AMBOSS - 173tech

Data Strategy

Reducing engineering burden through robust modelling

Objective

Conduct a comprehensive review of AMBOSS’s tools, team, and processes.

Obstacle

A complex, fragmented infrastructure and lack of consistent processes.

Outcome

Successful migration to new tools, alongside the implementation of governance and best practices.

Background

AMBOSS is a leading medical eLearning platform supporting more than one million healthcare professionals across 180+ countries. Despite having a highly capable internal team, the company’s data infrastructure had become increasingly difficult to maintain. This not only consumed significant engineering time but also limited the team’s capacity to focus on higher-value initiatives.

To address these challenges, AMBOSS engaged 173tech for an independent review of their data operations, assessing their tools, processes, and governance frameworks. The goal was to streamline systems, eliminate inefficiencies, and empower the team to focus on strategic, value-creating work.

Strategy Review

Light Touch: In just a matter of weeks, our team conducted a thorough investigation of AMBOSS’s existing processes, dashboards, and tool usage. Unlike other agencies that often require several months to assess and recommend improvements, our experienced team was able to perform a light yet effective review with minimal disruption to internal operations.

Actionable Recommendations: With decades of hands-on experience, we quickly identified key inefficiencies and provided immediate, actionable guidance. Our streamlined approach ensured that AMBOSS could start making impactful changes and not get lost in blue sky thinking.

Solution

New Processes: One of the critical issues we uncovered was a lack of clear guidance, which had resulted in the analytics team creating hundreds of different dashboards and tables. While initially well-intended, this proliferation became an increasing burden on the engineering team, especially as AMBOSS’ customer base grew.

Training: To ensure AMBOSS’s teams fully understood the broader implications of their analytics setup, we conducted internal training sessions. These sessions helped stakeholders recognise the downstream impact and hidden costs associated with maintaining too many dashboards and data models.

Implementation

Migration: Following our comprehensive Data Strategy Review, we recommended migrating AMBOSS’s entire data infrastructure to Google BigQuery. Instead of simply transferring existing inefficiencies, we treated this migration as an opportunity to optimise and refine their data architecture. This included refactoring data models, reconciling key metrics to a single source of truth, and streamlining AMBOSS’s multiple payment platforms, which previously had disparate and inconsistent metrics.

A New Start: The final outcome was a clean, efficient infrastructure that significantly reduced the maintenance burden on AMBOSS’s internal team. With this new system in place, the team could shift from constant firefighting to focusing on strategic, value-driven initiatives. Additionally, the governance structures we introduced ensured that AMBOSS could continue scaling without repeating past inefficiencies. Our work saved $175k on engineering resources in just 6 months.