scenario.
Following a strategic growth investment in 2021, School Status embarked on an aggressive acquisition strategy, integrating five newly acquired businesses into its core platform, which was originally built on Ruby, an object-oriented programming language known for its simplicity and flexibility, often used for web development.
To ensure seamless interoperability across solutions, they needed to upgrade their internal data visualization capabilities and standardize reporting processes. A major aspect of this transformation was recreating all dashboards from legacy SSRS templates and transitioning to Looker, a more advanced and flexible analytics tool.
School Status sought to leverage nearshore development teams in Latin America, capitalizing on the benefits of working within the same time zone to enhance collaboration and minimize inefficiencies. However, they faced a key challenge: limited internal expertise with the Looker platform.
Critical needs
- Seamless integration of acquired technologies
- Standardization of data reporting and visualization
- Transition from SSRS dashboards to Looker
- Expertise in Looker technology
- A collaborative, nearshore development team for optimal productivity
solution.
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looker migration and dashboard optimization
The team successfully transitioned two key products from the existing reporting framework to Looker. This included building Looker models, recreating dashboards, and ensuring alignment with best practices. To enhance performance, we optimized queries, created cache tables, improved joins, and refined the overall Looker model.
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staff augmentation to increase integrated speed
Additional back-end Ruby and front-end React developers were provided to support platform enhancements and improve integration efficiency. Leveraging our AI-powered talent platform, Randstad Digital, we were able to scale the team rapidly. Randstad Digital's profile-based system, with built-in skill assessments, ensured we matched high-quality candidates quickly, increasing both productivity and development quality. This solution allowed the client to meet their deadlines while maintaining efficiency and delivering high-quality outcomes.
results.
The migration to Looker, now serving over 90,000 users, ensured accuracy and optimized performance, greatly improving the client’s reporting capabilities. Our team developed SQL and Python scripts to automate discrepancy detection, maintaining data integrity throughout the transition. Over the course of a year, fewer than 10 issues surfaced, each resolved within 24 hours. The team also uncovered and rectified long standing data bugs that had persisted since the system’s inception.
The newly onboarded Ruby and Looker developers integrated seamlessly with the client’s team, hitting the ground running due to their expertise and readiness. Thanks to our pre-vetted talent pool, we significantly accelerated the hiring process, bringing developers on board within just 7 days. Over the past six months, our contributions have been pivotal in migrating to a new user interface, resolving persistent bugs, enhancing code quality, and transforming the client’s product into a more innovative and comprehensive solution for school administration. However, they faced a key challenge: limited internal expertise with the Looker platform.
key outcomes.
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improved user experience- The migration enhanced both their platform and users' experience by providing smoother, more reliable functionality.
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rapid hiring- Our streamlined vetting and onboarding process allowed the team to scale quickly, completing the hiring process in just seven days, which is 2-3 times faster than typical timelines.
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agile team scaling- School Status benefited from the flexibility to expand or reduce the team efficiently based on project demands, optimizing resource allocation and costs.
