Every Man to His Trade
At the start of the collaboration, Van Caem Klerks Group was only using the data generated from open or old orders, all other information needed to be sourced. Hence, traders spent a lot of time manually updating the price lists in Excel. "But that's not a trader's job. A trader has to trade," Wilco says. To ensure that becoming data-driven helps people do what they do best and add value to the business, developing a data strategy was essential.
Putting the Business in the Driver’s Seat
Together with Van Caem Klerks Group, Steven Nooijen and Roel Bertens (Xebia Data & AI) created a high-level data strategy that answers critical questions like the why, what, and how of data and analytics for the organization. The goal was to make the process of transforming data into business value easy to understand for everyone within the company - tech-savvy or not. "By doing this in co-creation, we ensure that the plan comes to life in the organization and that it empowers employees to achieve specific business objectives using data and AI,” Steven adds.
From Strategy to Execution
"We deliver a realistic and pragmatic data strategy that supports execution," says Steven. He adds: "It's an action-oriented document. It translates industry insights and business ambitions into value creation, target architecture, concrete epics, and required change management." In this case, the data strategy sets out three action items for Van Caem Klerks Group that Xebia was able to help with:
- Build a data platform on Azure that will enrich the existing ERP data (orders, invoices) with other data sources (e.g., competitor prices) to build data products for automation and deliver insights.
- Establish a Business Intelligence (BI) Team. From recruiting the right professionals to guiding the team toward delivering the right data products.
- Create a roadmap for the BI Team to deliver value aligned with the data strategy.
"Becoming a data-driven company is not just about getting the technology right. Working with data kickstarts a business transformation that requires a mindset shift. It's more than a one-off IT project, and that's why you need to capture your ambitions in a data strategy." - Steven Nooijen, Head of Data & AI Strategy at Xebia.
Business Intelligence Team
The new BI Team was set up in December 2021 by Xebia's Roel Bertens and then handed over to a newly hired internal Lead, Rik Krouwel. The team includes two Analytics Engineers (from Xebia), an apprentice Analytics Engineer (from Xebia), and a front-end developer.
The BI Team is responsible for translating the strategic goals set by the board into viable data products that generate business value. It is entirely self-supporting and in charge of working with the data platform.
