Project:
Intelligen enabled a safe transition from SAS to Snowflake by rewriting legacy code into
Snowflake-native procedures, optimising transformations, and replacing scheduling with Workato orchestration.
Our Client
Our client is Australia’s leading lenders’ mortgage insurance provider, pioneering solutions that enable more Australians to access homeownership sooner. With nearly six decades of experience and a fully ASX-listed presence, they partner with lenders and brokers to reduce deposit barriers and foster financial wellbeing.
Challenges
The organisation faced significant operational and technical challenges as it prepared to retire its legacy SAS environment and transition critical workloads to Snowflake.
Imminent Decommissioning of SAS: The existing SAS platform was scheduled to be decommissioned at the end of the year, creating a fixed and urgent timeline for migration.
Dependence on Legacy SAS Jobs: Numerous business-critical SAS jobs were deeply embedded in operational processes, making the transition complex and high-risk if not managed effectively.
Migration Complexity: A substantial portion of SAS logic, data transformations and scheduling dependencies required re-engineering to align with Snowflake’s architecture and processing patterns.
Risk of Operational Disruption: Without a structured migration plan, there was a heightened risk of service interruptions, delays in data processing and downstream reporting failures.
Lack of Modernisation Strategy: The organisation had not established a clear strategy for replacing SAS capabilities with Snowflake-native features, such as task orchestration, optimisation, and performance tuning.
Skill Gaps in New Technologies: Existing teams were highly familiar with SAS but had limited experience with Snowflake, increasing reliance on external support and slowing migration momentum.
Solutions
Intelligen ensured a smooth and controlled transition from SAS to Snowflake, reducing operational risk and uplifting their data engineering capabilities. Our approach focused on:
Re-engineering SAS Code: Systematically rewriting legacy SAS programs into Snowflake-native stored procedures to modernise processing and eliminate reliance on the decommissioned platform.
Optimising Transformation Logic: Translating SAS data transformation patterns into efficient SQL-based Snowflake workflows aligned with best-practice architectural principles.
Streamlining Execution Processes: Designing Workato-based orchestration to replace legacy scheduling dependencies and ensure consistent, reliable execution of migrated jobs.
Enhancing Maintainability: Structuring the new stored procedures for clarity, reusability and ease of ongoing maintenance by internal teams.
Source Code Migration: Coinciding with this project was a business migration of source code from Bitbucket to Github and new deployment processes. All new code was added to Github and changes managed and deployed with new business processes.
Reducing Operational Risk: Validating migrated workloads against SAS output to ensure accuracy, minimise disruption and maintain continuity of business-critical processes. Engaged with business owners to ensure new process outputs met their requirements.
Building Internal Capability:
Equipping teams with knowledge of Snowflake-native development patterns to reduce dependency on legacy tooling and support long-term adoption.
Outcome
Intelligen successfully rewrote the identified SAS code into Snowflake stored procedures and completed partial testing to validate core functionality and alignment with expected outputs. All the required processes were deployed and approved by the Business owners. Workato workflows were deployed and scheduled to ensure seamless continuity of each business process. Each process was documented to aid in any future changes that may be required.
