Set-Up

• To ensure a smooth transition, we set up a dedicated team of amarti consultants with the necessary expertise to move the project forward efficiently, minimising dependencies on other teams and mitigating the risk of constrained resources, hindering delivery milestones.
• Where collaboration with Dr. Martens’ teams was necessary, we built strong relationships and delivered new ways of working for a collaborative and iterative approach.
• We embedded ourselves within Dr. Martens’ in-house team to champion their people, share knowledge and get everyone up to speed with the new technologies being introduced.

Ways of Working

• We adopted an Agile, Kanban-based approach, allowing us to be flexible and responsive as the project progressed.
• Working closely with the Dr. Martens product team, we took on the responsibility to ensure the support needed to successfully deliver the outcomes.
• A core principle of our approach was transparency and honesty; building trust with Dr. Martens by addressing challenges head-on and ensuring confidence in the progress we were making. This transparency demonstrated our shared commitment to Dr. Martens’ in-house team, the end-user, and the platform’s future success.

Governance & Tracking

• Cadence was set up to provide regular updates to Dr. Martens’ Enterprise team, ensuring all stakeholders were aligned and confident in our direction.
• Tools like a plan on a page, RAID logs, and a burnup chart helped us visually demonstrate progress and tackle critical items for go-live, ensuring a blend between the established ways of working at Dr. Martens and an iterative approach.
• As trust grew, we shifted from fortnightly check-ins to monthly steering meetings, maintaining consistent communication with key stakeholders, including the CTO and project sponsor.
• A key milestone was re-scoping project outcomes and advocating for a phased go-live approach, which ultimately led to a realistic, achievable plan that supported Dr. Martens’ long-term investment in their data infrastructure and customer experience.

The project established the foundations for a modern, scalable data platform by delivering:

• Automated CI/CD pipeline – accelerating release cycles, reducing manual effort, and ensuring consistency.
• Three-tier environments (Development, Test, Production) – improving quality control and minimising release risk.
• Infrastructure as Code with Terraform – enabling consistent, repeatable, and scalable deployments.
• Comprehensive testing framework – validating platform outputs against legacy data to ensure accuracy during the transition.

In parallel, we resolved critical pipeline bugs to improve data reconciliation with legacy systems. While full reconciliation was not feasible, we worked closely with stakeholders and end users to set expectations and highlight the benefits of the new platform.

Dr. Martens successfully migrated to a modern, cloud-based platform that replaced legacy systems and produced a significant operational cost reduction versus the legacy tech stack.

Alongside the technical improvements, we delivered outcomes that transformed the business:

• Costs of business operations were reduced significantly through efficiencies in infrastructure and processes
• Data was made powerful and accessible.
• Rich asset data was created, ensuring accuracy and reliability for business and marketing activities.
• Targeting became more efficient, with cost-effective technology enabling personalised and accurate campaigns that could scale.
• By combining the right data with the right product, channels, and customer insights, we helped Dr. Martens drive the top line, using data as an enabler for growth.

 The business now benefits from:

• A cost-effective, efficient, and economically-scalable platform.
• Rich asset data that enhances accuracy, decision-making, personalisation, and targeting.
• Faster query times and better reconciliation, providing reliable insights across the entire global business.
• Being able to access deep insights into all areas of the business to make it more efficient and profitable
• Deliver insights to customer-facing teams, enabling them to deliver more personalised engagement to make better decisions globally.
• The ability to use data as a growth driver, enabling targeted campaigns and improved customer engagement.

This transformation has now established Dr. Martens as a modern, data-enabled business where data is the foundation of all operations and customer interactions.

Success was measured through reconciliation against legacy systems, clear user feedback, and adoption rates. End users confirmed the platform’s intuitive design, accuracy, and ability to enable more efficient work.

Where reconciliation wasn’t possible, we provided clear explanations of the variance, ensuring users felt confident in the new platform and its capabilities.

End-users confirmed the platform’s success, with many noting how it enabled them to complete tasks in a more intuitive and efficient manner when compared to the old system. This clearly demonstrates how Dr. Martens’ investment in data has already improved both internal efficiency, ultimately providing the tools and systems for Dr. Martens to provide a better customer experience for its end-users.

The outcome demonstrated that Dr. Martens’ investment in data not only delivered immediate efficiency and cost savings, but also provided a platform for long-term business growth, innovation, and customer value. Through this project, Dr Martens now has a lower-cost platform that can scale in an economically-viable way, that delivers insights to all levels of the business and drives better relationships with its customers.

Graham Calder, CTO at Dr. Martens said “This project has been a great success for Dr. Martens. Moving to a modern, scalable cloud platform has transformed how we manage data, giving our teams faster, more reliable insights. The new system is quicker, more accurate, and easier to use. Our teams can now trust the data, make better decisions, and focus on what matters. This investment isn’t just about technology; it’s about our customers. With better data, we can improve customer experiences, streamline operations, and drive smarter business decisions. This project is a big step forward, and we’re excited for what’s next.”

Amardeep Sirha, Head of Data and co-founder at Amarti said: “Working with Dr. Martens was about more than replacing old systems. It was about giving their teams the confidence to use data every day, helping them make decisions faster, target customers more effectively, and run the business more efficiently. What started as an internal tech project became a shift in how the organisation thinks and operates. Data can drive real change, and this shows the value of data when done right.“