Samsung upskills their Big Data Center teams to transform business

Samsung Electronics, one of the world's largest manufacturers of smartphones, TV’s, home appliances and electronic devices, recently launched their Big Data Center (BDC) to improve the use of big data in development, marketing, and product sales. Samsung also focused on maximizing the value of their existing data by creating a data hub platform to harness and streamline big data resources enabling a boost in their internal analysis and forecasting capabilities. These initiatives all support Samsung’s long-term transformation goal to become a data-driven organization where data drives actionable decisions. Due to Covid-19 impacts, BDC employees had limited in-person training and learning opportunities which also affected their ability to drive data center optimization. 

This prompted Samsung to creatively determine the best, most expedient route to ensure their teams could attend world-class training. Samsung did this whilst staying focused on their primary objective of maximizing the high capacity of the BDC, and upskilling employees to the most cutting-edge technologies and trends. 

Hundreds of employees team together in the BDC to design innovative, enterprise-level data utilization environments. This team includes a diverse set of technical expertise including back-end developers, cloud architects, data engineers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, privacy and security experts, strategists, and planners. Samsung preferred to secure a tailored-approach for the desired curriculum and educational experience in order to satisfy their diverse learning needs. With significant experience and expertise in delivering learning across multiple skill sets and delivery formats, the Google Cloud Customer Experience services was the key that enabled and guided Samsung to a successful learning process with data center optimization. 

Google Cloud Learning services and Customer Care services were engaged to meet their learning and data center optimization objectives. Initially the Learning services team proposed a project to nurture Google Cloud champions within the BDC team by utilizing the on-demand training program including Google Cloud Skills Boost hands-on training and Google Cloud courses available on Coursera. The selected courses were intentionally designed to cover a wide range of product solutions including AI Platform, BigQuery, Cloud Composer, Cloud Dataflow, Compute Engine, and Pub/Sub. 

In addition, Samsung leveraged Google Cloud's enterprise-level support service, known as Premium Support to further extend their technical capabilities while meeting the learning needs of BDC employees. Samsung had previously chosen to expand their Technical Account Management capability with the addition of Value-Add Services ensuring that multiple Technical Account Managers (TAMs) were engaged. With proactive collaboration between BDC employees and the dedicated team of TAMs, who arrived with customer-aware knowledge driven insight and guidance, each phase of the prescribed learning program was enabled to deliver the desired tailored development and implementation. Premium Support services was the layer that also ensured that the learning program suited both the immediate needs of BDC employees and the larger enterprise-wide initiatives to foster and drive digital transformation.

The learning program produced successful results in two dynamic paths. First, Samsung satisfied their employees’ thirst for continuous learning by upskilling existing skills with on-demand access and customized learning curriculum.  Additionally to reinforce the advantages gained from the cloud learning program, the TAM team organized a Google Kaggle Hackathon (GKH) enabling learning participants to gain and demonstrate new proficiencies with tools such as VertexAI, BigQuery, and BigQuery ML in a competition format.  The second result included Samsung extending their data center productivity and capabilities to optimize capacity of the BDC with Premium Support services. With tailored guidance from their Premium Support TAM team, Samsung effectively cultivated technical and digital transformation across their business.  

The BDC employees welcomed the diverse, interactive opportunities to expand their education, and many have directly or indirectly improved their work performance by completing the courses. 

“Employees are highly satisfied by providing high-quality and diverse educational opportunities. Thanks to this, we won the Samsung Culture Index at the end of the year.” —Wooseung Jang, Corporate EVP, Head of Big Data Center, Samsung Electronics

The flexibility of the on-demand Google Cloud Learning services and Premium Support services ensured that the BDC team participated in an innovative learning program in a manner that did not disrupt broader business operations and efficiencies. In fact, the BDC has already experienced a significant increase in their monthly recurring revenue stemming from the more robust operational efficiencies and the resulting employee innovations. Samsung successfully launched their enterprise data hub, with plans to expand and create a Big Data Center in America in the near future.

Their educational program is also gaining momentum, with a five-times increase in participants in one year. Currently, over 100 BDC employees participate in Google Cloud training through on-demand courses offered on Coursera, with plans to expand this program to hundreds of employees in data analytics and machine learning next year. By ensuring their employees’ skill sets are optimized, Samsung has gained reassurance that their Big Data Center will remain optimized for continued innovation to perform at the highest levels.

To learn more about how Google Cloud Customer Experience services can support your organization’s talent transformation journey, visit:

•  Customer Care Premium Support to empower business innovation with expert-led technical guidance and support

•  Google Cloud Training & Certification to expand and diversify your team’s cloud education