Production Tickets Cut From 15 a Month to 2 on Save the Children's AWS Data Platform

Save the Children’s global operations relied on a patchwork of systems—Salesforce, spreadsheets, and other siloed tools—to manage critical data. This fragmented approach limited visibility, slowed reporting, and made it challenging to align analytics with strategic goals. The organization decided to move to a centralized, cloud-based platform to integrate disparate data sources, improve accessibility, and enable real-time insights.

However, implementing a global AWS platform and Data Lakehouse required specialized leadership to coordinate across IT, business units, and external vendors while ensuring projects stayed aligned with the organization’s strategic priorities. Without dedicated program and project management, the initiative risked delays, budget overruns, and incomplete adoption.

Silver Tree had an established relationship with Save the Children’s leadership and a track record of successfully managing complex, enterprise-scale technology transformations. The organization needed a partner with technical expertise and the ability to bridge the gap between IT and business stakeholders, manage multiple workstreams, and ensure each deliverable directly supported strategic objectives.

Silver Tree’s ability to provide seasoned program and project managers with deep AWS, data integration, and cross-functional delivery experience made them the natural choice.

Silver Tree bridged IT and business teams to enable the delivery of a scalable AWS-powered data platform, reducing issues, improving performance, and creating a foundation for ongoing, strategic data initiatives.

Silver Tree led the AWS migration and Data Lakehouse build from inception through execution, providing full-service program and project management. Key steps included:

• Platform Implementation: Oversaw the design and deployment of a scalable AWS platform to serve as the foundation for all future data initiatives.
• Data Lakehouse Development: Partnered with business units, including Finance and Marketing/Sales, to migrate data from Salesforce, spreadsheets, and other sources into a centralized, curated repository.
• Vendor and Stakeholder Coordination: Managed AWS vendors, internal data teams, and enterprise PMO resources, ensuring seamless collaboration.
• Business Alignment: Facilitated requirements gathering with business users to ensure all deliverables tied directly to Save the Children’s strategic goals.
• Scalable “Factory Model”: Established a repeatable process for onboarding additional business units and continuously adding new data “rooms” to the Lakehouse, ensuring the platform grows with organizational needs.

• Reduced monthly production tickets from 10–15 to 0–2 through proactive issue identification and permanent resolution
• Improved BVA report refresh times by 50–87% through performance tuning and optimization
• Built reusable development and testing frameworks that cut development and system testing efforts by 50–60%, accelerating delivery of new pipelines and reports