Ivo Cools “Offshoring offers IT people who produce more for a lower budget”13

Magazine. Vol. 03, June, 2008.

Editorial: Unknown, unloved 3Umicore, KBC, Electrabel: IT staffing revealed 4Achmea about its successful outsourcing 8Strategic motives behind outsourcing 12Unified Communications: change in culture 14Outsourcing: 7 key areas 16Column: getting change underway 18

Edwin D’Hondt “IT strategy based on knowledge management”4

Hans Van Der Zwaag “Offer experiences to your employees”14

Piet Van Petegem “Get a change underway”18

Paul Piebinga “Not many companies succeed in standardizing IT”8

ABOUT CIONET MAGAZINECIOnet Magazine is a CIOnet initiative, published quarterly (April, June, October, December) and sent directly to CIOnet members and as a supplement to Data News.

Produced by:Roularta Custom MediaPublishing Director:Hendrik Deckers (hendrik@cionet.com)Editorial coordinator:Kurt Focquaert(kurt.focquaert@roularta.be)Photographs by:Thomas De Boever, Ruud Jonkers, Jan LocusPrinted by:Roularta Printing

Advertising agency: Exphose (Erwin Van den Brande – erwin@exphose.be)

2

The Technology Paradox

The shortage of IT talent is one of the most cru-cial issues a CIO faces today and will continue to face in the coming years. Research shows that a lack of skilled people is one of the primary factors driving outsourcing. Academia Belgica – the special interest group (SIG) that works on improving the cooperation between the academics and the CIO’s – focuses at the moment on promoting IT to young people. How do we make IT more attractive as a sector, as a career and as a curriculum? And can this help us to solve the ‘Quest for IT talent’? Promote or dump?

The SIG’s last meeting where more than 30 rep-resentatives of IT departments, vendors, aca-demics and media joined, revealed an interesting paradox. “We need to promote technology – we need more nerds!” was the opinion of the aca-demics from the faculties of engineering. “No, we need more right-brainers and should dump the term technology”, replied the professors from the economic faculties.

Of course both were correct. Thé IT person doesn’t exist. Like in the world of construction – where we have builders, engineers, architects, project managers and controllers, etc – we also have a range of different IT profi les, part of them technical by nature, the other part not at all. Strangely enough we still have the tendency not to differentiate between these profi les and we still talk about thé IT person. In this third issue of CIOnet Magazine we focus on the human side of IT. How do we fi nd, attract and retain the right people in our IT departments? How do we manage the competencies and knowledge inside the company? When do we decide to outsource parts of our organization and processes? What’s the best strategy for out-sourcing and offshoring? Joining CIOnetAre you a CIO with at least 20 people in your IT department or an IT Manager reporting to a CIO in an IT department with at least 200 people? Are you interested in joining CIOnet? Then send an email to an@cionet.com with your request and contact information.

HENDRIK DECKERSManaging Director - CIOnethendrik@cionet.com

www.cionet.com

BU

SIN

ES

S P

AR

TNE

RS

PREMIUM BUSINESSPARTNER

3

Research into the motives behind outsourcing IT pinpoints the prob-lem. It is not just the quest for cost reduction or more fl exibility that

leads to outsourcing, but above all the conclusion that Belgian business-es are simply not managing to get hold of the IT people they need. Fur-thermore, it does not look as though this is going to change anytime soon. The profession of IT specialist is weighed down, quite wrongly, by a negative image that is making younger people feel less inclined to opt for training in information technology.

Even though IT is a growth sector, in the long run the basic human capital necessary to support such growth is just not available. That is a cause for concern for the entire Belgian economy. Right now CIOs are already struggling with the phenomenon when they fi nd themselves unable to fi ll certain vacancies. So outsourcing tasks to India or China is only resolving a specifi c practical problem, and does not get to the heart of the matter.

In order to turn the tide, we fi rst have to polish up the image of IT people. Unknown, unloved, or so it seems here. Most young people associate in-formation technology with programming alone. They are unaware that the convergence between IT and business makes for some interesting hy-brids. The use of graphics applications in the medical sector is one good example of this. IT can immerse you in the business, and vice versa.

Although there is now a PC in pretty much every living room, young peo-ple still know virtually nothing about the way in which IT has grown into becoming the nervous system of our information society. Straight away, that’s a considerable reproach for the education system. Clearly, IT mer-its a place in the overall education of our young people, alongside lan-guages, mathematics and science. The media too does not escape criti-cism. The often negative coverage about viruses and hackers helps to defi ne IT’s image among the general public. There never seems to be space for good news.

From a social perspective, IT is a young discipline. It has been main-stream for barely thirty years. Yet in view of the importance of IT in our society today, we are gradually approaching a certain state of alarm. Asia and North Africa are rushing through two industrial cycles. Yesterday they were still agricultural areas. Today they have a place in the digital world. And what of tomorrow? We no longer have much of our head start left. It is therefore high time to upgrade IT training and the profession of information specialist.

Unknown, unloved

CARL TILKIN-FRANSSENSCIO – KBCPresident Advisory Board CIOnet Belgium

Editorial

4

Special feature

Strategic HR POLICY

It is important for IT to evolve along with the business, and for that evolution to be well root-

ed in the overall IT policy.” So says Edwin D’Hondt, CIO with Umicore. The company spe-cializes in materials technology and precious metal products. There are two hundred IT people working in Umicore’s Information Systems de-partment, eighty of which are external staff. They are responsible for the company’s administration. At Umicore, there are seven thousand PC users and three thousand SAP users. “The evolution of the environment in which the company operates

represents a big challenge in the area of IT. The complexity of the business models is growing constantly, there is globalization, and so on. At the same time, IT is also evolving very fast. So it is a good idea to follow the lesson well and also to anticipate the opportunities that arise from IT.”

IT people also need to networkJust as previous editions of CIOnet Magazine have illustrated, the hard thing in this is to gear business and IT to one another as best as possi-ble. “The business side relies on IT being suffi -ciently fl exible for supporting market opportuni-ties rapidly”, says Edwin D’Hondt. However, from the IT side this does not always seem easy to or-ganize. “The business side tends to have the idea that IT should guarantee a supportive compe-tence of the total lifecycle of the IT solutions, and that at the same time IT people can follow a nor-mal career path. That is often not so obvious.” When an organization decides to switch off its mainframe, what should happen to all of those employees who have spent their whole career immersed in Cobol? Quite plainly, it is a challenge to have those IT people swap over to a new job. “There is enough to do within IT to bring employ-ees regularly into contact with different jobs. It is important that they do not stay glued to the same chair for years. IT people have to network more. Talking with other members of the company’s staff, or with IT people from other organizations and sectors, allows them to broaden their fi eld of vision. It is important for IT to climb down from its ivory tower.”

The IT sector has obviously learned some lessons from the job auctioning that got so out of hand in the 90s. Those lessons translate into a clear HR policy in terms of IT staffi ng and recruitment. Companies are making a point of only attracting the right profi les. They are aiming for the ideal balance between internal and external staff. And when they are recruiting, they set the standard high.

PICTUREEdwin D’Hondt, CIO at Umicore: “I prefer an IT strategy based on knowledge management. You can indeed save costs by hiving off certain activities, but it also means losing much of the internally accumulated knowledge.”

”

IT staffi ng revealed

>

PICTUREFrank Noten, head of HRM for the ICT division at KBC Group: “Many aspects help to defi ne the HR policy of the IT department: outsourcing and offshoring, IT governance, the tension in the IT job market, and so on.”

At the same time, the company’s business side ex-pects IT costs to fall or at least to remain at the same level. “That vision means a certain risk”, be-lieves Edwin D’Hondt. “Moving forward purely on cost reduction can mean jeopardizing your internal IT knowledge. For that reason I prefer an approach based on knowledge management. You can in-deed save costs if you hive off certain activities and hire external staff instead, but that means losing much of the previously accumulated knowledge.” Edwin D’Hondt therefore argues for a transforma-tion of the traditional IT team, with a strong focus on the individual. “You have to emphasize the IT department’s strong points, and involve individual employees in the company’s vision at fi rst hand. Only by carefully explaining what the core activities are for IT do the employees gain an insight into the direction that the company is planning to go in. It also helps them understand better why the com-pany is opting to outsource certain aspects of IT, and lets them express sooner in what way they would like to contribute towards the core business of IT.”

Shifts infl uence ITKBC is also fi nding it challenging to attract and in-deed keep the right IT staff. The bank has a big IT organization: all together it has almost 4,300 IT people, just two thousand of whom are internal

employees in Belgium. This year KBC’s IT budget amounts to eight hundred million euro. “Over the years there have been a couple of shifts in our HR strategy”, says Frank Noten, head of HRM of the ICT division at KBC Group. “Outsourcing and off-shoring, IT governance and globalization, the evo-lution of the IT architecture and in the IT job market: these are all factors that have helped form the HR policy of the IT department.” One constant remains that KBC prefers to fi ll key roles and management functions from among its own staff members, al-lowing them the opportunity to advance. In addi-tion, the company recruits a mix of school leavers and more experienced profiles, with or without qualifi cations in IT. “We attract ICT bachelors and masters. But, after some training in our ICT Acade-my, new employees with different degrees, such as economics, mathematics or science, are also able to land a job in IT.”

KBC is seeing an evolution in the competences re-quired of its IT staff. “We are tending to be looking more for people who would like to work on interna-tional projects. Aside from the technical knowledge and skills, the importance of personal abilities has also risen greatly. A good IT person not only knows the technology, but is also communicative, able to work well in a team, deal with customers easily, and so forth.” The company is doing all it can to

5

get that notion across to the academic world and to the students themselves. “We try to assist as closely as possible in training, among other things by presenting cases, sponsoring professorships and offering trainee placements.” However, in spite of all the efforts, there is still a shortage of IT people in the Belgian market. KBC is solving the acute need for specifi c profi les by engaging ex-ternal staff for the shorter term. For the longer term, the company prefers to train new employ-ees internally. “We offer our employees a great deal of career opportunities and provide them with guidance and coaching”, adds Frank Noten. “At the same time we are quite open about the required competence and the associated salary level.” Of course, the advantage of a large organi-zation like KBC is that it offers a wide range of op-tions for advancing to technology specialist or to manager, both nationally and internationally.

Competence strategy forms starting pointNaturally, before you attract and train people, as a company you have to be sure of what profi les you need. For four years, Luc Olbrechts was closely involved in the HR part of the IT transfor-mation within Electrabel. The deregulation of the energy market and the acquisition by Suez meant

that Electrabel’s decentralized IT approach was ready for a revamped strategy. “The assignment was to centralize IT, achieve proper integration between business and IT and adapt our IT model to suit the new, European context. For this rea-son we fi rst developed a competence strategy. We wanted to know how many and what kind of IT people we would need for that. The insight into the required competence formed the basis for the further strategy.” Electrabel’s approach had a signifi cant infl uence on the recruiting policy. In-deed the competence strategy indicated which profi les the company had to recruit in the short term, which ones it could develop internally and which ones it would have to phase out or reorien-tate. In three years, the transformation of the IT competence that resulted from this produced a saving for Electrabel of about seven million euro. The company cut back more than one hundred jobs, mainly infrastructure related functions, via an advancement plan, outsourcing and a retire-ment plan for older employees. At the same time, over a two-year period there were seventy-five recruitments, mostly project leaders, service de-livery managers and specialists in process inte-gration.

Job atlas“It is important to complete a couple of success-ful projects early”, explains Luc Olbrechts. “This helps you create a sound basis for the projects that follow.” The experience from the fi rst project phase served as guideline for the further develop-ment and implementation of the renewed HR policy. “One of the key points was composing a job atlas. We analyzed the business processes, linked the associated IT processes to them, and allocated them to various IT jobs. In that way we were able to map fourteen different job descrip-tions and competence profiles.” The job atlas gave Electrabel a clearer view of the available and required IT resources. “We linked that approach to performance management”, adds Luc Ol-brechts. “Through a portal we have access to a tool for evaluating and validating the competence of employees. For instance we are able to draw up the most suitable training plan for each indi-vidual IT person, in order to give him or her the best possible support both in their current role and in the future.”

Special feature

6

PICTURELuc Olbrechts, HR manager at Electrabel ITS: “We started out from a competence strategy. We mapped the jobs and profi les, in order to obtain a view of the available and necessary IT resources.”

>

Data theft, hacking, denial of service. You can get hit anywhere, anytime. So, you need to protect your business�’ critical applications and increase the security and resilience of your infrastructure. After all, you want to minimise digital intrusion that can create financial damage, loss of reputation and reduced productivity. BT knows the threats you face. As a leading IT Services company, we help our customers to develop and implement a comprehensive security policy. With over 100 years of own experience, but also with the unique expertise of Infonet, Counterpane Internet Security and International Network Services (INS), BT can offer an unrivalled set of managed security services. Ranging from secure networking, threat management, intrusion detection, application security to consultancy services. So, with BT�’s security solutions you can think bigger about the future of your business.

Does your company have the best security?

www.bt.com/globalservices

A very complicated project has been wrapped up and Paul Piebinga is a happy man. He

explains: “Seven years ago we began centralizing our IT, which was spread out across the entire company. In 2001, that structure was causing a number of diffi culties. It was clear that it was be-coming increasingly hard to do portfolio-wide business with our customers, because we were unable to see beyond the boundaries of a divi-sion. For that reason we decided fi rst to central-ize IT, so that afterwards we would be able to tackle the business problem properly. In that same period, ten mergers also took place, which made it even more important to move everything

into one line. The plan of action was focused on centralizing, standardizing and fi nally optimizing.” He jokes: “If I had to organize a dinner party for all of the companies that succeeded in it, the evening would not really cost me much. If I had to organize that same dinner party for all of the com-panies that had tried it, I would probably have to hire the RAI exhibition centre.”

Internal or external?The infrastructure was tackled and, under Wout Kok’s lead, the entire IT was integrated into one company, Group IT Services where some 2,600 people work. Ten computer centers were cut back to two, where later on two were added from InterPolis and one type of workstation was opted for. Paul Piebinga: “During that whole project we were constantly working on standardizing more and more infrastructure components and on bringing them in line with the market. All of that

took a great deal of time, energy and manpower. Gradually it became clear that the added value and Achmea’s competitive strength were not so much determined by the way in which IT was de-ployed, in other words where the actual manual work was done, but far more by where and how IT was deployed. A few years ago, therefore, we drew up a sourcing strategy, which had the ulti-

In 2006, Achmea Group IT Services (GITS), Achmea’s internal IT service provider, started a big outsourcing project under which three parts (data centers, work-stations and network and communication) were outsourced in full. A massive process that was completed within eighteen months. Paul Piebinga (GITS chief executive) and his right-hand man Wout Kok were responsible for this process, which was supervised by management consultants Quint Wellington Redwood.

PICTUREPaul Piebinga held ultimate responsibility for Group IT Services at Achmea until 1 April 2008. Over the past six years Piebinga has been responsible for Achmea’s IT.

Proven partnershipAchmea about its successful outsourcing

Special feature

8

“Benchmarks ensure that we outsource at going

market prices.”

PICTUREWithin Achmea’s Group IT Services, Wout Kok is responsible for the infrastructure operation and procurement.

mate goal of focusing Achmea increasingly on controlling its IT, rather than on administering it. We look to see where we can best invest our en-ergy and what mix of activities we should do our-selves and what we should do with partners, so that the total package is as effective as possible.”

Wout Kok adds: “Focus on steering it, rather than wanting to do it yourself. In every area, you have to see whether you have the operational scale for doing things yourself, or whether it would be bet-ter to pass that over to companies that have that particular discipline as their core business. If you carry on doing everything yourself, you also have to spend money. More money in fact. We made a fi nancial model for if we were to do it ourselves, and a model for if we were to outsource every-thing. From a fi nancial perspective, outsourcing was found to comply better with the requirements of good business sense.”

BenchmarksBut then, who would be the most suitable parties to outsource parts of the IT infrastructure to? Ac-cording to Paul Piebinga that was not too tricky: “All IT companies can do roughly the same things, for about the same price. So tendering then becomes a matter of comparing promises, amplifying marginal differences. Consequently, in August 2006, we proposed to our Board of Di-rectors not to go out to tender, but rather to look back over our experiences of the preceding three years. This brought out a top fi ve of partners with which we had worked well.” Wout Kok takes up this point: “All that sounds fi ne. You make your choice, but now how do you ensure that the part-ner’s service offering is actually up to the mark? In order to acquire a good overview, we first de-scribed in full the entire service provision to our customers. Then, together with Gartner, we made benchmarks of all of the components of the process. This put us in a position to assess the various offerings for market conformity. Then, of course, the partners only had to make an offer for the part that applied to them. The partners ul-

timately remaining, Atos Origin, Getronics Pink-Roccade and KPN, were able to conform to the fi ndings of the Gartner benchmarks. Therefore, by defi nition we knew that the pricing was right. Certainly, there was some keen negotiating, but nobody ended up being fl eeced.”

Process“In this process Quint acted mainly as sparring partner”, believes Paul Piebinga. “It was together with Quint that we formed our images of what ex-actly we wanted and how we saw our role in IT. Quint has the means to crystallize such a vision

and to help with the implementation.” Menzo Meijer (Principal Consultant) of Quint adds: “The six months that we were working on the imple-mentation of the outsourcing project was a kind of simultaneous chess game. Three projects, three contracts. A rigid control. That was only possible due to the good relationship with Ach-mea and because Quint had the relevant knowl-edge for being able to supervise the process. The great thing is that we did not get tired of one an-other.” Wout Kok laughs: “For there is that risk, when you work for so long together. Things can get stale and you begin to deliver poorer quality.” Above all he was happy with the controlled way in which the whole process ran: “I had never

Special feature

9

“We want it to work, but at a normal price.”

>

10

Special feature

expected that we would manage it. The prepara-tory stage began in August 2006. That was when we defined the technology roadmap together with Quint. The deadline was 1 July 2007, in the end it became 12 July.”

FlawsNaturally, such a large-scale process is bound to have its fl aws too. About this Paul Piebinga says: “I think that the greatest mistake that we made was the fact that we did not properly involve the Works Council in the process. We overfed them with information and so there came to be too much emphasis on the complexity of the whole. Furthermore, it was a very long process that was also at one point interrupted by the merger with InterPolis, so that there were different start and stop times. For the people it is devastating. As long as three years ago, the staff knew that we were going to outsource, but all the same it did take a long time.”

FutureNonetheless, the end is not in sight. Paul Piebin-ga sighs: “As far as we are able, we have put

things in order on the infrastructure level. Howev-er, you cannot standardize your infrastructure without tackling the application level too; that will be happening over the next few years. We are now able to focus on restructuring our applica-tions and converging the different application functions that we have.”

480 million eurosAchmea’s entire IT infrastructure is out-sourced to three parties: Atos Origin (data centres), KPN (network and communica-tion) and Getronics PinkRoccade (work-stations). The total value of the deal with the three partners is 480 million euros over fi ve years. Management consultants Quint Wellington Redwood led the project super-vision. The total infrastructure was trans-ferred to the partners with effect from the beginning of 2008. Thus, contractually that did represent a ‘big bang’, but the ultimate transition will be fi nished off in the coming eighteen months. Earning back the invest-ment starts in a year and nine months.

>

PICTUREPaul Piebinga (l.) and Wout Kok (r.), Achmea, together with Menzo Meijer, Quint Wellington Redwood: their collaboration was a kind of a chess game.

11

Building RelationshipsSharing KnowledgeGrowing your Network

CIOnet is the first online network that empowers CIO’s & ICT Managersto network more efficiently for business.

CIOnet is an invitation-only business network with strict admission criteria. Please find all details on www.cionet.com

Not a member yet, but think you qualify? Contact an@cionet.com for more info.

12

Special feature

Record Bank is a full subsidiary of the ING Group, originating from the merger and ac-

quisition of all eight organizations. The bank pro-vides loan, savings and insurance products amongst others. Record Bank has 700 employ-ees in-house and a network of 750 independent agents. In view of the background to Record Bank’s origin, there was a great need for a new IT environment. For this reason the bank developed

a model of selective sourcing based on three pil-lars: a new infrastructure with full migration to the banking package Thaler v2, the defi nition of new processes based on ITIL with associated SLA’s, and fi nally attention to the governance aspect of IT. “Outsourcing was the only way to tackle this”,

claims Louis Mahy, CIO with Record Bank. “We did not have enough IT people of our own to cope with such a major revamp. Furthermore, the project was urgent in nature. Stability had to be brought about quickly.”

Record Bank decided to outsource the new infra-structure with different partners. The new Unix and Windows environments were accommodat-ed with HP Belgium, which rented data center space from Belgacom for the purpose. Telindus became responsible for the new network of the independent agents. Getronics elaborated a standard PC confi guration for the workstations in the agencies. Finally Record Bank transferred the print shop from ING to Joos-Ardatis. For support-ing the IT processes, the bank is applying ITIL procedures. The company opted for the solution of HP OpenView Service Desk, among others for incident management, request for change man-agement and user administration. Record Bank entrusted that solution to Getronics. “Since the infrastructure and applications have been out-sourced, IT is fulfilling an entirely new role with us”, adds Louis Mahy. “IT has evolved from a pure necessity into a strategic trump card. Not only is outsourcing having a direct cost saving ef-fect, it also allows costs to be kept better under control.” Moreover, Record Bank’s IT infrastruc-ture is now ready to support further growth of the organization, for example if an acquisition should take place once again. “In the past IT actually used to put the brake on that kind of situation. The present IT model is also reusable within other group companies.”

Outsourcing provides a solution to the shortage of IT people and the persistent pressure on IT budgets. Record Bank and Belgacom explain their strategic choice.

PICTURELouis Mahy, CIO with Record Bank: “IT acquired an entirely new role with us. IT has evolved from a pure necessity into a strategic trump card.”

A strategic choiceMotives behind outsourcing

Special feature

13

Offshoring as strategic choiceBelgacom has had experience with outsourcing for a long time. The company has been working for over ten years with partners in India for its software development. “We are in a fast growing business”, says Ivo Cools, vice president Service Center & Remote Infrastructure Operations with Belgacom. “At the end of the nineties we were not fi nding enough new employees to continue to meet the growing demand for applications. How-ever, the necessary competence does exist in In-dia. Among our Indian partners we have, in prin-ciple, about 300,000 developers ready to help

us.” For a while, Belgacom also had an offshoring project running in Vietnam. The standard of infra-structure, training and language knowledge was found to be quite a bit lower than in India. “As far as we are concerned, India continues to be the best environment for application development. In 2006 we thoroughly evaluated and confi rmed our sourcing strategy.”

That strategy is aimed, amongst other things, at fi nding the right balance between the company’s own employees and offshoring. Belgacom opted for the solution that guarantees the lowest costs over the long term. “When we fi rst turned to India, it was to get around the capacity problem in the Belgian IT recruitment market”, explains Ivo

Cools. “These days it is a strategic choice. Off-shoring offers us a scaleable, fl exible and effi cient group of IT people, who produce more for a lower budget.” Scalability in particular is important. De-pending on need, via its Indian partners, Belga-com can set more or fewer developers to work. A Belgian IT team of the company’s own does not provide that fl exibility. “In that way, offshoring has ensured that we are able to organize IT from a business approach: now we are genuinely busi-ness needs driven, instead of resource driven.” According to Ivo Cools, the fact that a large part of the knowledge concerning the development of

applications, and concerning the applications themselves, is situated outside the company is not only a problem with outsourcing. “You also have turnover amongst your own employees. With a sound program for knowledge contain-ment management your can keep knowledge management well under control with offshoring.” About 95 percent of the coding of the applica-tions is done in India, in addition to 70 percent of the application tests and 40 percent of the func-tional analysis and the design. Architecture is only 5 percent subcontracted. “We prefer to control that part ourselves. We are really strict about any-thing to do with ITIL: change management, ticket handling, that kind of thing. We do not believe that you can outsource everything.”

PICTUREIvo Cools, vice president Service Center & Remote Infrastructure Operations with Belgacom:“Offshoring is a strategic choice. It offers us a scaleable, fl exible and effi cient group of IT people, who produce more for a lower budget.”

14

The subject was unraveled during a meeting that CIOnet organized in the Netherlands at

the end of April. Guus Pijpers, known for his book ‘On an Information Diet’, (see also CIOnet Mag 2) stressed the necessity for Unifi ed Communica-tions. More than half of the attendees receive over 80 email messages a day, yet only a few of them go in for Unifi ed Communications. “We are facing information overload”, concludes Guus Pijpers. According to him, technical aids are all very well, but the problem is with people. As peo-ple, we have to be smarter in our work, and the

information has to fit in better with individual needs. For this reason, Guus Pijpers is arguing for a change in the communication culture into a culture based more on the needs of the recipient rather than the interests of the sender. “Naturally you can use Unifi ed Communications for reduc-ing your costs, but the real reason for introducing it has to be for dovetailing better with human ca-pabilities.”

The experience economy“One of our HR staff members was no good with technology. She had the system explained to her, and then she said: ‘Fantastic, I can do that at home too with my children in New Zealand’. Peo-ple are aware of the possibilities from their home life and would like that at work as well.” So ex-plains Hans Van Der Zwaag, Director of ICT & Fa-cilities with PGGM on the subject of their Unifi ed Communications system, with which they have been working for some time now.

PGGM, these days a public limited company that does the administration for pension funds, has 1,200 workstations, and 250 people there have a PDA. Unifi ed Communications works on the ba-sis of Microsoft products: Exchange, Outlook (with Outlook Web Access), ActiveSync, Voice Access, Exchange Unifi ed Messaging and in ad-dition there is software from NEC Philips in place for integrating with the telephone exchange (PABX). These products bring Unifi ed Communi-cations in the form of instant messaging (‘chat’), videoconferencing, linking with telephony, and livemeeting – remote collaboration. Linking with the telephone exchange makes it possible to switch from one form of communication to an-other.

“One of the greatest advantages is that you can see at a glance who is active on it,” explains Hans Van Der Zwaag, “and if someone phones you, your status on the screen changes to ‘busy’. ‘Presence’ is useful here; it is one of the powerful options of Unified Communications.” Mobile phones are involved in it too. For instance, you can listen to your emails on your mobile phone.One of the main reasons for introducing this kind

Pension fund manager PGGM and Rabobank have introduced Unifi ed Commu-nications in their organizations. It has led to a change in culture and calls for due guidance.

PICTUREHans Van Der Zwaag, Director of ICT & Facilities with PGGM: “If you want to be an attractive employer in the jobs market, you have to offer experiences to your employees.”

Change in cultureUnifi ed Communications

Case study

15

PICTUREPieter Ketting, deputy director of Rabobank’s Group ICT: “We want to place more responsibility with the employee. That is quite a challenge: we will have to give people trust.”

of system lies in ‘generation Y’, the younger em-ployees. “This generation is accustomed to doing ten things at once: chat, email, documents, tele-phone, and so that imposes demands on an or-ganization”, says Hans Van Der Zwaag. He be-lieves that we are moving towards an ‘experience economy’, and nowadays employers are required to offer experiences. That should not be a low pri-ority, if you want to be an attractive employer in the jobs market. And you should not be wary of the costs either, for Hans Van Der Zwaag claims that those costs are “just a tenner or so per year per employee”.

The experiences have been positive up to now. The target that half of the staff should have used the system within a year has been achieved. In spite of the increased communication possibili-ties, to date no decline in the number of emails has been seen yet. Now and again, stored email traffi c does look like a “saved chat session”, says Hans Van Der Zwaag, yet he adds that he had not had any specifi c expectations about this be-forehand. Video is experiencing only limited us-age, one of the main factors being that the staff members do sit relatively close to one another.

Rabo UnpluggedRabo is taking action on the construction of a completely new offi ce for an entirely new way of working. “Soon we will no longer be asking our employees ‘where were you’, but rather ‘what are you doing here’”, explains Pieter Ketting, deputy director of Rabobank’s Group ICT. This new way of working, dubbed ‘Rabo Unplugged’, is prompted by a clear vision of the future, and everything within that framework is being ap-proached: from the way the new building is being laid out, right through to the IT systems. Depart-ments involved in this program are IT, HR and fa-cility management.

“First we want to move towards two devices per employee: a telephone and a laptop”, says Pieter Ketting, who emphasizes that it should produce a cost saving compared to the present situation, where employees have many more devices: a tel-ephone, PDA, PC at home and PC at work, and often many others, such as a bigger screen for the laptop. “We want to be able to work entirely

device-independently, so that both business and private tasks can be dealt with combined on the one device.”

Rabobank drew up different scenarios, for 2010, 2015 and even 2020, with the main conclusions being that: we are moving towards a 24-hour economy; we want to work independently of time and place; in the future there will no longer be space to have your own workstation.

That means that in 2010, when Rabobank occu-pies its new building on Croeselaan in Utrecht, it is allowing for 70 percent occupancy (at present it is 100 percent); there are no longer personal workstations. The entire building will be working digitally. That means that there will no longer be any cabinet space and that all post will be dealt with digitally.

“It means that people will be obliged to collabo-rate more and that fewer rules will apply”, says Pieter Ketting. “We will be judging people by their output, imposing requirements on that output, and consequently placing more responsibility with the employee. That is quite a challenge: you will have to give people trust.”The ‘Unplugged’ program will be phased in within Rabobank. The departments themselves will be responsible for implementing it.

Case study

In spite of many disappointments, outsourcing is still frequently seen quite simply as a cure-all.

Lost control of your IT? Is there a shortage of know-how? Could it be done less expensively? These are often reasons for thinking about out-sourcing. Or maybe it’s just the hype going on around you and you are being comforted by sup-pliers who claim that it is time to concentrate on your core activities, or that there could be more possibilities for your IT personnel. Do not make outsourcing a goal in itself, but instead, together with your supplier look out for added value and pay heed to the 7 key areas that form the basis for successful outsourcing.

1. Stay in line with your corporate objectives and stay aware of why you are outsourcing work. Be sure to draw up principles when you do or do not outsource something.

2. Ensure clarity about what you want provided in the way of IT services. What aspect of your IT, what is the nature of the service provision, what are the service levels? You need to be able to meet current agreements with custom-ers and the contractual agreement has to be fl exible enough for good collaboration.

3. Set out the different roles and the teamwork structure. Where is the break in the value chain of your processes? Set up the demand organi-zation with a special role for purchasing ensur-ing a balance between giving and taking.

4. Create transparency in your decision-making and defi ne the input of your IT partner in strate-gic innovations, investments and priorities.

5. Agree standards and a framework for creating insight into the active coherence of processes, systems and infrastructure.

6. Measure and control performance at the stra-tegic and tactical levels.

7. Ensure support for those staff members who will be leaving in the outsourcing deal, but also for those who are staying. At the same time, there is a need for support amongst owners and users of IT. Make agreements explicitly and manage expectations.

Step towards offshoringThere has now been a great deal of experience with outsourcing. Thirty percent of companies are spending more than half of their IT budgets on it, and it is still growing. Moreover, only half of com-panies manage to save costs by outsourcing. Frequently therefore, outsourcing is not the goal but rather a step towards offshoring.

Successful outsourcing is successful insourcing. The new situation must offer opportunities for both the provider and the recipient, but also for the employees involved.

PICTURERonald van Wuijtswinkel, author of this article, is CIO of internet provider Xs4all.

Outsourcing: not a goal in itself

Column

16

7 key areas

Advertorial

The global business economy continues to drive increasingly complex requirements for knowledge sharing through virtual interactions and commu-nications. To address these requirements, organi-zations are optimizing business workflow pro-cesses and an IT infrastructure that supports a workforce that is increasingly mobile and must collaborate in virtual teams or workplaces — across the globe and around the clock.

IT management faces the confl icting pressures to be agile and accommodating when responding to changing business needs and to achieve op-erational effi ciencies and contain costs. One so-lution that many organizations are turning to is offloading part of this burden and outsourcing some IT operations.

IT organizations perform a number of complex tasks to support end-user environments. These tasks include managing a wide variety of devices, securely managing the communications infrastructure, and providing 24 x 7 support to ensure that it all runs as smoothly as possible.

CIOs and IT managers are evaluating alternative methods for delivering these IT capabilities need-ed to support end users. The alternatives for end-user support range from in-house solutions, to a mix of in-house capabilities augmented by ser-vice providers, to full outsourcing. Each option has its corresponding costs, risks, and advan-tages.

HP offers End-User Workplace Solutions (EUWS) to help IT departments address the challenges of managing the end-user environment — to help employees connect, communicate, and collabo-rate and to help control costs and mitigate risk.

IDC has conducted an ongoing ROI analysis of the benefi ts of utilizing outsourced services. Spe-cifically, using customer case studies, IDC has evaluated the benefits of adopting HP EUWS. The quantifi ed benefi ts fall into three main areas — IT cost reductions, IT productivity increases, and user productivity increases. Based on these results, IDC made a TCO tool, which enables IT departments to compare total costs of their end-user environments with HP End-User Work-place Solutions.

“By outsourcing service desk, desktop and licensing to HP, IT departments can shift the focus to strategic IT initiatives that drive business growth instead of just putting out fi res in maintaining the end user workplace.”

Shift your focus to make a difference

PICTUREHP offers the IDC TCO tool online to help you and your IT department get interesting insights into your end user workplace costs. Get your detailed ROI report at www.hp.be/euws

There is clearly a theme running throughout my career. For me the main thing is to be able to get a certain change underway in

a relatively short time and to keep it going, both within IT and in a company’s business organization. By now, we are all aware that it is often those changes made to the business strategy that drive the changes in IT. As IT director, it is my responsibility to gear the IT strat-egy to the changing business strategy, and to translate that into a workable implementation plan. Subsequently, I make sure that the implementation plan actually takes shape, with strict programs and associated deadlines.

I had that kind of task with the former Delaware, just after its takeover by Arthur Andersen, just as I did with Koramic Building Products. Af-ter that, I was CIO for almost four years with VRT. There my job was to professionalize the IT organization. The challenges that I faced at VRT included creating a harmony between the world of broadcast engineering and that of IT. I was also very closely involved in digitizing public broadcasting. The Joris Ide Group presented me with a similar assignment, albeit within entirely different surroundings. Here too it was mainly a case of building a professional IT organization, specifi -cally because the business strategy had been adjusted following the company’s acquisition by private equity fund Ergon Capital Partners II. Harmonizing and standardizing the infrastructure and the applica-tions featured high on the agenda for this. One of the first major projects in connection with this was implementing SAP in the Belgian branches of the Joris Ide Group within a period of barely seven months.

SAP is now suffi ciently embedded within Joris Ide and the IT organi-zation built up as planned. For the continual implementation of its strategy, Joris Ide needs an IT manager with a different profi le. Con-sequently, I have recently moved on to another company, Bank van De Post. In that new job, I will once again be facing the challenge of shaping the IT strategy fully in line with the objectives of the business. I am looking forward to it already.

Getting change underway

PIET VAN PETEGEMProgram director Bank van De Post

The columnist for this issue passes the torch to Luc Verbist, IT director with De Persgroep. The media sector is experiencing a stage of rapid evolution: newspapers are facing competition from new media, the advertising market has changed and the readership is changing. Piet Van Petegem would like to know how Luc Verbist is dealing with these changes from the IT perspective.

Column

18

19

Let’s take IT to a higher level

XPLORE n.v., is Belgium's Leading Java Professional Services company. Since 1997, we are focusing on the development and implementation of advanced distributed IT systems. Xplore’s professional services team, offers you a high level of experience and knowledge to turn - together with you - your IT challenges into a success. Xplore provides : > Business Consulting & Business Process Engineering Services

> Project Development Services: Agile, Scrum, RUP > Application Architecture & Quality Assurance Services > Application Development Services based upon Java JEE

more information at www.xplore.be or call 02 702 60 90