Category: Knowledge article

By Erik Vuuregge

As a car enthusiast, I enjoy reading TopGear magazine. Besides the magazine, I am potentially interested in their events, videos or merchandising. For readers of the Dutch Margriet magazine or a door-to-door newspaper, the situation may be completely different. So for similar products and services, there can be different value streams. A clever mix of economies of scale and differentiation requires a well thought-out organization.  

Customer value should be the primary starting point here. When you have that in your sight, it becomes easier to optimize and manage in a data-driven way than with a traditional focus on business functions. Value streams offer plenty of guidance because you can analyze all the individual steps required to deliver something of value. This includes monitoring the ultimately delivered value itself.  

You then go through all the successive standard phases of the customer journey: from awareness, evaluate, purchase, delivery to service and/or after-sales. At each step you weigh what can be organized generically and where something specific must be undertaken or set up. With magazines it is important to identify differences and similarities. So in terms of offerings, subscription forms, related activities and so on surrounding target groups. And in terms of supporting functions.  

Similarly, an energy company has different activities and functions. In addition to gas and electricity supply, products and services can be provided. Think of solar panels, charging stations, heat pumps, smart thermostats. Often these are relatively separate value streams and processes organized in silos. While supporting functions such as sales, marketing, service delivery can very well be organized generically due to their product-transcending nature.  

Many benefits

For both the organization and the customer, a smart setup has many advantages. For example, both the energy company and magazine publisher have a much better understanding of the market through centralization of the customer view, allowing you to serve it better and more completely. We must move away from the situation where individual products and services all have their own person on top of the rock, with their own decentralized organized strategy and approach. Instead of compartmentalization and self-interest, the delivery of customer value must take center stage.  

You achieve this through a matrix-like setup, bringing certain things together and making others specific – preferably based on reusable modules. Product owners or others responsible for products and services can make their own choices and take ownership better than ever. At the same time, they benefit from everything that can be set up generically. This applies to both large and small organizations.  

Insight is fundamental to such an organizational and cultural change. A thorough analysis of key business activities is a good start. You then make sure that all processes, functions, resources and systems are in view. Moreover, if you know to whom you deliver which forms of value, then you can align yourself optimally with them. Our experience as Anderson MacGyver shows that this leads to significantly better results.  

Interested in Anderson MacGyver’s solutions for digital services?

Contact our specialists! We are happy to assist you.

By Onno wasser

Education is personalizing thanks to technological advances along the principles of ‘any time, any place, any path, any space’. New parties are claiming a share of the market based on digital platforms with modern online and offline learning concepts. Traditional universities and colleges will have to make organizational, process and IT changes in order to keep up. Anderson MacGyver helps these institutions make the right choices. 

Like any sector, education faces changing social and economic dynamics. Universities and colleges must move efficiently, quickly, agile and scalable with market developments. The broad digitization leads to changing needs among students and other stakeholders, which must be anticipated and responded to. The journey of the customer on the one hand, the student, must become central. On the other hand, also the journey of the employees, the researchers and not least the staff. The student and the researcher demand fit-for-purpose support, the staff demands workable technology to perform their work effectively and efficiently. 

At Utrecht University of Applied Sciences (HU), in view of these developments, a digitalization ambition was formulated several years ago, aimed at personalized education, among other things. “With everything we tackle, we ask ourselves how this makes it easier for the student or teacher,” said Ellen Schuurink, who is responsible for digitalization. “Operations are organized so that students, teachers and researchers can focus optimally on their core tasks.” 

Freedom of motion 

Many higher education organizations, however, are limited in their freedom of movement by the legacy of outdated technology and historically accumulated specificity in processes and IT. In addition, partially decentralized governance and mandatory tendering stand in the way of a proactive approach. The question is: how do traditional institutions in higher education ensure that they can still be agile? 

The corona pandemic has emphasized the urgency even further. “It has become even more visible how important digitalization is,” said Ronald Stolk, Director Center for Information Technology (CIT) and CIO of the University of Groningen. “We are increasingly floating on IT. From a traditional structure, you are too slow to support that quickly and adequately. You therefore need to assign responsibilities further down in the organization: people must be able to make their own decisions to a certain extent in consultation with IT consultants.”

Fit for future

In these changing dynamics, a ‘fit for future’ design of IT is crucial: a stable foundation that is at the same time flexible enough to allow for customer-oriented innovation. Contrary to popular belief, technology is not the starting point of such a transition. On the contrary: you can only start thinking in cohesion about a suitable IT when business activities, operations and organization have been examined. After all, each component requires appropriate support. 

Digital transformations are not limited to modernizing existing IT. “Such a fundamental change process is highly multidisciplinary,” said Rob van den Wijngaard, director of Leiden University’s Administrative Shared Service Center (ASSC). “If you pull a string within one domain, it irrevocably starts to move along elsewhere. The HR component in particular is very important and is quite often overlooked.” 

The ASSC director promotes a multidisciplinary approach that includes aspects such as people and culture, processes, management & organization, customer interaction and information technology. As such, change is always embedded in the big picture. 

Uniformity

That holistic view was the starting point of the analysis Anderson MacGyver conducted at both Hogeschool Utrecht and the aforementioned two universities. In Leiden, this involved all major activities and stakeholders: managements of functional areas such as HR, finance and IT. Plus the people responsible for information management. “The result is a widely supported and driven report and follow-up process,” said ASSC director Van den Wijngaard. 

Anderson MacGyver’s report confirms that for many basic activities, you can suffice with unified processes and solutions. “You can thus benefit, for example, in the HR domain from cloud-based platforms such as Workday or SuccessFactors, which are developed as ‘industry standards’ specifically for higher education or another sector.” 

However, a lot of energy flowed away into insufficiently unified and harmonized basic activities. When you address that, people can put more time and energy into things that make a difference for the university. Van den Wijngaard: “Eighty percent of all things you can organize tightly and as standardized as possible. For the remaining twenty percent, you provide customization or specific solutions, with which you make the difference as a university.” 

Balancing 

Anderson MacGyver helps make that trade-off between ‘uniform’ and ‘specific’. For supporting business activities such as finance, HR and procurement, ideally you want to set up the automation once properly and uniformly to have little to worry about later. In terms of effort – and thus capacity and budgets – the focus can then be placed on supporting the primary, mostly customer, researcher and other end-user oriented activities. 

The technology available to support the uniformly arranged processes are mostly package solutions, the more integrated platforms such as ERP suites or best of breed applications for debtor management, invoice scanning and matching or procurement support, for example. In principle, those packages offer in the standard adequate functionality. Processes should be adapted to them instead of customizing the systems to fit those processes. 

Optimization 

Manager Digitalization Business Operations Ellen Schuurink and her HU colleagues were helped by Anderson MacGyver in the ERP domain: a trajectory around the optimization of the basic administration. “By examining the entire work process and the supporting IT, you get a very good picture of the coherence, including the adjacent financial processes and systems.” 

This also brings up the impact of choices. Schuurink gives an example: “For us, a contract student – who combines work and study – is of a different interest than a 17-year-old who chooses an advanced program in his or her region. The latter will come to us naturally, while for contract students we are competing with other colleges and commercial and non-commercial institutions at home and abroad.” 

“Both categories relate to the administrative process, but for the young student from the region, in terms of CRM, we can probably suffice with a standard solution, while for the contract student we may have to differentiate.” 

Transformation

Ronald Stolk has been responsible for all IT-related matters at the University of Groningen since 2017. In addition to office automation, focusing on HR, finance and facilities issues, among others, there is the support of the research and education domains. The size and diversity of the organization poses challenges for Stolk – also a professor of clinical epidemiology – and his associates when it comes to secure, high-performing, available and appropriate IT support. 

“Universities employ very special and important people,” said the Director of CIT and CIO. “They discover great things for society. This involves pushing the boundaries quite often: building their own solutions for research, inventing things. Those teachers and researchers are part of one of the 11 faculties, all of which are organized differently and thus have a certain degree of autonomy. As such, they have their own requirements regarding the same central IT service.” 

Governance 

Anderson MacGyver has helped deal with that in the best way possible. The Agile transformation that was initiated five years ago has been further developed over time in order to easily translate questions and requests into the most appropriate solutions. Stolk: “The optimal governance is clearly visualized with areas and colors. Moreover, a distinction is made between IT support that you can standardize and IT with which you really distinguish yourself as the University of Groningen.” 

As an example, recently a computing cluster costing tons that was funded from the decentralized research budget was incorporated into the infrastructure. “Sometimes there is a gray area, then somewhere a server is running under a desk or in a broom closet. Then you have a governance challenge. The approach of Anderson MacGyver taught us how best to interpret and adjust those things.” 

In decentralized governance, you can start a dialogue about every solution that should make a difference, adds HU’s Ellen Schuurink. “With a lot of support processes, uniform systems suffice. It is a missed opportunity to do it all on a small scale and each to his own. That does require clear demarcation, where you choose technological solutions that fit the strategy and purpose of use.” 

Interested in Anderson MacGyver’s solutions for digital services?

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By Edwin Wieringa

I want to discuss digital transformation one more time. A widely used but tricky term, not least because it is multi-interpretable. Is it about IT, business or strategy? Are we talking about replacing or modernizing large ERP systems, about digitalization of existing (business) activities and interaction with customers, or is the movement mainly at the strategic-administrative level?   

Besides the fact that digital transformations usually play out across all the aforementioned domains and solutions, another thing is certain: it is not about the slick PowerPoint presentations you so often encounter – at conferences, with IT vendors and, yes, with consultants as well. Sure, it’s all part of it. The question to answer in transformation reaches beyond formulating a vision, it is about how you can realize the implementation in practice. 

That turns out to be a lot trickier. You have to translate the PowerPoint into Excel, so to speak, and into a plan to implement things iteratively, in short-cycled steps. Preferably according to a proven method and approach. In order to realize this structurally for clients, we as strategic consultants have also gone through a process of change: from manual work to ‘productizing’ our methods, models and approach. Now, clients are more in the driver’s seat and at the controls themselves.  

Perspectives    

Defining for Anderson MacGyver is that digital transformations are always viewed by us from different perspectives: customer perspective, business operations, organization, architecture, technology, not to mention the data flowing through it all. In doing so, clients are typically guided through a tried and tested process of models, methods – including reference material, best practices and so on. We see this as our intellectual property.  

Such a process goes far beyond only fine words and supported by ditto pictures, but offers practical tools for implementation and hands-on support if required. Through the mentioned productizing we want to enable the customer to do more steps in this process themselves. The data generated during such a (partial) self-service process will be used as a sector-specific benchmark or other form of reference. That information will gradually become richer and richer, allowing organizations to transform even more accurately. The method itself will also improve as a result.  

Not only advice

Once again: it all starts with a widely supported picture of the organization and a common dot on the horizon. To get that clear, we at Anderson MacGyver naturally offer the trusted personal advice of the best people, where sometimes strange eyes compel so that things get going just that little bit faster or are picked up by someone. And in doing so, we now also deploy products based on the same tools, frameworks, methods and vision that our clients can use themselves.  

In both cases this provides an overview in a very short time, including a detailed roadmap to get where you want to go. In terms of required capabilities, organizational structure, IT solutions, architecture, data management and more. Without speech confusion, because everyone “sees” what it’s about. This is how PowerPoint slowly but surely becomes a reality.  

Interested in Anderson MacGyver’s solutions for digital services?

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Of course, we all know salmon is a tasty fish that is prominently featured on the menus of many restaurants. The association with an IT director comes to mind for far fewer people. Yet salmon and the IT director share an important similarity. 

The similarities

Salmon are known as goal-oriented fish, going through hoops to reach their goal of spawning high in river springs. Through intricate routes, against the current, salmon secure their future each year. 

Purposefully going against the current is something the IT director and salmon have in common. In many companies, IT, digitalization and data are seen as ‘office automation’. Making sure ‘the internet works’, making sure ‘you can log in’, making sure ‘the access passes work’ and at best ‘making sure the customer database is up to date’ and that ‘the webshop is up and running’. 

IT and digitalization are rarely seen as strategically important, and certainly not as so essential that a board seat is allocated to IT/Digitalization. ‘First make sure that everything works …’. The IT director swims against the current with their vision and investment plans. 

This is a strange situation because IT has been ubiquitous from a business management perspective for decades. Every business unit has to deal with it. From logistics to manufacturing, from HR to sales & marketing and from finance to legal, they all use computers, tablets and mobile phones. On these devices there is software that makes their work easier, better and more fun.  

The importance of IT

From a commercial perspective, IT has been important for a long time. An efficient, well-automated operation leads to lower costs and more competitive pricing. Reliable and relevant data on all fronts leads to targeted marketing, predictable market movements, customer and employee management and more. 

Flawless operational and integral IT is indispensable, but just as important is a multi-year strategy on IT and digitalization. Of course, we all have an idea of what needs to improve tomorrow: aligning systems, efficiency, cloud-based, SaaS and a few more buzzwords. All are nice concepts, but they are optimization strokes and it’s all about the bigger end goal. 

Ambitious journey

What really matters is what’s at the top of the river. In the world of salmon, that’s its future, namely spawning grounds. In the world of the real IT visionaries, that’s augmented and virtual reality, digital-mobility, the real global village, fully transparent real-time insightful business processes and much more. And quantum computing that makes all that possible. 

It is important to know that digitalization and digital transformation are not just about tomorrow or next year, but a combination. After all, salmon must swim up the right river tomorrow, but it does so because of its ambitious vista, the spawning grounds that make the journey there worthwhile. A visionary salmon therefore does not belong on, but at the table in the boardroom! 

Interested in Anderson MacGyver’s solutions for digital services?

Contact our specialists! We are happy to assist you.

Recently, I renovated my house. That actually involved a collection of projects, some of which involved the foundation: electricity, heating, plumbing and lighting. The choice of what and how was mainly made together, as a family. But we deliberately kept some subprojects out of the central group process. For example, the home office in the extension, with all the specific functionality needed to do your work well.   

This renovation involved miniature portfolio management. The project at my home illustrates why organizations do this and what ultimately makes the difference in the decision-making process. With portfolio management, you can adequately address organization-wide challenges by thinking from the expected value for the whole. The question is: which projects do you include in this discussion, and which do you not? That depends on how ‘loosely coupled’ they are…  

Highest priority 

Traditionally, you determine which change projects have the highest priority and then allocate time and budget accordingly. But not everything is part of this centrally led discussion. After all, by delivering the right products and services, business managers must achieve results that are in line with the objectives. The what and how of commercialization towards the customer, market or partner ecosystem is a matter for the director responsible.  

In many organizations, this is shifting towards prioritization within agile teams, who are responsible for products with associated functions and customer requirements. Budgeting involves a Dragon’s Den-like setting, where business cases are pitched with a view to the required funding. In the agile world, the product manager or product owner has a key position. 

Loosely coupled

Products and services with which organizations distinguish themselves in the market and achieve business results are relatively ‘loosely coupled’. They are largely independent, but do use the organization’s facilities, support activities and infrastructure. There are always things that need to be organized centrally. For example, when security, finance or compliance are at stake. For that basis you make use of centrally organized services. In the case of my house, good locks, connected smoke detectors and a certified alarm system together ensure that the workspace is protected – you don’t make up a separate solution for that.  

If things are loosely coupled ‘at the front end’ of the business, i.e., operate independently of other systems, then the business director or product manager can arrange distinctive matters themselves. If there is in fact interconnection with, for instance, an ERP system or other IT-legacy, then adjustments must be included in a centrally managed prioritization. Who or what is up first is a matter for business and IT to weigh up. The person responsible for resource planning has a key position here, together with colleagues who are also directly dependent on their business goals and results. You must keep the director of the distinctive business at the front end out of this as much as possible. 

The colour of business activities

In order to support our clients in the best possible way, Anderson MacGyver maps out their business activities and the supporting IT in detail. Depending on the dynamics and differentiation, the business activities are given their own colour. Green, blue, orange and purple indicate the areas in which, for example, investment is needed to keep the basics in order, where efficiency can be gained in supporting technology and where data and technology can increase direct business value.  

The distinctive, loosely coupled business activities should therefore be kept as far as possible from the central portfolio discussion. In this purple domain, it is mainly a matter of assigning them to the right business unit, board member or team. Major changes in the other colors are preferably part of a widely supported prioritization. This is also the case at home. Because nobody wants to end up without electricity and in the cold in a poorly secured house.  

Improving yourself is always a journey of discovery. Of course, you can try and practice blindly and along the way you will certainly make progress. It is smarter to gain insight: things that are going well, but also points that lend themselves to improvement. As a passionate windsurfer, I occasionally allow myself a 360 view from the outside with a camera – a kind of self-assessment. Similarly, the right tools and resources are available for organizations that want to transform and accelerate digitally.    

For digital acceleration, you need to know where digitalization is progressing too slowly before you can kick things into high gear. It could be that in the customer domain, things are moving fast, with for example ‘next best actions’ or streaming data. In contrast, there are more possibilities in the factory or on the asset side. Where do you stand? Where are there still large gaps to bridge?  

Data is the main driver of digitalization, most of the time in conjunction with the application of new technological possibilities, such as equipping maintenance workers with VR glasses or placing sensors in a production environment and physical assets. An important aspect of digital acceleration is that organizations must be equipped to do so – with the right competencies they can make the step to a successful digitalization of the business model or even to a new digital business model.  

Equip your business for digital acceleration 

This often starts with the board, but the rest of the organization must not be left behind either. Assessments, but also training, internal and external academies focus on the human factor. Sometimes it means that the board chooses a different approach. For example, by deciding that data management, in addition to being a centrally supported matter with tools and guidelines, is largely the responsibility of the users themselves. This brings the data closer to the business, which can then steer it.  

Just as I am doing nowadays as a windsurfer… For some time, there have been waterproof cameras that you can connect to your rigging. In this way, you can record your own actions and share them with others, for example. Nowadays, these cameras are so advanced that they film everything around you as if a drone were to follow you. A Matrix-like sensation. Combined with the ability to control and edit on a good cell phone, you literally have a 360-degree view of yourself and the circumstances in your hands. An ideal assessment tool to improve yourself based on recorded facts!  

In data-driven organizations, such a look at yourself in practice often leads to remarkable results. For example, for a business team that will deal with data, it is important that the algorithms are developed further and calibrated regularly. If this is not done, there is a risk of erroneous conclusions. To this end, the business should hire a data scientist, all the while the business manager would rather hire a project manager who will help him or her to increase turnover in the short term. The board can prevent such perverse incentives by appointing/setting targets for digitalization in addition to revenue or margin. Otherwise, the behavior will not change.  

Human potential

As mentioned above, the human component in digital acceleration and transformation plays an important role. A close collaboration with HR, for the continuous learning and development of talent, is crucial. For each individual, role and position, attention should be paid to culture, leadership and knowledge of, for example, business context and stakeholders, in addition to professional development. 

The essence of the story is: digitalization is in the people. Often the weakest link at first, but with the most potential. The assessment should focus especially on all those people involved, practical and context dependent. Digital consultants determine where the most important gaps are, but also where the best business cases are. In other words: where is the biggest difference to be made per unit of time?  

As a windsurfer, I’m going through this transformation; from sharing great moments to taking a critical look at myself, not least via friends’ feedback (my own windsurfing consultants) on my 360-degree self-assessment. This is how we ultimately reach greater heights through digital means. I assure you it works!  

IT is inextricably part of virtually all business activities and processes in the digital age. In order to make the right tech and data choices at board level, an optimal interaction between the IT leadership and the rest of the board is necessary. But that’s where things tend to go wrong. During the CIO Masterclass, with contributions from SPIE CEO Lieve Declercq and Anderson MacGyver co-founder Gerard Wijers, the language barrier was broken down.  

During her introduction, chairwoman Crystal Reijnen lightheartedly but aptly typified how people in the boardroom sometimes talk past one another when it comes to IT decision-making. The Anderson MacGyver consultant quoted an imaginary CEO who, after a day on the road with other directors, suddenly realizes that her company must do more with data. But, before the CIO can even enthusiastically come up with suggestions, the CFO already asked what it will all cost and the CHRO says it shouldn’t have too much impact on the employees. Any more good ideas, anyone?

Yes there are! The CIO’s ERP renewal proposal, for example. It’s needed badly as a foundation for a digital future, but unfortunately no one in the boardroom sees the need for a modernized backend. Recognizable? Quite so. “It’s good that IT is a topic of conversation in the boardroom,” says Reijnen. However, it is only the beginning of a long journey toward a value-driven IT strategy. “To get the maximum value from IT, you do need to have the board on-board.”  

Biggest annoyances 

Anderson MacGyver’s Gerard Wijers then reflected on IT decision making in the boardroom. A complex dynamic that often misses the core, because those involved often have a different point of view. This leads to misunderstanding, misalignment and even annoyance. “In the Netherlands we are rather fond of our freedom of mind and we are therefore rarely shy of opinions. Even if things don’t suit us,” says Wijers, who is also a core lecturer at Nyenrode and the Antwerp Management School. He listed the most important irritations on both sides.  

He listed the top five irritations business leaders have about IT professionals: they make everything complicated (‘good at explaining what’s not possible’), they deliver too slowly (‘dozens of years of backlogs’), they are too expensive (‘unclear business rationale for investments’), insufficiently aligned with the rest of the company (‘they have a different agenda’) and they speak a different language. Wijers: “Clouds, lakes, tribes, sprints – it is certainly not the idiom of an energy or manufacturing company.”  

Of course, the IT leader also has something to complain about. For example, inadequately formulated expectations in relation to a not infrequently unclear business strategy, and in the extension of that: unclear priorities. Another cause for friction is that IT is mainly seen as a cost instead of a source of value – partly because dedicated technology ownership is not anchored in the board. Finally, IT is just too poorly understood by a limited tech-savvy board.

Bridging the gap

What can you do to bridge all these gaps? The suggestions Wijers mentions are logically in the realm of communication, governance, experimentation, simplicity, roadmaps and priorities. More salient is the realization that there are different manifestations of IT (multi-modality) and an IT demand that is balanced with the often-limited delivery capacity. “For all of this, ultimately the people, the teams and leaders make it all possible.”  

That crucial human factor – including the confusion of speech to be avoided – was emphatically addressed in SPIE CEO Lieve Declercq’s contribution. In her transformation program, which included the goal of better aligning IT with the business strategy, she distinguished four key pillars: getting the IT and data house in order, driving innovation, and achieving growth. “As a people-centric company, we place the human factor emphatically at the heart of these changes,” says Declercq.  

Integral strategy

Shortly before, she had told about the reason for the change program within the Dutch branch of the multitechnical service provider. The company has grown strongly and is organized in a decentralized way, partly due to mergers and acquisitions. “Our customers are in sectors where technology plays a fundamental role,” Declercq told us. “Energy companies, factories, physical infrastructures. IT is defining the future of our customers, and therefore our own.”  

Many of these clients were more mature in terms of IT than SPIE itself. It was decided to formulate an integrated strategy from the board, of which IT was an inseparable part. This was then translated to all divisions, functions and people. A modern, future-proof IT environment was the springboard to better business results.

Multi-year program

This required a multi-year program that went beyond combining projects. In addition to discipline, perseverance and dedication, good interaction and coordination between IT and business was crucial. Anderson MacGyver helped to align activities, ambitions, organizational structure and the associated IT support from the beginning. This included selecting and implementing a new core application.  

Apart from the content of the program, according to Lieve Declercq, it is important that the CEO and other board members continuously ask questions. What does IT really mean for the company, for example in relation to a business model that may or may not change? What does the customer expect? What is the focus of IT – and is it cost or value? Is there a process for integrating rapid acquisitions? How do business and IT push each other to greater heights?  

Lieve Declercq: “Asking the right questions helps break down the language barrier. This is not only the responsibility of the IT function, but also of the other board members, including the CEO. IT leaders should expect me to make an effort to understand them.” 

Inclusion of junior managers increases the chances of innovation projects reaching success compared to when senior managers are engaged, according to a study of Rotterdam School of Management (RSM). Experienced managers with a track record of success enjoy the trust of the organization, and are widely regarded as the go-to people for quality ideas. This leads to the HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) effect, which signifies the ignorance of facts; HIPPO’s present opinions as facts, but do so without staying objective, which can lead to faulty decision making with negative consequences in terms of cost, time loss, and loss of team trust. However, the issue can be circumvented utilizing data-driven decision-making.

What is required for a data-driven decision-making culture?

Data eliminates emotion from the decision-making process. The classic 2011 film Moneyball shows that, in an emotion-driven sport – like baseball in the USA – smart choices, and high scores can be achieved by solely looking at data. Nevertheless, soccer clubs in the Netherlands have only recently initiated data collection and data-driven decision making. Perhaps, because this sport is – to an exceptionally high degree – driven by emotion and HIPPO-behavior.

Besides patience and persistence, a report structure based on relevant and quality data is paramount in creating a supported data-driven decision-making culture. A sound justification of the data structure, quality of the data, and sources of algorithms should be available to parry skeptics.

Holistic view of data

At Anderson MacGyver, we see that many of our clients struggle with this challenge. Even if everyone agrees that decisions ought to be taken based on data, it remains difficult to get to, or retain a high quality of data-driven insights. We enjoy aiding our clients in achieving a data-driven decision-making culture by developing a data vision, data strategy, and from there, data-based products or services. We also see that organizations that – with an ostensibly paralyzing perfection – primarily focus on the completeness and correctness of the fundamentals but lose track of the business focus. A balanced analysis and setting the right priorities are the crucial success factors. Only through a holistic view on data, can you ensure that the value of it can be (temporarily) disclosed and the deployed methods maximally contribute to business value.

Maximally equipping HIPPO’s

Are you questioning whether you are extracting the maximum potential from your data? Or how you could transition your decision-making towards a more data-driven process? Do you recognize the HIPPO’s of your organization, and do you wonder how to better inform them? Have a look at our ‘Data to Value’ approach, or visit us during the Big Data Expo on the 14^th and 15^th September 2022 at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht.

Forced to work from home when COVID started, I structured my desk optimally: clean, tidy, ergonomic, and everything I needed within reach. Although my work has not really changed in the past two years, my desk has become crammed and cluttered again. With digital IT landscapes, if you’re not careful, the same thing can happen.

Japanese tidying guru Marie Kondo has described a way to keep your home clean. Her theory is called “tokimeku”, which means that you only keep things that bring you joy. Translated to a digital IT landscape, this becomes “decide which parts of the system landscape make you cheerful”. Knowing this, take action and clean up and continue doing so. Anderson MacGyver has a few tools to help you determine what excites you. What should remain ‘on the desk’ of your digital IT landscape, and what can be cleaned up?

Cleaning up your digital IT landscape using business activities

It starts with identifying the activities that are the right of existence of an organization. To do so I use the Multimodal Business Activity Analysis. Subsequent business activities are sorted among four coloured quadrants -green, blue, orange and purple- in order to analyse if technology investments are in balance and where investments should be made. For example, to ‘keep the desk clean and workable’ I need to decide where new capacities must be defined and where technology enables new products and services compared to technology upgrades forced by solution providers. 

The translation to technology investments is not a mathematical exercise. There are multiple trajectories to embark.  For example, as an energy company, do you choose to be a commodity supplier and go for operational excellence? Or do you deploy advanced technology to support customers as best as possible in their energy transition and go for customer intimacy? The product and the sector remain the same, but the chosen strategy has a major impact on the organisation of business and behind of IT.

No single solution for everything

Many of our customers have historically used an ERP or similar core system. Originally rolled out as a ‘solution for everything’, but increasingly modified and supplemented over the years. In other words, the desk has become fuller and messier again. It lacks overview, which makes it more difficult to operate in a customer- and value-oriented way.

What to do?

Aim for a digital IT landscape in which you give the core sufficient attention, but in which you look at the whole, with related solutions for each business domain. No monolithic ERP that (with or without the necessary customisation) supports everyone’s job, but an adequate and coherent holistic solution that provides optimum support within the individual domains. This may well be a single core application, surrounded by collaborating systems – like the laptop on my desk communicating with my other apps and devices.

Creating value

My work at Anderson MacGyver is about supporting organisations and their leaders in their strategic, operational, and tactical choices. The better and more focused those choices are, the more value is created. That makes me enthusiastic and that is what my workplace should be optimally equipped for. If necessary, with the help of Marie Kondo.

Digitization of products, services and operations can help organizations achieve double-digit growth. For large companies – from retailers, insurance companies, and energy companies to media conglomerates – this means potential extra revenue of tens, to hundreds of millions of euros. In order to really extract that value, thorough self-knowledge is required.

In their efforts to develop digitally, organizations face the challenge of bridging three gaps: a gap between business and technology, between strategy and operation, and finally between exploitation and exploration.

Business and technology must always be closely aligned in the digital world. You can greatly improve that alignment with Agile working, but that usually does not extend to the second gap; anyone who applies the Agile methodology to operational teams may lack strategic focus. The optimal digital organization is able to bridge both gaps.

Separated worlds

In a large B2C organization for which Anderson MacGyver recently completed a project, 38 percent of revenue comes from digital products and services. Naturally, the organisation works in Agile DevOps teams, using external and internal technology platforms. Nevertheless, insufficient speed was achieved in terms of improvement and renewal of the service provision to customers.

The strategic issue turned out to be twofold: the customer focus, growth focus and drive to outperform the competition was strongly present in the various business units, but the technical employees were directed based on daily performance, continuity assurance, security and cost savings. In result, these two worlds did not align enough to realise a sufficient degree of acceleration digitally within the organization.

“Business, management and IT must become more ‘in sync’. Paramount to achieving this is insight into one’s own business activities. What is the added value that you provide as an organization (for customers)? Do you provide a commodity service for a low price, or are you delivering an exclusive niche?”

Setting up a company strategy for a digital organization

As Anderson MacGyver, we have the experience of digital transformations in completely different organizations and sectors. Although the perspective and execution differ per case, the approach is roughly the same.

First, all business activities are classified – from a strategic perspective – on a canvas; the operating model canvas. For each activity, technology and business are brought together within multidisciplinary teams at strategic, coordinating and executive level. Within a digitally mature organization, all teams deliver a type of value that is in line with the company strategy.

Every nine to twelve months one central theme is communicated from the management. That gives a strategic focus on top of Agile working in the rest of the organization.

Consequentially, the gap is bridged in three areas, which enables you to really focus on delivering added value for customers, and ultimately, for yourself. Regardless of the industry.

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