The snapshot
1
The acquisition of logistics operator Celeritas in 2023 required the urgent unification of business logic and data models from two distinct entities.
2
Integrating heterogeneous systems and harmonising billing for over 30 carriers created a complex environment burdened by inefficient KPIs and excessive infrastructure costs.
3
Devoteam implemented a scalable, serverless data architecture on Google Cloud Platform to centralise information, automate data cycles, and democratise business intelligence.
About the Client
Citibox, the Spanish technology company redefining the last mile, has achieved a crucial milestone in its recent history: total integration following the acquisition of Celeritas.
With a network of over 52,000 smart mailboxes in 10,000 buildings and serving half a million daily users, Citibox had a clear mission: to enable frictionless deliveries and returns. However, inorganic growth brought with it a monumental technical challenge.
The Challenge: Merging the Business Logic of Two Sector Leaders
In 2023, the acquisition of Celeritas, a key logistics operator, created an urgent need to unify two distinct technological worlds. The scenario facing the engineering team was complex:
- Heterogeneous Data Silos: Information dispersed across Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
- Billing Fragmentation: The need to unify systems from over 30 carriers with incompatible formats.
- Cost Inefficiency: KPI processing was unoptimised, causing cloud resource consumption to skyrocket.
The goal was not simply to “mix data”, but to build a comprehensive, scalable data platform acting as a single source of truth, automating the data lifecycle and reducing operational expenditure.
The Solution: Modern Data Architecture on Google Cloud
Working alongside Devoteam, a new architecture was designed on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), covering everything from data ingestion to visualisation. The strategy was founded on four technological pillars:
1. Real-Time Data Capture
Datastream was implemented for real-time ingestion from operational databases, with Pub/Sub for event management. To address the challenge of carrier invoices and Excel files, automatic serverless services were deployed using Cloud Run and Cloud Functions.
2. Storage and Transformation with BigQuery
The heart of the solution is BigQuery, chosen for its performance as a central data warehouse. Data cleaning and modelling were orchestrated via Dataform, utilising SQLX to define robust business logic.
3. Business Intelligence with Looker
To democratise access to information, Looker was implemented. Its powerful semantic model now transforms raw data into secure business insights, granting autonomy to non-technical departments.
4. Security and Governance
Best practices in cloud security were applied, managing granular access with IAM and protecting critical credentials with Secret Manager.
Key Fact: This infrastructure recently demonstrated its elasticity when Citibox integrated a new high-volume e-commerce partner without any performance issues.
Results: Direct Business Impact and Cost Savings
After two years of working under agile methodologies, the new platform has transformed Citibox’s operations, delivering quantifiable results:
- Savings of over 50%: Process optimisation allowed the bill for the most expensive project on Google Cloud to be halved during October and November 2025.
- Total Automation: Processing for over 30 carriers was unified, eliminating human error in invoice management.
- Decision-making Autonomy: Thanks to Looker, teams analyse profitability by route, client, and carrier without relying on technical support.
- Advanced Geographic Visibility: Google Maps integration allows for business visualisation by region or postcode, which is vital for logistics strategy.
Adopting this cloud-native architecture not only solved the integration problem but has also left Citibox prepared to scale and continue leading sustainable logistics in Europe. The project was delivered at no internal cost, whilst the in-house team gained valuable guided experience in the cloud.
