Felix Hoffacker - Project at a financial services provider
Felix Hoffacker - Senior Consultant
Hello Felix. Please describe yourself briefly and name your projects for in-factory GmbH.
Hi, I'm Felix and I've been working in the DWH environment for half of my life. I am now over 40 years old and can say that with a clear conscience. During my first degree, I supported the development of an international retail DWH and continued to develop and operate this information system in various areas for almost 10 years. I have been employed by in-factory GmbH for more than 10 years and have turned data into facts for various customers in the financial and pharmaceutical sectors. The first year I was involved in an index standard reporting project in Switzerland. After that, I worked for a pharmaceutical company for several years in sales reporting with a planning component. I then worked for a year at a development bank on a system migration to a new platform. I have now been working on various topics at a financial services provider for more than six years.
Felix, please tell us a bit more about the "different topics" in your current project.
We - as in-factory - have been there since the turn of the millennium and started with ETL - i.e. classic Informatica development. This is still the main topic today, because the volume of data processed there is enormous and it is still necessary to react quickly to new circumstances and source system changes. This means there are always new challenges that we solve together with and for the customer. In addition to this main topic, we also work on other tasks relating to smooth system upgrades, smart data modeling, optimal performance, stable process automation, intuitive user interfaces, functioning deployments and meaningful reporting. I think we can now say with a clear conscience that we are also very good at advising on topics related to ETL - I am proof of this.
Proof, Felix, I don't understand, can you please explain that in more detail?
Of course, I completed my first MicroStrategy certification in 2004 and for my current project I work exclusively as a reporting expert. So I don't develop Informatica workflows, but I work very closely with the Informatica developer to ensure that the target tables are managed appropriately so that I can use them in an analytically optimized way for high-performance and accurate reports. The aim is always to ensure that the reporting environment is as easy to use as possible, has fast response times and that the figures are clearly understandable and meaningfully visualized. It is also important to me as a report developer that I only produce additional report modules and that the users can execute the report queries ad hoc and also create them themselves. However, direct SQL queries are sometimes unavoidable due to the criticality of time, which I always carry out immediately. I would like to mention four points. Firstly, in addition to the large volume of data, the breadth of data is truly extraordinary. Almost all areas of the company and many external customers consume the information we create together. Secondly, we also process near-real-time data, which is an additional but solvable challenge, especially with this volume of data. Thirdly, in addition to the technology, we are always interested in understanding our customers' business areas so that we can examine all the options during the conceptualization phase and take the best possible path. Fourthly, we test as early and as much as possible so that potential errors can be identified and resolved at an early stage. Ultimately, however, it only works with targeted communication between all those involved so that a lot of data becomes facts that are relevant to decision-making.
