Wouter Trappers is the founder of Xudo and shares his slightly unconventional path from philosopher to data consultant with the Bros in this latest episode of The Data Engineering Show. Wouter’s grounding in philosophy has proved to be a shaping influence on his approach to business intelligence. Much more than just a software solution, for Wouter, BI is all about change management and aligning leadership with data projects.


They discuss:

• 
  From Excel to Expert: From basic Excel tasks to a full mastery of BI tools like QlikView, Wouter has blended his technical and philosophical approaches to data to become a bona fide expert.
• Data Strategy as Transformation: Good change management principles have to be adhered to if a BI project is going to bear fruit. Focus on leadership alignment, KPI clarity, and user empowerment instead of simply implementing software. 
• Challenges of Starting Small: Wouter has some tips to offer smaller companies around bootstrapping their data journey using existing tools, practical education, and even Gen AI.
• Balancing Scales: Smaller startups compared to large enterprises face a very different set of challenges.
  
  

Wouter’s combination of philosophy and pragmatism brings fresh takes to building effective data solutions.



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Previous guests include: Joseph Machado of Linkedin, Metthew Weingarten of Disney, Joe Reis and Matt Housely, authors of The Fundamentals of Data Engineering, Zach Wilson of Eczachly Inc, Megan Lieu of Deepnote, Erik Heintare of Bolt, Lior Solomon of Vimeo, Krishna Naidu of Canva, Mike Cohen of Substack, Jens Larsson of Ark, Gunnar Tangring of Klarna, Yoav Shmaria of Similarweb and Xiaoxu Gao of Adyen.

Check out our three most downloaded episodes:

• Zach Wilson on What Makes a Great Data Engineer
• Joe Reis and Matt Housley on The Fundamentals of Data Engineering
• Bill Inmon, The Godfather of Data Warehousing