Understanding Data
Understanding Data is a small data consultancy in Turnhout (the Kempen region, Flanders, Belgium). It helps small and medium-sized businesses (KMO’s), local governments and entrepreneurs turn data into decisions, through strategy advice, technical implementation and training, and it sells its own modular data platform, MAKO. Its mission statement is “Wij maken de Kempen, Vlaanderen en Europa datagedreven” (we make the Kempen, Flanders and Europe data-driven). Checked 2026-10-29 against understandingdata.eu (home, about, services, product and event pages) and Belgian business-registry aggregators.
Facts
| Founder | Floris Remmen, listed on the About page as “De oprichter”; no education or earlier career is given there |
| Founded | 2022-10-17, registered as an SRL (registry aggregators); principal activity listed as computer consultancy |
| Location | Turnhout. The site gives De Kempus, Kempenlaan 2 as its address; registry listings show other addresses (Turnhout and Oud-Turnhout), so check the latest filing if it matters |
| Language | The site and events are in Dutch |
| Size | No employee count published; the site says the team mixes backgrounds from engineering to psychology and names no one besides the founder |
| Values | Integrity, respect, value, learning and teaching, ownership (About page) |
What it offers
- Strategy. A roadmap that starts from a business goal and maps it to processes, data sources, insights and actions. It describes itself as tool-independent and aims for a solution the client’s own team can run, not ongoing consultancy.
- Implementation. Builds data platforms in layers: integration, modelling, scheduling, data contracts, security and catalog, visualisation and automation. The services page names stacks on Microsoft (Azure Functions with dlt, Databricks, dbt, Power BI), Google (Dataflow, BigQuery, dbt, Looker Studio) and AWS (Lambda with dlt, Redshift or Trino, dbt, Streamlit or Power BI), and an on-premise or German-cloud option on MAKO. Infrastructure is code-managed (Terraform or OpenTofu, Ansible, ArgoCD, containers or Kubernetes on Talos Linux). It also lists many other tools it works with, including Apache Superset, Airbyte, ClickHouse and Trino.
- Training (“Data Educatie”). Tailored programmes and hands-on workshops on real data for business leaders, entrepreneurs and public bodies; it says it works with VOKA to spread data knowledge.
- Community events. Free monthly breakfast sessions (Ontbijtsessies) in Dutch at De Kempus in Turnhout, covering topics such as data strategy, data quality, governance, process automation and dlt; and the Data in de Kempen afternoon event (workshops, keynote, networking), whose 2026 edition the site dates 2026-10-29.
- Case studies on the site. Bol.com (moving behaviour measurement from an external tool to a self-built system on Apache Kafka), ING (a more flexible gender pay gap analysis tool) and ASML (linking machine uptime to productivity to support a new service contract). These are the company’s own descriptions.
MAKO Data Platform
MAKO (“Modular Analytics & Knowledge Orchestration”) is the company’s own product, aimed at SMEs and mid-sized firms that want analytics comparable to larger players. Per the product page:
- MAKO Platform: the core that connects systems and moves data, using the Python framework dlt to load transactional data into a warehouse, plus automation and AI integration.
- MAKO Insights: a central data warehouse with dimensional modelling, data tests, a KPI dashboard, fine-grained access control and Python forecasting models (Prophet is the example given).
- MAKO Automate: a visual drag-and-drop workflow builder for moving data between systems, for example sending a welcome email or enriching a CRM record with ChatGPT.
- MAKO AI: language models, computer vision and a chat interface for asking questions of data and documents.
- Deployment: container-based; runs on AWS, GCP, Azure or on-premise, and can mix cloud software with on-premise SQL Server.
- Built “on established open-source technologies”. The page does not say whether MAKO itself is open source, and gives no licence or pricing, only a contact route for a demo or advisory call.
How it fits
A local consultancy in the same space as the data-platform tools already in the vault: it builds on dlt, dbt and BI tools such as Apache Superset and Metabase, and its stack choices line up with the open-source BI comparison. It is not a vendor of any of them.
Limits to know
- The site names only the founder and gives no employee count, funding or customers beyond the three case studies.
- Registry listings and the website show different addresses; the website gives De Kempus, Kempenlaan 2 in Turnhout.
- The product page does not say whether MAKO is open source and states no licence terms.
Sources
- https://understandingdata.eu (home), /about, /services, /product, /ontbijtsessies, /data-in-de-kempen
- https://companyweb.be/en/0792564729/understanding-data
- https://busibee.be/en/0792564729-understanding-data.md
- https://www.populer.com/understanding_data-4236909/view