Another year has come and gone and we are here once again to recall the main milestones in the development of Archetix. A lot has happened in 2023, and my colleagues and I would like to share with you these insights, news, changes and the evolution of the company in general.
We would like to thank you, our clients, partners, suppliers, associates and also family and friends. Thank you for your energy, time and desire to do this with us. We couldn’t have done it without you!
Our motto for 2023 was “Finding the treasure hidden in data” and we appreciate you being on this journey with us. So let us summarise the year 2023 for each Architect (member of our team) of our company in the following chapters.
I wish you a pleasant reading and if anything doesn’t make sense to you, feel free to contact me.
Marek Čech
Company Director and Head of Advanced Implementation Projects
The year 2023 was the fifth year of the company’s existence, which is usually a very crucial year for young companies. It feels like the third day on a ski course, which we know is critical. Even we were not able to dodge a few punches and the year was very turbulent indeed. At Archetix, everyone felt a little differently. How? You can read that in the medallions from each of my colleagues below.
News in the online world
The biggest change we have addressed has been the gradual and steady tightening of the way we work with consumers’ and customers’ personal data. We have responded to this mainly with our partner – Cookiebot. This tool enables our customers to comply with these regulations. At the same time, every one of our analytics workshops includes a discussion specifically on Data Governance, security and the process of collecting personal data. This is where we try to educate our clients and the community on how it should be done.
There has also been a new push to collect customer data, so-called first party data. That is, through Conversion APIs, enhanced conversions, and similar techniques, ad networks are requesting customer data so they can associate it with their databases and ensure continued user targeting even after third-party cookies are restricted.
Last but not least, I see a situation in the market where large functioning e-shops are undergoing quite complete redesigns. After the boom of e-shops about 5-10 years ago, these e-shops are now beyond their lifespan. Companies are starting to demand new e-shop solutions in a big way, which causes that there is not enough capacity on the market, both developers and analysts. In case you need a redesign, you need to think of allocating a part of your budget into implementing analytics tools, marketing codes, etc. Which many companies unfortunately neglect.
The biggest change in analytics is certainly the evolution of the perception of the server-side GTM (SGTM) tool. Part of the expert community is rather sceptical and recommends waiting to implement it. On the other hand, the other group sees SGTM as an opportunity to address current issues and challenges and prepare them well for the future of the digital marketing ecosystem. Thus, they recommend clients to deploy this service. We routinely implement SGTM with clients, we are also becoming more familiar with the technology and the most important thing for us remains what the client expects from SGTM.
News/changes in web analytics implementations
We will stay on the topic of SGTM for a while, because its implementation is a big trend at the moment. Of course, SGTM is not a panacea and it certainly won’t solve all the problems of the modern digital world. It’s a technology that opens up other ways to be competitive in the digital world, how to easily implement various server-based conversion collection techniques like Facebook Conversion API, TikTok Conversion API and others. It will provide clients with a tool to process the so-called first party data quickly and cheaply and to control it in more detail. So instead of developers constantly integrating new systems into the core of the site, they can simply use the server-side Google Tag Manager. Today, we have implementations where most of the marketing and analytics tools are handled through SGTM and there is no need for developers to develop everything. We are getting more and more into SGTM, learning from real projects, testing, developing templates, components, etc. This allows us to deploy SGTM to clients very efficiently and solve the resulting tasks.
I also keep up to date with analytics news through analytics events and conferences. Last year I traditionally attended Data Restart, which was very successful. There was a lot of talk about data processing, data activation, and it touched on the topic of data processing using artificial intelligence. I also strengthened business relationships with clients at the event.
Thanks to the fact that we have also become members of APEK, I have regularly attended their webinars. I’ve also been to APEK’s event where they discussed the future of ecommerce.
Major company news
I would like to highlight our cooperation with Ochutnejořech.cz, where a complete redesign of the website was carried out. We have been involved in it since the beginning of this project and we are attracted by similar collaborations.
At the same time, we started a strategic cooperation with Shoptet, where we solved how to shift the analytics of Shoptet itself, as well as client e-shops running on Shoptet.
Last year, we opened a new Prague office, where the data team mostly works. This has opened up the opportunity for us to tap more into the data community, as most events are held in Prague (Data Mesh, Data Punkers,…). It also allowed us to be more flexible with clients who like to meet offline.
In terms of company structure, Martin has moved to the position of team leader, coordinating a team of web analysts in Pilsen. You can read about how others perceive this change in the medallions from the individual team members. I consider it a very successful event.
Thanks to my new colleague Pavel, who took over the role of internal developer, we managed to tweak a few internal tools like cafeteria, meeting management tools and others.
Compared to the previous years, we have started to penetrate more into Business Intelligence and data warehousing. This is related to the development and increasing experience of our members and colleagues. At the same time, we feel that there is a great hunger for these areas in the market and not enough capacity. I appreciate that as a team we can offer quality services in this area as well.
During the year we have had new colleagues joining the team and onboardings, but we have also had some colleagues leave.
Fulfilling the vision
The move to Prague was a big step that changed the dynamics of the company to some extent. It was of course a personal and professional challenge on my part, but everything went smoothly, not least because the company has always been built on the ability to work remotely. We found a way to make the most of it and how to operate without the company suffering for it.
The company has been successful in educating junior people into capable analysts, and we definitely want to move towards hiring more senior people in the future to determine the company’s next drive. There has also been a reshuffling of the ownership structure that will allow us to grow faster and more dynamically. We still want to be on the cutting edge technologically, keep up with the market and offer services abroad.
Thanks to our quality work and recommendations from our partners and professionals in the field, such as Lukas Mehnert, Vasek Jelen, Marek Lecián, Roman Appeltauer, we get strategic orders. We also maintain a good reputation in the framework of cooperation on projects with our “competitors”. We pride ourselves on good relations and a pleasant environment.
In the fifth year, we were finishing our first vision that we set when we founded the company. The vision was:
“In 2023, we are the leader in web and customer analytics and its visualisation, we continue to build our international presence and we are already working with foreign entities. We are interested in smart solutions such as smart cities and smart homes. We are gradually transferring our analytical knowledge and practices from marketing to other fields such as transport, logistics and waste processing. We offer an objective view of the data. In the Czech Republic, our implementation of web and customer analytics ranks among the top. Archetix is a knowledgeable and innovative company that is growing its industry and the community in which it operates.”
I know there is still a lot to work on, but I am positive about the company’s vision. We have succeeded in fulfilling our vision, we are one of the leading companies in the Czech Republic that are dedicated to web and data analytics. In the future, our goal is to build additional capacity. Although our team is small, it is capable of taking our clients further.
At the same time, Archetix is a knowledgeable and innovative company that develops its industry and the community in which it operates. We are 100% successful in doing this, with our experts attending conferences, presenting at conferences, engaging in community discussions and sharing their ideas, whether at events like MeasureCamp or Data Date. My former colleague Marie also participated in GTM forward and I did a webinar for Shoptet. At the same time, together with SITPort, we organised the first big Marketing Pilsen, a conference for 150 people in TechTower in Pilsen, which was a success.
In the area of international presence, we are also succeeding in fulfilling our vision. We have orders abroad, mainly within the European Union, which account for about 10% of the company’s turnover. In the future, we want to strengthen our position on foreign markets as well.
The company has grown by 50% year-on-year. Even though the company ended the year in a loss, I consider this a success because we are succeeding in meeting our long-term goals. The loss was mainly due to investment in human resources.The company also maintains long-term partnerships. We are a Google Partner, a Shoptet partner, a Keboola partner and a Cookiebot partner. In the next few years, we want to pass Google Cloud certification and become a full Google Cloud Partner for analytics services.
Mark’s year 2024
My personal challenge for 2024 is to showcase the work of Archetix more on the Czech market. From my perspective, this includes attending conferences, creating case studies and articles for industry media or participating in podcasts. Although it doesn’t seem like a big challenge, I expect more interest in our analytical services.
In 2024, I also want to take it further and create a public version of the company’s analytics maturity model, which I have been working on and using for internal company needs for several years. This is a proprietary maturity model based on our already successful Marketing Meter, which is used by our clients that we work with to develop long-term analytical maturity.
Personally, I’m also increasingly moving into the role of business analyst in data technology, meaning that on projects I often act as the person who forms an important bridge between client requirements and the technical team. I’m limiting my involvement a bit in the technical implementation itself, gradually leaving that to my colleagues.
Among other things, we have set a vision for the next few years that we want to go more into the European market and prepare solutions that we can replicate on clients. This is the dream of every consulting firm, so we will see how successful our efforts will be.
Overall, I’m excited to see what 2024 will bring and I’m happy to be entering it with a strong Archetix team.
Michal Pich
CTO, Data Analytics and Integration
News in the industry and our work
The whole development revolves around artificial intelligence. Interesting technologies are emerging that make our work easier in many ways. Unfortunately, there are also some negatives that I have noticed recently. Not only in data analytics, but in general, it is now difficult to secure work for junior staff. Even simple activities are becoming more complex and often have overlaps that junior staff are simply unable to perceive. “How to educate analysts from scratch” will be a big challenge for the whole market in the future.
For example, there are tools that generate chunks of code. A senior analyst will be happy to use this help and it will save him/her valuable time. However, if the same method is used by someone who is just starting out in analytics, it may do more harm than good. Not only will he or she not learn anything new, but he or she will become dependent on the tool. Then, when more difficult tasks come later, he/she will be at a loss because they will not know what to do and will not be able to approach the problem correctly.
The needs or requirements of clients have also changed slightly. Services such as complex data-technology consultations are becoming more in demand. The client’s brief then looks like this: ‘We have a shop, it works somehow, but we don’t know what to do next’. So we often encounter very vague and non-specific assignments. At that point, clients are not able to define the root of the problem in detail and want to solve it as a whole.
In 2023, we have a new competitor to DBT – Dataform. Dataform was bought by Google a few years ago, which is a major advantage for us because it is directly connected to the tools (Bigquery, Google Analytics, etc.) that we already use to the fullest. But it has its imperfections. Due to the fact that Google spent about 2 years to integrate it into the Google Cloud Platform ecosystem, DBT has come a much bigger way in the meantime and has missed Dataform a bit. Because we’ve been working with DBT for longer we’ve been using it for larger projects, it has a broader community behind it and we have more experience with it in general. On the other hand, we use Dataform for smaller projects. It’s still a very good tool, but the community behind it is weaker and more limited. The fact that Dataform is in Google’s environment makes it so called “free”. In contrast, DBT is a separate company, so it is more expensive for us and creates a burden, but it is worthwhile on large projects. I believe that eventually Dataform will catch up with DBT, if only because Google is a big company. Using Dataform, then, also makes it easier to hand off projects to the client side and other consultants because everything is actually “all in one” (GCP).
For us as Archetix, it is definitely interesting that Keboola released a backend on Google Cloud last period. Previously they were mainly running on Snowflake and now BigQuery will be one of the variants. The whole development will be interesting for us to follow.
In the future, I definitely want to follow the general philosophy of the approach to working with data and the development of data and orchestration software. It’s very interesting mainly because working with data at the cloud level is a young field, but software development has been around for a long time and at the same time is very popular among people. So a lot of the tools for developers that make it easier to develop pipelines don’t exist yet, or are just bending over backwards. I’m curious to see how these fields will evolve in the coming periods.
The Prague community of data analysts is awesome. By making the field relatively broad, it’s important to find the right people for the right topics. Unfortunately, I have not been to many events in the past year. I didn’t miss Data Mesh and Data Date, though. I love all the events that Fenek^^ hosts, and their podcasts, where there are always lots of interesting people and they always cover interesting topics.
What pleasantly surprised me was the Czech MeasureCamp. It was always a great event that kicked off with a lot of interesting ideas, but this time I was especially interested in the fact that a large number of foreign analysts attended the event.
I would also like to attend the Snowflake meetups. I’m looking forward to seeing a new community form around this tool, and I’m interested to see how it all evolves and grows.
Main news from the company in 2023
We have had the privilege of working on many great clients in 2023. The most interesting for me was the whole project on OchutnejOřech.cz. In general, I especially enjoy the beginnings and initiation of projects, when all the collaborators are very proactive, asking for information and everything moves very quickly. Thanks to the fact that we built OchutnejOřech.cz from scratch, I enjoyed watching and building this project together with others. At this stage, the main priority for the client is kicking off the whole project, designing the new website and getting people working together on all levels. I also took great care in designing the architecture of the entire system taking into account working with both production and test environments.
At the same time, one of the challenges of the last year was the end of cooperation with some colleagues. Being a small company it is always difficult for us to absorb such a big change. But at the same time we have opened collaboration with new people like David, Pavel or Ema who are moving the company forward.
We have also had to adapt to real conditions and adjust our long-term corporate growth plan accordingly. So we started working on building up the existing teams, developing them and evolving them further. Organically, a new position of Team Leader was created, which was taken by Martin, mainly thanks to his previous experience in managing people. It fit together quite smoothly, but the biggest change was probably in the perception: Martin was put in charge of his own team, whose main goal and priority was to become independent. I’m positive about the whole thing, I think he’s well on his way to functioning independently, and I think it actually makes sense.
Michael’s year 2024
I went into the new year with the idea that I would like to move from the role of who clients outsourced for the implementation of the entire project (you could say business analyst), to the role of building teams on the client side. As I mentioned in the text above, I am most comfortable and enjoy the beginning of a project, the kick-off phase, and it is also when the most work gets done. So I would like to focus on this part of the project, which I would help the client to get his team up and running and then be able to function independently. I would still be on hand for the client and their team, but it wouldn’t be all on me. I don’t have it completely figured out yet, so I don’t know what form or how much, but I can see the potential. We generally refer to this as developing long-term data and analytical maturity for the client. That’s what all of our products and services revolve around. Our goal is not to keep doing the same tasks for clients, but to gradually teach them and work on more and more complex analytics.
At the same time, the new year also brings a host of new events. I would like to attend classic events from the data community like Data Date or Data mesh meetups. However, I would like to focus more on the communication itself than on the events as such. So I would like to use these events mainly for meeting friends or new people.
Recently I have been very interested in Snowflake, which I have only met through our partner Keboola. Some clients are open to this topic and therefore I am attracted to this tool.
With all this comes learning new skills. First of all, I would like to focus on soft skills, knowledge and abilities. I’d like to start working with Snowflake a bit and finally I’d also like to get my Google certification.
Martin Štacko
Team Leader Web Analytics & Smartlook
Management of the Pilsen office and Team Leader position
A lot of changes happened in the company in 2023, and the biggest one that primarily affected me was my transition to the Team Leader position. So we have now split into two teams, with me in charge of the Pilsen team. A big focus went into making our Pilsen office more independent in terms of web analytics projects, people are now more self-sufficient and everyone has their given responsibilities. Everything is of course a challenge for me, which I want to grasp 100% and do my best to make everything work and continue to evolve.
The position has come about because of all the changes that have happened in the business: whether the owners’ move to Prague or my initiative. I wanted to start working more with people and advance my leadership and communication skills. At the same time, we proudly maintain our corporate headquarters here, which is still in Pilsen and we are heading out from there to the world.
I was attracted to this position mainly because I already had experience in leading people and I also wanted to take advantage of this opportunity that was offered to me. I see it as a great opportunity for self-development and overall growth for the people in my team, as I can lead them to do what they enjoy doing. Most of all, I like the responsibility and the vision of leaving something behind.
The biggest challenge is to make all the people in the team work together. I manage colleagues who have different content of work and overall functioning, so it is necessary to work with each of them individually.
The Prague office is now in charge of Marek, who moved to Prague at the end of 2023. This has actually had a big impact on the overall functioning of the company. I am glad that this change has been received very positively, we still keep in regular contact and are constantly addressing the strategic and overall functioning of the company.
The development of my new role has gone smoothly and this is mainly thanks to the support from Marek and Michal. The challenge at times has been to align myself with the owners. We each have a slightly different way of solving problems, so the main priority was to agree that everything made sense for both the teams and the company. What we do agree on, of course, is that we offer the highest quality work for our clients in a transparent and client-friendly way.
My plan and vision for my team is to establish daily routines and responsibilities so that everyone is ideally doing what they are best at. I want to streamline our work so that we can do it better and more, so we can fulfil the plan. Now the main plan is to stabilise everyone on the team overall.
Company-wide view for 2023
As my position in the firm has changed, I am now managing clients predominantly on an account basis (i.e. looking after their long-term development and building their analytical maturity). I enjoy working with long-term clients such as Saint Gobain. We have a good relationship with each other, the whole collaboration has developed smoothly and our projects continue to grow. We work together not only on Czech divisions but also on other foreign divisions.
I also enjoy one-off collaborations, which are often interesting and unique. We meet very interesting entrepreneurs from interesting industries.
We also try to foster collaborations with smaller-long-term clients such as Nanospace. We have a good relationship with each other and we actually think of them more as our partners with whom we help each other.
Over the past period we have successfully managed to stabilise client projects, which I am now also managing more from A to Z. That is, we have started doing complete projects (end to end solutions), from consultation to final output and visualisations. So we handle web analytics completely for the client, everything has a smoother flow, processes have been streamlined and fine-tuned to the last detail.
We also changed a bit the teams and the people in them. Marie and David have been the biggest asset. Unfortunately, Maja decided to end her cooperation with us. David has joined my team and together we’re delving into the ins and outs of data analytics, expanding our reach and offerings to our clients. At the same time, Kristyna has also newly joined our team, which makes it easier to plan all activities together and easier to combine marketing and analytics activities. I consider this a great success and a clear fulfilment of our company values, with everyone doing what they do best and even office positions having room to grow into analytical roles.
We have also recently started working with Pavel. Pavel has been very helpful in developing our internal tools. He helped us with the creation of important scripts that allowed us to streamline our work. He also quickly got to grips with data projects under the guidance of Marek.
And the latest addition to the company is Ema, who is helping us a lot with office management. She plans joint activities and generally makes sure that we are all happy in the office, and she succeeds in that as well. 🙂
As far as events are concerned, we were with Marek at the classic Data restart, which was again great. We saw the latest news in data analytics, had a chance to chat with colleagues, clients and meet new people. It’s always nice to see old familiar faces at these bigger events, who have made their mark in the history of our company, like Libor Pelikan, or to chat with people from the GA4 academy I attended, like Aneta Hejnová Holá and André Heller…
In the West Bohemian metropolis (Pilsen) there are always Marketing Pilsen events. I always like to attend them and I am very pleased that people from related fields come regularly and are interested in trends in marketing or analytics.
Apart from that, I have also attended Data Date, visited clients in Prague, or had a training session in my hometown České Budějovice, where I was able to talk about our partner tool Smartlook.
What I’m planning for 2024
My biggest plan for the next period is to seize the opportunity to lead a team and exciting projects. I want to give it my best, fulfil the plan, both my personal and company plan. I would like to be able to effectively lead the team, the office and the clients. However, this will require a lot of work.
In terms of learning, I want to focus on proper delegation of work. So I will need to work on people management, work scheduling, communication, efficiency and patience. So I will be focusing mostly on soft skills rather than technical skills.
I am also looking forward to seeing what events 2024 will bring. I definitely want to revisit some of the MeasureCamps or other marketing events that come up.
However, my focus for 2024 is clear – to deliver on the team and personal plan, to have happy people on the team and also happy bosses.
Tomáš Ondříšek
Web analytics
Company-wide view for 2023
The company has shifted a lot over the last period, especially in the type of projects we handle. From my perspective, we have a greater number of narrowly focused projects recently. For example, these are projects focused purely on server-side measurement or, from the other end, on campaign reporting and lifetime value.
In terms of the company, I see the biggest challenge in terms of reorganising the company in terms of the leadership of the web analytics team, which is now successfully led by Martin. I don’t think it was easy for either side in the beginning, but currently I think it’s working well.
This change was all the more necessary due to the fact that Marek moved to Prague at the end of 2023. Marek’s move surprised me, but he communicates very well online, so it’s not a problem to arrange a video call with him to discuss specific things. Here, we benefit from our company values and our culture, which takes full account of remote working, which I also use extensively.
Another challenge for me was the client GoodAccess, where we tried to link data from their internal system and then from GA4. After several collisions on both sides, we finally managed to bring the project to a successful conclusion. I believe both sides gained a lot of new insights and experience.
The biggest personal challenge for me was the month-long trip to Vietnam (given that I had never been that far away, and certainly not alone). Living and travelling in Vietnam along with my work was a real challenge, just because of the time difference. By the same token, it was an advantage to some extent. I could literally send work and completed tasks back in time.
Despite the fact that the whole GoodAccess project was a challenge for me, I really enjoyed working on such a client. Here I was solving the data linkage in a way that made sense to the client and brought some utility value. I also tried my first sophisticated query in Google’s BigQuery tool. And surprisingly, it was functional. By the end of the year, SQL had become a common tool for me, and it’s also a meta that I think many web analysts who are serious about their field have been forced to move into.
Another such client is TrueClicks, where we’ve solved challenges around measuring LinkedIn Ads campaigns. However, the communication from the client is lightning fast and very friendly.
We also worked on several internal projects, such as promo videos, revitalization of our website and redesign of some documents for clients (offer of cooperation, service leaflet,…). This is exactly the type of project where you can “drown” hours, but for me the result is worth it.
The project that went very quickly was with the client Česká zahradnická společnost, where the whole meeting with the client and the subsequent agreement on the next steps was extremely fast, as well as the actual processing of the order. One simply loves such projects.
I am glad that I have moved up in my specialisation to the position of senior web analyst over the last period. Or at least I have come significantly closer to it.
A big personal shift has been the change in my morning routine, where I get up at 5am instead of my usual time, which allows me to get more work done (if needed), or do internal stuff, or my own learning and development.
We have a new addition to our team, David, who is currently playing the role of a bridge between web and data analytics. I generally get on well with David and especially appreciate the fact that we always get to a stage in project communication where the data outputs are of incredible value to the client. Another person who has joined us is Pavel, our new and very capable data analyst. Sadly, at the end of the year we parted ways with Marie, where the vision for further collaboration simply didn’t meet, which I see as perfectly normal these days and it has moved everyone on a lot. We are simply living in dynamic times and change happens on a daily basis. Even changes in life and work priorities. Last but not least, we need to mention another team member, Ema, who now makes our working environment in Pilsen a relaxed one by taking care of the office and our teambuilding activities.
What I plan for 2024
My plan for 2024 is to continue to push myself in what I do and deepen my knowledge in analytics, consent management, Looker reports, and other sub-areas.
Another plan is to delve more into the ins and outs of BigQuery and SQL databases (sending data to BQ, joining data from multiple sources, data types, and other joys).
Personally, I’ll be happy if I can maintain my current work pace and revisit a country in Asia in the fall.
I would like to visit one of the MeasureCamp events again, for example in Spain, Italy or directly in the Czech Republic. I would like to learn how to link data from multiple sources at BQ level and basic measurement using server-side methods, which I currently see as increasingly in demand.
I currently have a whole wishlist of what I would like to buy or where to go in 2024. This includes things like upgrading my home office or vacationing in Asia or buying a condo. However, I wrote a few lines above about life changes.
The professional challenge will be converting existing clients to Consent mode v2, which will be effective from March 2024. These are two new consents that will be required for ad conversions, particularly for Google Ads. Even clients who have somehow avoided this until now will have to deal with this situation willy-nilly. Otherwise, they will lose their advertising accounts.
In the autumn, we will see the end of third-party cookies in Chrome and possibly the entire digital marketing ecosystem. So we need to prepare our clients to measure conversions and collect remarketing audiences using technologies that favour first party data and associated user identifiers, which seem to be primarily email or phone numbers. We need to gradually build new versions of the data layer containing this information for our clients, prepare server versions of Google Tag Manager for them and work with them to strategically increase the number of users visiting the site in logged-in mode, e.g. through third-party services such as Google/Facebook.
David Šugár
Web and data analytics
Company-wide view for 2023
I don’t have a company-wide view of the past year, as this is my first year at the company. The big personal challenge was moving from pure web analytics to a mix between web and data and the associated tasks.
Very interesting projects that I was able to get involved in were with clients like Ochutnejořech.cz and Saint-Gobain, where they handle a lot of data tasks, which is a big and engaging challenge.
I view my first months at the company very positively and I’m glad I joined the team.
My plans for 2024
In the coming year, I want to push my data expertise even further and get more involved in other sub-disciplines of the field, mostly customer-facing. With this move, I also want to shift my own specialisation.
In the coming year I would like to attend more specialised events on data analytics, but also classic events like MeasureCamp and similar.
I take it as a challenge to enable new services and develop them more from the knowledge gained.
Kristýna Bulíková
HR & marketing
Company-wide view for 2023
As my colleagues before me have already revealed, the company went through a major reorganisation last year, planned or unplanned. There have been many changes that have affected everyone in my opinion. Starting with the addition of reinforcements to the teams, the renewal and innovation of marketing communication and the direction of the company’s presentation, the termination of cooperation with some of the clients or partners, to Marek’s move to Prague.
The biggest challenge for me last year was taking care of recruitment, when we wanted to strengthen our web and data team. I’m always pleased when all parties get on the same page, collaboration works and everything makes sense. So I’m glad we could welcome David to our team, as he is the only one in our company who officially has one foot in web analytics and the other in data. I’m also happy for Pavel, who has joined the data team. Even though he’s a rather quiet person, every time he speaks it’s worth it. And the latest addition to our team is Ema, who takes perfect care of our special group of analysts and our office in Pilsen. With the arrival of new colleagues, there are also goodbyes. Unfortunately, Marie will not be coming with us for the next period, as she has a better offer and I hope she will do her best there! I think she has been a great colleague to all of us, she has left a great body of work behind and will be missed.
The next challenge for me was to change my marketing goals or priorities. My new main task was to start working on processing our promo videos, presenting them on our YouTube channel and also letting the public know about our videos. I am very grateful for this, all my colleagues have helped me a lot with this. Without them, it wouldn’t have been possible. And so, thanks to the efforts of everyone in the company, we have made several educational videos in the fields of web and data analytics.
At the same time, my general perception of what marketing activities to focus on next has changed. I’d say we started to become more public relations oriented, we started to do more training, speaking at workshops, conferences, more of our awesome blog articles, and we even got to chat on our very first podcast!
The last bigger challenge for me was joining the web team. This is big news for me and something I’ve been tempted to do since I started working with Archetix actually. So at the end of the year I had the opportunity to join Martin’s team, where I’m gradually getting into the depths of web analytics. It’s great to be able to learn new things and I’m very happy for this opportunity. I’ve already completed my first few tasks and I’m looking forward to what the next year will bring.
What I’m planning for 2024
My plan for 2024 is pretty clear: I want to learn how to work with analytics tools like Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Smartlook and Looker Studio. I have already worked in these tools, but in general I would like to understand them in depth and be proficient in them at least at a junior level.
We have also made it a point to bring on a sales rep to help us with our clients. As part of my role as an HR recruiter, I want to select the right person to join our team. So a big focus in early 2024 will go into recruiting, onboarding and stabilising the sales rep on our team.
Last but not least, I want to keep improving my marketing activities. We will definitely continue to focus on creating attractive content for our clients and prospective clients, public relations and building good relationships with our partners. I want to focus on our blog, to which all of the Archetix team contribute their thoughts, trends and interesting industry news. I would also like to get our articles into other media with a focus on technology. I’m also hoping to open the door again with a podcast. My next goal is also to update our English website, Archetix.com, which I am working on, but there is still much to improve. We’ve got the communication towards the Czech market down now we’ll focus more on the international market.I look forward to all the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead of us in 2024. 💙
Ema Strakošová
Office management
A company-wide view of 2023
I came to the company from a different industry, so it’s a big challenge for me to capture information and understand what people are dealing with at work. It’s like learning a new language. I think I’m picking it up quite well, at least by my standards. I’m considering doing some beginner training as well, I’ll see what time brings!
At the same time, I’ve started university to study Special Education, which is a long-term and time-consuming challenge. So I’m learning to juggle school, work, and babysitting on top of that. Luckily, I really enjoy what I do, so it’s really easy most of the time.
My work at Archetix is versatile. I make sure that the Pilsen office is equipped, I do minor administration, I devise programs for teambuilding and meetings. It’s all kinds of work.
This job teaches me the most the ability to organise things, time and people. In my personal life I have organised chaos, but I don’t want to let that into my work. I’d say I’m handling it fairly well. Also, my knowledge regarding analytics is expanding as much as possible, maybe it will still take me in a completely different direction in the future! I’m enjoying the variety and flexibility that exists in our field, so it’s a beautiful thing to manage while studying.
What I’m planning for 2024
In 2024, I’d like to delve more into analytics, finding a smaller goal of my own to contribute to the company. Or at least understand more in depth the basic principles and learn new things. I also want to learn WordPress so I can apply my interest in linguistics and design.
In my personal life, I want to work on my study procrastination, because that’s starting to be a problem. I also have a pretty long list of books I want to read, so if the books to read by the end of the year are fewer rather than more, I’ll be happy.
I’d definitely like to attend a Czech MeasureCamp to enrich my knowledge. And if there are similar events, accessible to beginners, I may very well show up there too. It will help me understand more about what the company does and what kind of people are in the industry.
Pavel Kosan
Data Analyst
A company-wide view of 2023
I’ve only been with the company for half a year, but from what I’ve observed, it’s great that despite some people leaving, there’s a new force coming into the company. In general, it’s important that new team members have the opportunity to integrate into the company environment and processes as quickly as possible, which at least from my perspective is working well.
The biggest challenge for me was definitely the beginning, because I am quite introverted, so I am not very good at getting to know people, but thanks to the friendly attitude of everyone in the company it was easier than I could have hoped.
As far as my work goes, I mainly develop new components for Keboola and other scripts, either for internal purposes (setting up invoices) or for the need of client data pipelines. I am also working on data transformations in DBT and visualisations in Looker Studio, and I take care of extending the company portal to help us with benefits selection or organising meetings.
The work has given me a lot professionally and practically in just six months. I’ve learned how to work with a lot of new technologies that I didn’t use/knew before (my favourite tool is probably Keboola). I got a closer and more practical look at creating and maintaining data pipelines and definitely deepened my knowledge of SQL a lot. Writing complex SQL transformations was a bit scary at first, but now I would say that even complex queries are not a problem for me. Next I moved on to JavaScript, which was a language I had never used before.
In terms of other skills, I’ve definitely moved up a bit in scheduling, planning, and preparing data for reports. Identifying appropriate combinations and aggregating many tables and columns to answer a specific question. However, I definitely still have some catching up to do in this area.
I’ve been managing school just fine this semester, with time set aside to devote to work, school, and myself. In the new semester, it will be a bit more challenging, because there will be a bit more of that school, and not just lectures and labs, but especially a lot of extensive term papers, ranging from a team software project that we have to report 500 hours of work on as a team in the first semester, to term papers on advanced non-relational database systems, advanced computational statistics, and so on. But even this semester I have time allotted for work, so I’ll manage. The next semesters should be easier.
My favourite project was definitely one of my very first assignments I got at the company. That was the development of automated invoice filing. Not only did I enjoy the practical side of it, but I’m always so happy to see it actually being used in practice and simplifying work.
The biggest work challenge for me was definitely the Search Engine Analysis on the ochutnejorech.cz project. I had to get to know and navigate through the, at first glance, rather opaque GA4 data. Once I got my bearings, I had to figure out how to make the most of it for the client. My biggest weakness to work on is knowing how to ask the right questions and build hypotheses that I want to use the data to answer.
What I’m planning for 2024
Professionally, I would like to move up in data engineering, be able to design data infrastructure for meaningful, efficient and effective reports, and perform data integrations. At the same time, I like to think about different uses of artificial intelligence, either by leveraging off-the-shelf AI applications or by developing my own applications to simplify my work. Lately, I’ve been very interested in developing applications (primarily in Python) based on large language models. Whether using OpenAI API for GPT-4 or maybe using Llama, which is an open source trained big language model that can be downloaded and run, modified, retrained locally. I’m sure you could program an application with it, for example, to automate heterogeneous mail, etc.
These three areas (data engineering, analytics and artificial intelligence) have a lot in common, but they are also very different in many ways. And both now and in the future, in my opinion, they will form the core of all Business Intelligence.
One of the biggest challenges this year will definitely be that big team software project at the school, where we will be developing a fairly complex system for processing and analysing heterogeneous medical data: from patient charts and text to biosignals and biomedical images. Throughout the project, I will be in charge and have a major say in everything related to artificial intelligence, from selecting appropriate approaches and models, to programming and learning models, to validating and optimising them, to final deployment. I will also be in charge of things regarding the construction of data pipelines, to automate the feeding of the right data into my AI models. It will be a challenging project, but I am sure it will give me a lot and I will be able to use a lot of the experience I gained here in the company and vice versa.
The next challenge will be combining work with school especially now in the summer term. But I think that if I stick to the timetables I have created for this, I will be able to manage it all.
I have a strong feeling that the AI trend we’ve been seeing over the last two years is not just a temporary phenomenon, but that it’s going to be here with us forever, and it’s going to keep getting better, and we’re going to have to keep up with it whether we like it or not.
A few words in conclusion
If you have read this far, you have seen the fifth year of our company’s existence, both through the eyes of me as a director and through the eyes of my colleagues and people who are part of the now very experienced Archetix team.
As you’ve read, it’s been a turbulent year for us, both with the recruitment of new colleagues and new projects and challenges. Some colleagues have stayed with us and continue on as a strong part of the team, while others have chosen a different path.
On the business side, I am very pleased that we are continuing to bring new and exciting projects to the firm and, most importantly, that we are succeeding in our main goal of building long-term analytics and data maturity for our long-term clients. For them, we are able to continuously find new topics that move them forward.
From a financial perspective, the company made a projected loss of CZK 476,000, which was mainly due to the investment in human resources and the establishment of the Prague office. In the coming year, we will focus on building strong partnerships that will ensure the stable growth of the company and prevent any further losses.
On behalf of the entire company, I am delighted that you are part of our story and look forward to working with you in 2024 and beyond.
