Roundtable: Digital Workplace
On the 4 September HCL graciously invited indysource members to De Luytervelde in Eindhoven. We had a pleasant dinner and a great discussion about the Digital Workplace.
Sixteen indysource members, Geert-Jan van Bommel, Director Platform & Infrastructure at AkzoNobel and Erwin de Kort, Global Director User Services at Signify were warmly welcomed in the sunny garden of De Luytervelde. After the social conversations with fellow outsourcing experts, we were invited into the dining room.
Geert-Jan started with some background on his company and talked throughout the first course about AkzoNobel’s sourcing strategy and strategic objectives. After a hostile takeover attempt that was declined by the management of AkzoNobel, there was pressure from the shareholders to increase the performance of the company, hence AkzoNobel promised their shareholders, amongst others, increased profitability. They are planning to achieve that goal by both increasing prices and reducing costs. It was up to Geert-Jan van Bommel to reduce the IT costs. He optimized the IT department by, amongst others, centralization of the IT Department. One of the key drivers to reduce costs is to reduce options for the employees, one size fits all. This helps to reduce complexity and the need for assistance is needed in complex situations. Erwin de Kort confirmed this but said that when one of his C-level superiors has a need outside the standard solution he will be running to make their wishes happy regardless of the standard. The independent advisors discussed the digital workplace further in detail, with a focus on the one size fits all concept.
During the main course, the discussion focused on the success factors of Transitions and Transformation (T&T). In every outsourcing deal, the T&T is a challenge. As a group, we concluded that the people side of T&T is very important. When somebody resists the solution is to explain the reasons and motivations for the change.
When Signify hired HCL the business was Transitioning from being part of Philips to being an independent company. As Signify was developing itself again employee satisfaction was not great. As the as-is situation could be greatly improved the Transition of HCL was relatively smooth. HCL succeeded in bringing down the total tickets by over half and increased the NPS to 80. That could be seen as a very successful Transition.