How Moeve Democratized AI and Saved €500K/year with KNIME

Challenges: Difficulty Democratizing AI Usage Across the Organization

Moeve is an international energy and mobility company with over 11,000 employees. They had a clear goal to empower people across the organization to make smarter, data-driven decisions by spreading advanced analytics capabilities beyond the technical teams. But their first attempt at data and AI democratization didn’t go as planned. The reasons were clear: their data tools were too complex, employees lacked context and access to the right data, and their expectations that all employees would become data scientists with complex tooling was unrealistic.

Solution: Creating a Citizen Data Scientist Program with KNIME as the Key Tool

Learning from those early challenges, Moeve relaunched their strategy. The second wave focused on developing a specific role: citizen data scientists who deeply understand their business domain, are trained in basic data science concepts, and can combine the two for decision making. 

“What makes a real citizen data scientist? Someone who works in a business unit, knows the business process, and has been trained in analytics and AI…They are the bridge between the tech team and the business units,” says Alex Romero, ClearPeaks consultant and KNIME expert leading the technical side of the initiative.

They began to use KNIME to train-up citizen data scientists. Moeve chose KNIME for its accessibility, open-source model, and visual programming interface, which helped reduce the steep learning curve of data science. 

How Moeve Upskilled Citizen Data Scientists in Business Units

Their AI and data democratization strategy was built around three pillars:

1. Training – Programs developed to teach KNIME and data science principles.
2. Mentorship – Ongoing, customized support from experts like Alex, not just at the beginning but through every project and use case.
3. Advice and best practices – Access to experts in AI and ML who know (and can share) the latest innovations and up-to-date best practices.

This structured support has helped ensure that citizen data scientists can work effectively within their roles — not in isolation from their daily responsibilities, but embedded directly within them.

Beyond technical training, Moeve also launched other exciting initiatives, including:

• Hands-on education for employees, covering topics like AI, data visualization, and change management.
• A safe space where employees share use cases, doubts, and inspiration.

These programs reinforce the idea that innovation is not top-down – it’s shared, supported, and continuously evolving. 

“We're creating this innovation concept around the company, where the citizens are building AI solutions that are providing immediate and real impact to their teams,” Alex said. “It's a shift in how we work, in how we innovate, and also in how we optimize processes across the company.”

Delivering Value with KNIME Data Apps

Once trained, the citizen data scientists at Moeve moved into active development and deployment of solutions. 

Through KNIME data apps, deployed via KNIME Business Hub, they were able to deliver consumable insights to end users. Data apps allow individuals and teams to build and deploy anything from scheduled reports to interactive dashboards to model monitoring.    

Each business unit at Moeve has a dedicated KNIME Business Hub license, managed by a role they created internally – the AI Democratization Owner – who is responsible for deployment. This structure supports scalable, consistent delivery of AI solutions without overwhelming resources. Overall, training citizen data scientists reduced the dependency on their data science team and allowed Moeve to more quickly get value from AI use cases.

Results: €500,000/Year Savings (So Far)

In just the first year of establishing this strategy, Moeve has:

• Trained citizen data scientists in energy parks — one of their highest-impact units — and HR
• Deployed 7 AI use cases as KNIME data apps, with 10 more in progress
• Achieved estimated savings of €70,000 per use case, totaling around €500,000. )This figure only accounts for savings and does not account for additional value added by these use cases.)
• Created a culture shift, where employees are building solutions that directly impact their own teams
  

Moeve’s AI democratization journey is far from over. They've created an effective, scalable model for bringing data science closer to the people who know the business best and are planning to expand it further. It all works because of the right combination of training, ongoing support, and KNIME’s accessible and easy to learn user interface. 

“This year, our goal is to have at least 30 citizen data scientists fully trained and actively developing AI solutions for their teams by the end of 2025. We also aim to double the number of citizen data scientists by the end of Q2,” concludes Alex Romero.

Learn more about how KNIME can support you or schedule a demo with our customer care team. 

Moeve was supported by ClearPeaks to deliver their AI democratization. Learn more about ClearPeaks’ services here.