and thousands of tables had been created without clear governance, burdening engineering as the customer base scaled. We introduced structured processes for data modelling and dashboard creation and deprecation, giving the team clear rules on what to build, what to retire and how to maintain what remained.

Training: We ran internal training sessions to help AMBOSS’s teams understand the true cost of their analytics setup. The goal was to make stakeholders aware of the downstream impact of maintaining hundreds of dashboards and data models.

Implementation

Migration:Following our strategy review, we recommended migrating AMBOSS’s entire data infrastructure to Google BigQuery. Rather than simply transferring existing problems to a new platform, we used the migration as an opportunity to rebuild properly. That meant refactoring data models, reconciling key metrics to a single source of truth, and unifying AMBOSS’s multiple payment platforms, which previously reported inconsistent numbers.

A New Start: The result was a clean, efficient infrastructure that significantly reduced the maintenance burden on AMBOSS’s internal team. Engineers shifted from constant firefighting to strategic, value-driven work. The governance structures we put in place ensured AMBOSS could continue scaling without repeating past mistakes. In the first six months alone, the changes saved $175k in engineering costs.