A Return from RITUALS: New Hire has Corporate Skills Up His Sleeve

With Google Cloud’s continuous  pursuit of innovations into their product offerings and development of automation tools using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), our staff must always stay one step ahead. By constantly growing our areas of knowledge we remain the experts our clients trust us to be.  

As a premier Google Cloud Partner, we are actively building an internal learning culture so staff can pursue further education, Google certifications, and training. This has allowed us to attract talent with intellectual curiosity, which is critical when you are trusted to provide cutting-edge digital data solutions. 

It’s this culture, along with the opportunity to help brands become data-driven, that convinced José Javier Felipe to return to Crystalloids. After five years with RITUALS Cosmetics, working as a Developer and Cloud Solutions Architect, José is excited to leverage this experience with his client work here at Crystalloids as a Senior Developer. 

“At RITUALS, I really developed soft skills and that was crucial because a lot of client conversations are not technical…you aren’t talking about the how but about the why…RITUALS allowed me to move from a technical mindset and approach to learn how to think more strategically, like a business” shares José. 

José joined RITUALS after working for them via Crystalloids. During our partnership, RITUALS realized they needed someone internally to oversee the frameworks that were being built with Crystalloids. 

“I was always deeply involved when we were working with RITUALS so when they needed an in-house person to continue with the production and maintenance of the work Crystalloids implemented - the team suggested me,” explained José. 

Crystalloids (and José) first worked with RITUALS to centralize their data so that the brand had a complete consumer profile before moving on to launching a loyalty program. “Back then RITUALS did not have a complete customer profile. Their data points were not connected. First we had to create the “truth” of the customer first (getting all customer information - repeat ones or one-off customers, etc)...and then centralize it to create full profiles.”  

This began with the development of a fully-integrated CRM that would house the 360 consumer view and journey. Once this was developed, work on their loyalty program began.

“First there was CRM development and implementation before we could even begin thinking about the loyalty program…once we had the framework for the loyalty program we started a segmented release. We started in Belgium…now we have 10 countries that have loyalty programs and with Crystalloids we are releasing an updated version of our loyalty program with even more tiers and reward incentives.”  

Under RITUALS, José not only ensured the work developed with Crystalloids continued to be properly maintained but also built out his own skills to continue growing internally. 

“I transferred to RITUALS as a Senior Developer and ended as a Cloud Solutions Architect in their new Data Systems team where I supported the business side…and oversaw the development of new projects and in technical analysis and choosing technology.” 

Now, with his corporate experience in business IT alignment and data engineering,  José is confident  that he’ll be able to better engage and connect with Crystalloids’ clients - especially those that are vendor retailers.   

“You go from working with only code to discussing perspectives - you get a reality check in a corporate environment - you start to think about the why and move away from the how.”  

Having developed this new perspective, José believes it’ll only strengthen his ability in consulting. Now he rejoins Crystalloids with a deeper understanding of the information critical to stakeholders– what they care about.

“You know to move away from talking technicalities…when you deal with stakeholders you learn they don’t need to know everything. You have to modulate your recommendations  so everyone can understand each other and move forward on assignments.” 

Additionally, “you need to have good communication skills to elaborate and understand the business needs and cases that clients come to us with but on our end we need to communicate properly so they understand our proposals and the solutions we are recommending,” he adds.  

Currently, José is finishing a Google certification as he onboards with the team and gets up-to-speed on the client projects he will be working on. “Being back in a team at Crystalloids is exciting - even when I was technically a RITUALS employee I never felt separated from the team here,”notes  José. 

Happy to be back at a time where our team is working with retailers, José looks forward to sharing his knowledge and skills with businesses that need it, but more importantly, that want it. 

“Right now I am joining the Body&Fit team in revamping their data layer…They are having issues with how data analysts are working because they don’t have…the full picture. Data points are not integrated so they can’t trust their reports,” explains José who’s final goal is to get the Body&Fit team to trust their data and become a data-driven business. 

Once settled in, José also plans to develop his expertise in machine learning. “We know so much about connecting data but I believe the next step (at least for me) is to expand what you do with the data itself - how you extract the information and use machine learning and AI to resolve issues.”  

ABOUT CRYSTALLOIDS

Crystalloids helps companies improve their customer experiences and build marketing technology. Founded in 2006 in the Netherlands, Crystalloids builds crystal-clear solutions that turn customer data into information and knowledge into wisdom. As a leading Google Cloud Partner, Crystalloids combines experience in software development, data science, and marketing, making them one of a kind IT company. Using the Agile approach, Crystalloids ensures that use cases show immediate value to their clients and make their job focus more on decision making and less on programming.