From SaaS licence to an AI-powered BI platform
Replacing traditional BI software with a reporting platform built around the business
Rather than investing in another generation of BI licences, De Mandemakers Groep partnered with Crystalloids to build its own reporting application using AI-assisted development. The result is a reporting platform that removes licence constraints, gives the organisation full ownership, and can continue evolving alongside the business.
The Goal
The goal was not simply to migrate reports, but to rethink how reporting was delivered.
DMG wanted to:
- Replace recurring SaaS licence costs with a custom solution
- Give more people access to reporting without escalating licence costs
- Maintain full ownership of the application
- Validate and improve existing reports during migration
- Create a platform that could continue evolving with new reporting and AI capabilities
- Enable internal teams to build reports through a co-development approach
The Challenge
DMG relied on a traditional Business Intelligence environment, built on Looker, to support reporting across the organisation. While the platform delivered the required reports, licensing costs continued to grow and user restrictions limited broader adoption. At the same time, the business wanted greater flexibility to adapt reporting as requirements evolved.
As the project progressed, both teams recognised that AI-assisted software development had changed what was possible. Instead of continuing with another licence-based BI solution, they began exploring whether a custom application could better support the organisation's needs.
About our customer
De Mandemakers Groep (DMG) is one of the Netherlands' largest home retail companies, with more than 250 stores and over 20 well-known brands, including Mandemakers Keukens, Keuken Kampioen, Brugman Keukens & Badkamers, Piet Klerkx, Woonexpress, Saniweb.nl, and Montèl. As a family-owned business with more than 6,000 employees, DMG helps customers create kitchens, bathrooms, furniture, and complete home interiors through an extensive nationwide retail network.
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The Solution
Crystalloids developed a custom reporting application on top of the new Enterprise Data Platform.
Using AI-assisted development, the team migrated existing reports within approximately one month. During the migration, every report was validated against the original datasets, allowing legacy inconsistencies to be identified and corrected before going live.
The platform is now being developed together with DMG through a co-development approach, enabling internal teams to build and extend reports themselves while Crystalloids supports more complex functionality.
The Result
The new reporting platform demonstrates how organisations can increasingly replace generic software with solutions built around their own business.
Key outcomes include:
Custom reporting platform developed with AI-assisted engineering
Migration completed in approximately one month
SaaS licence costs eliminated
No user restrictions for reporting
Improved report quality through validation during migration
Greater flexibility to develop new reporting capabilities
Internal teams enabled through co-development
Using Google Cloud Platform products like Google BigQuery for data management
By moving away from traditional BI licenses to a custom platform built with AI, we eliminated recurring SaaS costs and removed user restrictions completely. We now have full ownership of a platform that scales seamlessly with DMG's business, without being tied to vendor limitations.