Ariadni Apostoleri | BI & Business Process Analyst (ex-Bayer)

How I work

From “nobody can see what’s happening” to a system people trust

Lab digitalisation at TH Köln

Enterprise Power BI at Bayer CropScience

Open to the right team, EU-wide

I work across the whole lifecycle, not just the dashboard at the end. I sit with the people doing the work to find out what actually matters, turn that into KPIs and requirements, build the reporting, coordinate the releases, write the documentation, and train the people who'll use it. I treat adoption as part of my job, not someone else's. A dashboard nobody opens is a failure, however good it looks.

I came to this from chemistry. An M.Sc., years in the lab, and somewhere along the way I realised the part I loved wasn't the experiment, it was building the systems that made the work make sense to everyone else. Regulated, evidence-heavy environments are where that instinct earns its keep.

Case study · Bayer CropScience · 2023 – 2025

One source of truth for a global safety operation

The transformation, in one drag

Drag the handle

The problem

Assessing the safety of third-party crop-protection products was a global job run on email and scattered spreadsheets. Dozens of scientists, several regions, high-value decisions, and no reliable way to see how much was in the pipeline, what stage things were at, or where they got stuck. Leadership was making calls in the dark.

What I did

I owned it end to end. I worked out the KPIs that actually mattered, cycle time, regional workload, where approvals bottlenecked, and built the Power BI environment on SQL-backed data, with views shaped for scientists, regional managers, and leadership so each saw what they needed and nothing they didn't. I coordinated delivery of the supporting Power Apps tool with an external development team across 10+ release cycles, built a SharePoint hub so the process and its rules lived somewhere other than people's heads, and led a 90-day cross-functional push that cut out a step two teams had been doing twice.

Skills shown

Power BI & DAXKPI designRequirements & UATChange managementStakeholder managementProcess redesign

Case-level visibility leadership had lacked

Illustrative

Sample data, real interaction. Toggle the view; hover for tooltips.

The result

More than 100 people across five regions adopted it, voluntarily, within six months. Case turnaround fell from six-to-eight weeks down to three-to-four once the delays were finally visible enough to fix. In one case a team in Latin America settled in about a week a regulatory question that would once have taken two months, because the dashboard showed them a colleague in China had already cracked it. An adjacent team liked it enough to ask for their own.

100+ users, 5 regions 100% voluntary adoption in 6 months ~50% faster case turnaround €2M+ per case informed

Capabilities

What I actually do

Find out what matters

I get into a process with the people who run it, separate what's important from what's just noisy, and turn it into clear KPIs, requirements, and a redesign worth building.

Process mappingRoot-cause analysisRequirementsKPI design

Build reporting people trust

Power BI, DAX, and dashboards designed for the person reading them, not for showing off. Validated numbers, drill-downs that make sense, and views tailored to each audience.

Power BIDAXSQL (strengthening via Mode Analytics)Data storytelling

Ship it, and make it stick

I coordinate releases, run UAT, write the documentation, and train the users. I measure success by whether people rely on the thing months later, not by whether it launched.

Change managementRelease coordinationUATDocumentation & training

Bridge the technical and the human

A scientist's training and four working languages, put to work translating between the people who generate data and the people who decide with it. That gap is where most reporting quietly dies.

Stakeholder managementScientific translation4 working languages

Documented in my reference

AI-augmented, human-owned

My Bayer reference documents something most candidates can only claim: that I use AI to speed up technical work and raise its quality. I work daily with LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude, and I connect them to my tools and data through MCP, so the model works inside my actual workflow instead of a separate chat window. I use that to move faster on DAX troubleshooting, documentation, and dashboard iteration, and to pressure-test my own thinking. The business logic, the interpretation, and the final call stay mine.

The edge

Why regulated industries suit me

Chemistry taught me to work carefully with messy evidence: question the assumption, check the number, write down why. That's exactly the temperament regulated work rewards, in life sciences, pharma, chemicals, quality, and anywhere reporting has to be accurate, traceable, and defensible. I know GxP-governed environments from the inside. It's the setting where I'm most useful, though the way I work travels well beyond it.

Background

One instinct, followed across every role.

I kept gravitating to the same thing: building the systems around the work so it could be trusted, found, and acted on. Here is that thread, from the lab to enterprise reporting.

Foundation2011 – 2019Education

Trained as an analytical chemist

B.Sc. Chemistry, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki · M.Sc. Chemistry, Ruhr University Bochum (research in analytical chemistry and electrochemistry)

The foundation: rigorous, evidence-driven scientific work.

TH Köln2021 – 2023Work experience

Research Associate

Started building the systems around the science. I replaced paper lab journals with electronic ones and structured SOPs, commissioned and documented new analytical and laboratory instruments from scratch (procurement to operating manuals), digitised exam workflows on a no-code platform, and coordinated the relocation of three chemical laboratories.

TH Köln2023Work experience

Educational Systems Consultant (freelance)

Selected as my team’s most experienced person with the university’s no-code education platform, I built exam and exercise pools with automated evaluation, designed to last.

Bayer CropScience2023 – 2025Work experience

BI Analyst

The same instinct became a full enterprise Power BI environment for a global regulated workflow, combining chemistry domain knowledge, process design, and multi-region stakeholder delivery.

Now2025 – present

Open to the next role

Preparing for PL-300 (exam Q3 2026), sharpening SQL, and looking for the right team.

Languages

Four working languages, one bridge across regions.

I worked entirely in German at Bayer and TH Köln, coordinated with Spanish-speaking teams in LATAM, and reported to international leadership in English. The languages are part of how I operated as a central contact across regions, not a footnote.

GreekNative

EnglishC1 · Professional

GermanC1 · Professional

FrenchC1

SpanishB2

Education

M.Sc. Chemistry

Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

2016 – 2019

B.Sc. Chemistry

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

2011 – 2016

Certifications & development

Deepening my BI and analytics toolkit.

I ramp quickly and teach myself: my Bayer reference notes that I independently and systematically expanded my skills beyond what the role required. I'm doing the same now with SQL and PL-300.

Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst (PL-300)In prep · Exam Q3 2026

Mode Analytics SQLIn progress

Google Project Management CertificateIn progress

Introduction to SQL, SoloLearn2026

Power Apps & Power Automate, Bayer Data Academy2025

Negotiation, Harvard Concept (Bayer)2024

Basic Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), Udemy2021

Mini MBA in Business Management, IBMI2020

Python Core, SoloLearn2019