A Day in the Life of Nils Van Hoof
Meet Nils Van Hoof, Data Analyst at Ahlers Belgium. Before joining Ahlers, Nils had moved from Finance to IT. Today, he drives data analytics and reporting across the company, turning internal data into valuable insights that support both our operations and business decisions. In this story, Nils reflects on his journey to tech and the meaningful impact data-driven projects can have across the organization.
What’s your background? How did it eventually bring you into IT within logistics?
I studied Business Administration at the University of Leuven, focusing on economics and business. My master’s was in financial management, so I actually started out very finance-oriented. It took me two jobs to eventually find my way into IT. At first, I worked at a company providing financial advice to entrepreneurs and wealthy families. I handled investment analyses, but my main task was keeping our internal system aligned with up-to-date data from the banks and investment platforms of our clients. Over time, I started teaching myself how to code using YouTube and Google. I automated most of my own job and realized how much I enjoyed the tech side. Later on, I went more into business controlling at a retail/wholesale chain. I wanted to dive deeper into the finances of one company rather than financial markets in general. I analyzed P&Ls across stores, regions, and markets. That’s where I really got into data and IT, and that interest eventually brought me to Ahlers in 2021.
Looking back, what has been the most difficult task?
Honestly, the hardest part was learning how to code from scratch. In the beginning, you don’t even know what’s possible. But once the basic concepts click, everything becomes easier and you can search for solutions much more efficiently. When I joined Ahlers, I didn’t know everything from day one. For example, Power BI was relatively new to me, but with the team’s support I picked it up quickly. It was very much learning by doing. Which is the best way of learning anything!
What project are you working on now?
Right now, I’m focused on developing our Data Warehouse, which brings together data from all Ahlers countries so we can finally see the company as one global operation. Every country works a bit differently, so the real challenge is turning all those formats and definitions into one clean dataset. Only then can we build insightful reports.
It’s a cross-department effort: we can create dashboards and integrations, but everything starts with good data input ─ garbage in, garbage out. That’s why we also share data-quality dashboards so local teams can spot and solve issues themselves. This project is never finished. We constantly add new data sources, metrics, and use cases. Today most of our data comes from the TMS systems, plus some financial systems and Salesforce, and we’re already preparing to integrate HRM data. If there’s data somewhere, we want it to be able to generate insights.
I’m also involved in our new TMS and OMS projects on the integration side. We’re now building smarter, two-way connections so systems can stay in sync with each other automatically. And of course, we’re preparing to onboard data from the new OMS and TMS systems to the Data Warehouse.
What surprised you most about logistics after working with the data?
If you’re not close to it, you don’t realize how complex logistics really can be. Especially at Ahlers, where we handle project cargo: there are so many measurement units, cargo types, legal requirements, and exceptions. It’s far from «one shipment, one truck». All that complexity shows up in the data too, and I never fully appreciated that before working here.
How do you see the role of IT and data analytics in logistics?
It’s only becoming more important, just like in every other sector. Companies are realizing how much valuable data they already have. With new ESG legislation, route optimization, CO₂ calculations, cost optimizations ─ you need reliable data for all of it. There’s still so much untapped potential in many companies. At Ahlers we’ve invested a lot of time in understanding how to use our data properly, and I’m sure this trend will only grow.
Could you share any fun fact about you?
Until recently, I’d been playing basketball at the same club for 26 years, this place became my second home. And this year, my sports career reached a new peak 😅. My colleague Kaat and I proudly became the undefeated champions of the Ahlers Ping Pong Tournament.
