Inspirational session on “Data-Driven Management” on 1 November in Amersfoort

16 November 2018

On Thursday 1 November at 2:00 p.m. the participants start trickling into the inspiration session on “Data-Driven Management” at Seats2Meet, which is located above Amersfoort Central Station. Speakers Daniëlle Koning (UWV) and Marteyn Roose (Centraal Beheer Achmea) will talk participants through their practical examples and their own experiences.

We will kick off the afternoon with a short introduction by Marjolein Geesing (Cmotions). She will talk about the main trends and developments in the market, the various dimensions of a data-driven organisation and the challenges of data-driven management that she hears about in conversations with organisations in both public and private sectors.

Challenges for data-driven management

The substantiation of decisions and policy from data sounds very attractive and also requires the necessary preparation within an organization. Data provides many opportunities to gain more insights and to put the citizen and/or customer first. However, there are a number of obstacles to overcome when putting it into practice. Here are a few of them:

• How do I get my management team to support it and connect with it?
• Can we trust the data quality and the ability to combine different data sources across the silos?
• What is the (real) demand from the business?
• Safeguarding knowledge: what roles are there and where do we invest them in the organisation?
• Embedding in organisations: we’ve done the first pilots, now what?
• How can we create a data-driven mindset in the entire organisation?

These dilemmas sound familiar to the participants – they too encounter some of these challenges in their day-to-day practice. Let’s see how UWV and Centraal Beheer Achmea have tackled various challenges.

Focus on the customer at UWV: developing customer journeys

Daniëlle Koning (Senior Market Researcher & Customer Journey Manager) explains that UWV has more than 1 million customers. These customers represent millions of visits to the different websites, millions of letters sent and millions of phone calls received. It would be fair to say they have a huge amount of data.

Data and customer-focused working
UWV got started with data and customer-focused working by developing customer journeys. In the customer’s experience, there is just one single UWV that they interact with. In practice, you can interact with multiple different departments (and sites). When you look from the perspective of customer journeys, you can create a single customer experience. The challenge was to turn a (traditionally) inward-looking organisation outwards: to focus on the customer.

Important conditions
Conditions for designing customer journeys:

• Understanding and uniformity
• Commitment and ownership
• Financing
• Time and capacity
• Actualisation and action

Customer-focused working in practice
Start with a clear objective in mind. The plan was first presented to the management team, so that from here, there would be enough support in the organisation. This made it possible to free up budget and people. Also, a Customer Journey Manager was appointed who will oversee the project.

In order to know whether the objective can be achieved, it is important to have uniformity of concepts in order that everyone is speaking the same language. They also looked at: what are customer journeys, which ones can be distinguished and where does the customer journey actually begin.

When you look from the perspective of the customer’s experience, the customer journey begins before their first moment of interaction with UWV. By doing so, you get an organization motivated to focus externally and you come to other insights that are of importance. You can then support this with the data available.

To create commitment in the organisation, ownership was placed with the directors of different divisions, each having a specific customer journey.

A total of 18 customer journeys were identified through input from various employees and customers. To apply focus, based on the data, they looked at which 6 customer journeys are the most important and started with those.

People within the organisation were involved through sessions with various different departments and sites around the country. Work was done using multidisciplinary teams, across departments, so that staff from every area of expertise could contribute their thoughts and experience what the added value of data can be for customers. This gave everyone ownership in the customer journey.

And on it goes…
The first customer journeys are set to be completed this year. After that, we look again at prioritization to give shape to the other customer journeys.

Centraal Beheer: focus on the customer experience

Next, Marteyn Roose (Private Customers Director at Centraal Beheer Achmea) immersed us in the world of data-driven organisations. He gave us an insight into how he has been able to interpret data intelligence in his own roles at various different organisations.

Within the Centraal Beheer brand there are a number of success factors that have allowed data-driven management to develop well.

Way of working: hard and heart. The way of working is determined by a combination of ‘hard’ customer data (e.g. omnichannel, process mining, personalisation etc.) and the ‘softer’ and more visible side of Centraal Beheer (heart) that you encounter with their staff, a customer council, innovation centre, those little touches of service, the slogan “even apeldoorn bellen” [Give Apeldoorn a call] and so on.

Mindset. In addition to the way of working, it’s also crucial to change the mindset of the employees. Customer service is pivotal for all employees. One example is in the attitudes of the customer service employees. The customer isn’t making a claim, but they do have a problem, and we can help with the solution.

The role and positioning of data & analytics in the organisation. Marteyn talks about where in the organisation the department is best situated and what techniques you can use. More important than the technical possibilities offered by data is that employees from different departments are able to see the value of data-driven working. Take employees through your world of data step by step. Working in multidisciplinary teams plays an important role in securing engagement from different departments and gaining an understanding of each individual’s role.

Innovation for the future. In Marteyn’s vision, it is necessary, alongside the multidisciplinary teams, to leave room for an innovation club to focus on future developments.

Finally
How can you create value for customers within an organisation with (big) data and data analytics?

• Make it easy to understand
• Build for scale and execution
• Validate any opportunities found
• Keep testing and learning

Data-driven management: the lessons learned from the session

What can we learn from these organisations in the area of data-driven management in practice? Both presentations showed:

• how important it is to start with a clear objective in mind,
• with sufficient support from the management team,
• to work from the perspective of the customer’s interests,
• to work across departments (i.e. in multidisciplinary teams),
• and to start small and above all, to start.

This interactive session is part of the platform we want to offer to our partners. A place where they can share their experiences and case studies, discuss issues and inspire each other on topics like data-driven working. This topic has the potential to be followed up some time in the future.

Can’t wait that long? And do you want to be kept up-to-date on the developments of data-driven management, data science and data analytics? Sign up now for our newsletter so you will be the first to hear about the next inspiration session.