(US & Canada) | Our Data Dictionary Is the Source of Truth We Align On as a Business — Burn Boot Camp VP of Technology

Ashwin Ratan, VP of Technology at Burn Boot Camp, speaks with Geoffrey Speare, Director of Data Architecture and Engineering Practice at Ironside, in a video interview about preparing business stakeholders for the mobile app project, the biggest challenges, scalability, cost-effectiveness of the solutions, integrating on-demand video, and bringing in data from different SaaS systems.

Burn Boot Camp is a global fitness community that offers challenging 45-minute workouts and nutritional support.

In the beginning, Ratan discusses preparing business stakeholders for the project and the journey of building a consumer-facing mobile app. He opines that the project was multi-faceted, and business played a massive role in the stakeholder buy-in aspect.

Therefore, it became critical to bring them into the journey, ensuring that they understood what was being delivered and that it was not a pure IT project, says Ratan. From an organizational profit standpoint, this project would serve the customers, the community, and the business.

Secondly, the project involved building a team that could meet two parallel tracks – the BI and the app – while meeting the timeline within a confined budget, says Ratan. Thus, the Burn Boot Camp contracted a versatile group of skill sets in the journey to get positive outcomes.

When asked about the biggest challenges of the project, Ratan especially mentions the educational aspect associated with bringing multiple parties together. While some asked questions, others learned along the journey, and it was a task to keep up with the expectations from a behavioral standpoint, he adds.

The dynamic between tech-savvy and business-savvy franchise partners fascinated Ratan, as this, in his opinion, added value to the product to be delivered. He notes that there were multiple franchise partner meeting sessions wherein the partners gave opinions on the deliverable, which brought in critical feedback.

Sharing his experience with how the solution performed, Ratan bases the performance on different factors. He appreciates Ironside, from a support standpoint, for agreeing on the estimates, for reporting from an audit angle, and for bringing in expertise from an architecture perspective.

Regarding scalability, Ratan maintains that the app had made 1.7 million bookings in the last 90 days, and there have been a few thousand tickets that have now been reduced to a couple hundred. This gives an overview from the booking perspective and the customer delight ratio.

When it comes to cost-effectiveness with the cloud solution, Ratan states that so far, everything has been within the scale. He mentions that while defining the project with Ironside, Burn projected it out to a maximum capacity from the growth and velocity aspects, and it is expected to scale with the company. Ratan appreciates Ironside for being supportive with the AWS partners and keeping that in check for Burn Boot Camp.

Describing the mobile app’s benefits to members, he mentions that reviews reflect its positive aspects, saying it is easy to use and very intuitive.

Moving forward, Ratan discusses integrating on-demand video into the mobile app from a business and technology standpoint. While there were initial challenges, everything was taken care of before the launch.

Ratan mentions another company came through to help integrate the video-on-demand feature from the technology side, and the business side is still working through the adoption cycle. Looking at the numbers of people signing in, he expects them to grow through 2024 and 2025.

Stressing the initial challenges, Ratan points out that, technologically, it was about ensuring that the integration worked with the one on demand. Further, the business side has the educational cycle, configuration, ownership, and accountability of the videos that members see today.

In terms of relying on automation, Ratan states that there have been no complaints since the launch. He shares that the data gets refreshed every day at 6 am and he gets all the reports with no raised tickets.

Commenting on bringing data from different SaaS systems, Ratan believes that it is critical from a business or technical perspective. He adds that it is a one-box stop that has all the data. Now, the main conversation is around assessing which system to bring in, what data to bring in, and what the rules are. This is an easier conversation to have than building one.

Speaking of experience with feedback, Ratan affirms being ready for feedback after going live, and with support, the small issues were fixed to support customers and franchise partners at Burn. He applauds Ironside for being responsive and supporting the customers with their questions.

Concluding, Ratan mentions building a data dictionary in collaboration with Ironside. That became the source of truth to comprehend the factual information of each variable in the report. In case one does not understand the data dictionary, Ironside extends support by educating more about the information source, he says.

CDO Magazine appreciates Ashwin Ratan for sharing his insights with our global data community.