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Martijn Teuben is CIO at leading European logistics provider, Verbrugge International. Here, Martijn explains why change is necessary to ensure the best possible outcome for the business and its customers.
Written by Anna McMahon Produced by Jennifer Davies 3
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Having started life over 60 years ago as a transport company, Verbrugge remains a key player in today’s international breakbulk and bulk logistics. Next to the terminal in Terneuzen (The Netherlands), and with two terminals in Vlissingen (The Netherlands), the company has around 250 trucks on the European roads each day. Aside from its terminal and distribution services, Verbrugge also offers a full range of in-house supportive services such as short and deep sea chartering, port and cargo shipping agency and customs services, along with over one million square metres of warehouse space plus large outdoor areas.
Martijn Teuben is responsible for Verbrugge’s digital strategy while leading the general IT and communications department, software development, security and innovation, as a member of the executive committee led by CEO Martin Verbrugge. Martijn says, “As member of the ‘ExCom’, my goal is continuous alignment between strategy on IT and the business strategy. If you take a look at our company, we aim to adjust to our customers’ requirements as much as possible. Like 5
more often in our industry, we had a lot of legacy systems that were very labour-intensive to maintain and not as adaptive as we would have liked, in order to keep on serving our customers who require more direct insights and greater flexibility. The current ERA is incomparable to one or two decades ago, so you can’t hold on to old setups if you want to lead your industry. The future leaders are the ones that are most adaptable to changing environments and circumstances.” This shift in customer requirements means change is necessary to enable Verbrugge to continue to serve them, and a more innovative digital environment needs to come into play to help redress the balance. Martijn explains,
“We are very flexible when it comes to our customers and the spectrum of products we handle, which is our strength, but it also presents a number of challenges from a legacy perspective. First priority is creating a ‘minimum viable’ landscape within the next two to three years to empower the organisation. During the successive years we’ll be focusing on optimising the full landscape based on business experience and requirements. All together a great challenge that IT addresses together with business stakeholders from all organisational layers. We are a company in transition, not only in terms of our digital transformation, but as a company as a whole.”
SeVen Changing Pillars
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safety
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Innovation
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Digital Transformation
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Business Development
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People
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Communications
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Finance
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Ricoh Business Center and Verbrugge: successful implementation of digital change strategy Over the past few decades, logistics service provider Verbrugge International has undergone significant growth. With this growth, the internal processes – including incoming invoices and procurement – have become increasingly complex. Currently, these processes are mostly done by hand. Perfect timing for far-reaching digitization! With Ricoh Business Center, Verbrugge found a knowledgeable partner for implementing the comprehensive digitization of its information logistics processes over the coming years. The partnership with Ricoh Business Center fits perfectly with the broader digitization strategy currently being implemented throughout the Verbrugge organization. Head of Procurement Joost Visser and Chief Information Officer Martijn Teuben turned to Ricoh to improve the internal information logistics processes.
The challenge Visser: “We are a family-owned business with a passion for logistics. But, we’re behind best-in-class benchmarks when it comes to digitization. We know we are able to improve our effectiveness through digitization. Additional goals cover needs such as: increased efficiency, better process insights and compliancy alignment.
We have included these goals in our digital change strategy. Digital solutions will really make a big difference for our organization. The first project has been the digitization of incoming invoice processing. Until now, on an annual basis, we were processing anything up to 70.000 invoices by hand.”
A fruitful partnership Joost Visser came in contact with Ricoh Business Center and Marco Verwoert through a shared relation. Visser: “We were looking for a new purchasing system and chose S4Financials. After discussing our wishes with S4 Financials owner Marcel Blanken, it was clear we needed more than just a purchasing system. He advised us to talk with Verwoert at Ricoh Business Center.” “Already during the very first meeting, there was a business click. Their approach and way of working really appealed to us. Together, we pinpointed our challenges, after which Ricoh came up with a number of fitting solutions. Ricoh helps us with thinking out-of-the-box, advises on a broad set of issues and, where necessary, provides valuable feedback. There are many people out there who can tell you
what should be done, but only a few who can successfully link advice to fruitful execution. Their digitization of our incoming invoices was the proof of concept. It’s all been implemented as promised.”
Blueprint for further digitization Ricoh advised Verbrugge to opt for a custom-made solution, rather than an off-the-shelf one. Marco Verwoert, Ricoh Business Center’s director and owner, considers this solution a strong basis for a long-term collaboration. “The processes that we’re digitizing right now, will serve as a blueprint for the next step: the digitization of all of Verbrugge’s information logistics. In fact, what we’re putting in place is an innovative solution that meets all of Verbrugge’s digital needs and requirements. It will help kickstart the further digitization process and drive continuous improvement,” Verwoert explains. He adds: “But, we have ample attention for Verbrugge employees. We know that change isn’t always easy. Our consultants are key in this respect: they play a significant role in supporting Verbrugge and its employees in this change. Such support is something that is often
overlooked, but essential for achieving a successful transformation.”
The digital future The first results have already been achieved. Visser: “Thanks to digital invoice processing, our efficiency has doubled, and our lead time has been slashed back by over 60%! What’s more, we now have insight into the status of invoices anytime and anywhere. These results will give our organization a great boost and will help us becoming a digitally future-proof company. We, our employees and our customers will benefit greatly from this transformation!”
Do you want to digitalize even further? If, like Verbrugge’s Joost Visser, you are curious to know what digitization could mean for your company, feel free to contact Marco Verwoert at Ricoh Business Center. Call him on +31 (0)6 55 742 732 or send him an email at marco.verwoert@ricohbusinesscenter.nl
with Ricoh, we implement smart printing & scanning hardware and RPA, which stands for Robotic Process Automation Martijn Teuben CIO Verbrugge is currently running the final year of its ‘Project 20’, which is named after the year 2020, in which the company is looking to achieve results built around seven changing pillars. Martijn says, “Working on Project 20 requires a lot of change management. One of the great things about this company is that our employees show real loyalty, but this also means we do not have many people who are used to change or have experience in other companies, so there is only one known route for them available. That’s understandable, but it can also slow down change. By involving key and end users from the beginning, we aim for best possible engagement 10
and naturally growing ownership and accountability. We’re facing this challenge together and everyone should feel invited and involved during the journey. That’s something that has to be guided, so change management is a primary key to success.” For Verbrugge’s IT, the past two years were marked by
restructuring the department, implementing the agile methodology, expanding resources, designing the digital roadmap, finding the right partners and taking many decisions. Asked about the toughest decision, Martijn answers, “For me, it is not about tough decisions, but about the impact they make. Looking at the digital landscape, for me, it has to be reliable, adaptive and sustainable. From that perspective, we aimed to prevent vendor lockin and also decided not to go for an off-the-shelf ERP-system, but for a hybrid and API-driven ERP environment. We internally build our operational core applications and communication layer, alongside off-the-shelf and SaaS applications for all primary and secondary supporting business services. It’s not the easiest road, but it provides us full control, ultimate flexibility,
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Everything we DO should be adding value Martijn Teuben CIO
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Streamline logistics from door to door.
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phased implementations and continuous business alignment to support optimal adoption. I challenged my team to become the favourite department of the organisation!” In supporting its digital transformation, Verbrugge is working closely with several key partners, each bringing something different to the table. Martijn explains, “As I said before, we
We needed extra insights, and Salesforce really helps us to get things better aligned implemented the agile methodology for software development. Personally, I prefer the pragmatic approach over theoretical training sessions and ‘nagging’ coaches. Sometimes you have to run into the right partner, like I did with Cohesion on this subject. We had an initial meeting with them about software landscapes and development strategies, but we quickly mutually agreed on changing the objectives of the meeting. Their internal lead for their experience lab showed off his great approach towards agile and was already using his experience to help one 15
of the large Dutch banks. This was the guy we were looking for. He assisted us on the agile implementation in 2018, and last month (January 2020), he re-joined us for at least another six months to fulfil the role of scrum master and coach our new business analyst to become product owner. Also, Cohesion’s expertise on continuous development & integration and automated testing helps us to improve our delivery, reliability and quality.”
code framework. Martijn says, “We are aiming to halve our yearly prints within five years. Together with Ricoh, we implement smart printing & scanning hardware and RPA, which stands for Robotic Process Automation. RPA is able to automate many manual processes, as long as they can be defined by parameters and dependencies. We started to automate procurement invoice authorisation and sales invoicing processes, so that they run automatically instead of manually for the greatest part.
Verbrugge is partnering with Ricoh for its hardware and RPA, as well as Thinkwise for its low
“Thinkwise is another company with a great product. At the time when we decided to build our
We transfer Infra, Code and Mindset. As an IT consultancy company, we deliver knowledge on how to automate the IT infrastructure of the top 500 companies in The Netherlands. We automate the infra, from code to production. The most important and difficult step is mindset. IT and management need to come out of their comfort zone and be openminded about the new reality. What we have always wanted to achieve is IT in line with business, and finally the tools are there to realise this. We are here to help.
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www.cohesion.nl
core ourselves, we also wanted to accelerate our software development at a quick pace. We found that the way for us to do it was with low code software, which enables development teams to build software based on a standardised framework instead of continuous deep
coding themselves. Quick development by using building blocks, integrated secure-bydesign and easy cross platform deployment have helped us to accelerate technically.� The final partner Martijn mentions is Salesforce, with which Verbrugge
Cohesion’s expertise on continuous development & integration and automated testing helps us to improve our delivery, reliability and quality 17
enjoys a young but fruitful relationship. He adds, “When we looked at our commercial department, we tended to do things traditionally on spreadsheets with the occasional email to each other. As a result, noone was fully aware of what was going on, which made it very difficult to look to the future. We needed extra insights, and Salesforce really helps us to get things better aligned. The commercial team has been recently restructured and is now ready to get Salesforce implemented to maximise its potential for our business.” In terms of data management, Martijn is not one for generating data for data’s sake. He explains, “Everything we do should add value. For me, the key principle is to have a single entry, exactly when, where and by whom activity is executed. Manual executions may involve manual input if necessary, but automatic data entry generation by digital triggers is the standard. That way, data can be viewed as trustworthy and being used as baseline for successive processes. In the end, all relevant data from within 18
the full landscape will be synced to our data warehouse to present real strategic insights that will impact the company’s decision-making. Logistics is a market that is changing, and changing at a fast rate. To be just as flexible as the market, as well as our customers, is of huge importance to us.” And by continuing to innovate, this offers one way in which
During 2020, we will also have two teams of five masters students from Rotterdam Business School, who will perform research and present proposals on warehouse robotics Martijn and his team are able to keep up with the ever-evolving logistics market, something that Verbrugge isn’t alone in doing. He explains, “I represent Verbrugge within the Steering Committee of Zeeland Connect, a triple helix platform that brings companies, education and government together to jointly face challenges, explore opportunities
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and innovate. Representing a large consortium, we received subsidies regarding autonomous driving, zero emission and the Dare to Share initiative. With Verbrugge, we are also part of a consortium that applies for a European subsidy for a ‘5G blueprint’ project towards a digital environment with less latency and more available bandwidth. “In addition, we are working with students from the
Thinkwise is another company with a great product HZ University of Applied Sciences on implementing digital shipping documents and communications. During 2020, we will also have two teams of five masters students from Rotterdam Business School, who will perform research and present proposals on warehouse robotics. This will give us a minimum of two different ways in which we can use robotics in our warehouses to increase efficiency, speed and safety. Fontys is the other educational institute with a student performing his final internship placement with
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In order to achieve the goals we have set for in the next couple of years, we need to keep the organisation-wide commitment on our IT-strategy
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us, focused on algorithm creation based on data analytics.” On the subject of the position of IT, Martijn concludes, “I am very pleased with the commitment shown by the ExCom. They have shown trust in my approach and support the IT strategy, and you need a company to see the importance of IT to be able to reach its goals. On the
other hand, my IT team now has no excuses not to deliver, but I am proud of their ability to change so far, and I am convinced they will deliver solutions to be proud of. Why are we going to be successful? It’s all about cross-functional alignment and working together to find solutions that meet the needs of more than one department. It is also very important to have the right stakeholders in the company who support the approach. In order to achieve the goals we have set for the next couple of years, we need to keep the organisation-wide commitment on our IT-strategy.” For further information on Verbrugge International, visit www.verbruggeinternational.com Keep an eye out for a new website launching in 2020!
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+31 (0) 115 64 60 00 info@verbrugge.nl www.verbruggeinternational.com
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