ROTOP Data Lake (deal)
The sales pursuit for ROTOP’s data lake / Claude Cowork engagement. Won: all contracts (engagement + AVV) signed 2026-06-24; delivery runs under the ROTOP Data Lake project. Deal owner: Bijan. Pipedrive deal 966.
Origin
Inbound via the PE network. Colayer (Manu Lachmann) connected Bijan to Oliver Serg at GENUI, who introduced ROTOP’s new CFO, Dr. Michael Peterseim. GENUI wanted fast, visible data/KPI wins; Oliver had limited runway after prior failed recommendations and pushed a breadth-first MVP across verticals (first views across Sales, Finance, Production, CDMO) rather than one vertical end to end. NDA signed 2026-05-19 (Peterseim + Junker); a free scoping workshop followed on 2026-05-22.
What was sold
A data lake plus Claude Cowork layer, explicitly not a BI/dashboard tool, consistent across all three ROTOP leaders. Agreed technical shape (settled in the technical 1:1 and confirmed on the offer call):
| Layer | Tool |
|---|---|
| Data warehouse | Snowflake (EU/Frankfurt region) |
| Transformation | dbt Cloud (paid tier, for the MCP server + Claude Cowork connectivity) |
| Version control | GitHub |
| Infrastructure | ROTOP-hosted Linux server; Gemma access via SSH + IP whitelist |
Data access is a one-time BC + Sage dump onto a ROTOP Linux server (Phase 1), because ROTOP is mid carve-out from the MDG group and a live pipeline is not feasible before end of September 2026; a recurring pipeline is Phase 2. Consolidation of ROTOP’s two legal entities is the Phase 1 demo case. The semantic layer / KPI-definition work was flagged as the single biggest driver of success and scoped as an iterative, budget-time exercise.
Commercial history
- Routing tension. Manu (Colayer) insisted contracts run through Colayer, with Colayer leading the engagement; Gemma’s preference was a direct engagement with ROTOP, Colayer invited as a courtesy. Resolved in practice as: Gemma’s offer wraps into a Colayer-style offer (Colayer adds its fee on top) and Colayer is the client-facing contract holder.
- First offer. Bijan sent the Gemma draft to Manu by 2026-05-27; Manu wrapped it and sent the combined offer to ROTOP. A technical setup annex (preferred option + a fallback Option B) was included at Rex’s request.
- Walkthrough (2026-06-04). Peterseim + Rex; Snowflake confirmed over a BigQuery alternative, full historical dump agreed over a filtered load, Gemma’s AVV to be used. A revised offer was needed.
- Revised offer. Resent 2026-06-15 with an explicit 24-day cap plus minimum deliverables; the Linux server was confirmed ready the same day.
- Contract approved 2026-06-17 (in the same call as the MDG dump coordination), sent via DocuSign, all documents signed 2026-06-24.
Meetings
The sales-phase meetings live under this deal (see the Meetings collection): the kickoff workshop, the technical 1:1, the offer walkthrough, the MDG dump coordination, and the AVV review. The delivery kickoff and everything after it live under the project.
Open thread
An operations deep-dive workshop (with Hendrike Heinrich and the Ops lead) was floated during the pursuit and never scheduled; it is a natural follow-on for the production/ops vertical.