Networking dinner Wehkamp, April 6 2017

The first part of the program was a guided tour in the impressive new and highly automated Logistic Service Center. In this concrete-steel colossus more than 70.000 shipments are processed every day. Orders are pre-sorted by the technology, ‘hand-picked’ by people and automatically wrapped and set up for dispatch. A great example of the collaboration between human and machine. 

In the next part of the program, CEO Piet Coelewij shared Wehkamp’s vision of a digital company with us. First ingredient for this is the obsession for the customer and customer experience. Transparency and real time feedback is of great importance in this area. This obsession is driven to the maximum, from the belief that even though it hurts at short-term, the customer will value the openness at long-term and will stay loyal to the brand. Other ingredients of the digital strategy are: results are more important than responsibilities, innovating is important to keep up with the speed the market imposes, information and development of employees are necessary conditions for digital development, think big but start small and technology is more than IT.

The implementation of this vision hasn’t been easy and is for the most part a cultural transformation: from a payoff culture to a learning culture. Especially in the area of customer obsession and transparency a lot of work has been done. What helps in this case are the most important KPI’s: 1. the Net Promoter Score, 2. employer satisfaction and 3. the financial results.

After this, Kees Jans complemented the story of Piet by giving insight in the support of this transformation delivered by the technology team. The approach is that multidisciplinary, led by a business responsible, product teams work on solutions which have a direct value for the customer. Every team has a ‘Polestar’ to give direction to. In every team there are technology experts who have the goal to let the teams supply in their needs on their own, which makes them less dependable on others. The motto is: ‘What you have been waiting for yesterday, you can do yourself tomorrow’.

During the magnificent dinner, a few subjects on our association where discussed. Mirjam Verhoeven (CIO de Volksbank) was chosen to be a new member of our board. We are very pleased that Mirjam is strengthening our board! Also we have talked about the Guide Digital duties of care, which the Cyber Security Council has produced this week, and about keeping our association relevant for the responsible for digital transformation at large ICT using companies. The board will also talk about this last matter and will share a proposition with the members.

Summarizing the above: it was another great meeting!