Very human technology

Back in 2012 I started to support de Baak. De Baak is acknowledged as an international leading training institute. De Baak is an international training and knowledge institute in the field of leadership, personal development and entrepreneurship. They focus on the ‘Human Side of Enterprise’ and on the development and effectiveness of people in organizations.

Digital transformation

I started with the design and implementation of a new digital strategy. Including Social Media strategy, new websites, and training staff. Key was to design a ‘very human digital strategy’ and to facilitate digital transformation. Add digital technology into all business areas to improve customer satisfaction. This was an interesting area of work and a great project as many employees were offline focused and one of the goals of the strategy was to merge the offline and online world.

Share course information

ICT plays a central role nowadays in the way we communicate and do business with each other. And key is to implement it in such a way that it is secure and facilitates the employee. This means understanding the added ‘value of digital’ by the employee is key. Often this is not part of the strategy. Companies buy a new platform, hire consultants and introduce the platform. Often (unfortunately) a disabler when it comes to customer happiness and often not secure.

During this project I spoke to many customers of de Baak. I also visited their competitors to understand how they sync course information realtime (accurate data) with the Learning Management Systeme (LMS) of their customers. I was surprised.

In fact each training institute designed there own ‘digital feeds’ to synchronize with the ICT-systems of their customers. Besides inaccurate information there was a lot of frustration, as each customer has contracts and contacts with various training institutes, different ICT departments of the training institutes and various technologies.

Competitors and their customer

At my customer ‘De Baak’ I worked together with Fabrizio Tomasi. A very inspiring employee with eye for detail. He was busy with many vendors to match all kinds of ‘XML-feeds’ for several customer of De Baak. Besides that this was very boring work, we had to find a way to get rid of this. I found out that each competitor of De Baak had these same issues.

EDU-DEX

One day I’ve met Rino Schreuder (a talent & management development expert).  We proposed to meet all competitors of de Baak for a meeting to discuss how we could better serve customers. All CEO’s were present. Few months later, in 2013, we founded the non-profit EDU-DEX foundation. I became member of the foundations board.

Why dit it work out?

To create a common data standard for information about open enrolment courses and trainings, ICT is key. Many ideas are created in the boardroom without involvement of key stakeholders. We took a different approach! After the top management agreed to move on we’ve started with a meeting of all key IT stakeholders of all organizations involved. This was key in the process and I see this as the foundation of the success.

Since the beginning all was designed and funded in such a wat that customers can use it for free. Training institutes do have to pay a fixed yearly fee to the foundation.

Uniform course information

Nowadays, in 2019, EDU-DEX provides uniform course information from > 140 training institutions which can be made available for free through one single web address to the customers and is more secure compared with the many interfaces before. Also many large organizations such as Dutch Railways (NS), Heineken, ABN-AMRO, Dutch government, Achmea and much more, make use of the Edu-Dex feeds.

The EDU-DEX open data standard creates programme information that is better accessible and comparable; and the Edu-Dex database collects and distributes this information with more ease and each 24 hours. This saves clients and suppliers alike a significant amount of time; IT-costs; and loss through incorrect or outdated information on dates, fees, etc.

Edu-Dex ambassador & Cyber Security initiative

Before summer, Ria van ‘t Klooster was appointed to the Edu-Dex board and I became ambassador. In 2020 I will be involved in a new cyber security initiative. Focus: keep The Netherlands as secure as possible. Currently there is a serious issues in getting small companies and consumers secure. I think we will come up with a different view. And who ‘we’ is, will be announced soon. We will start by organizing an exclusive breakfast session in december 2019.

Get in contact?

Interested in a brainstorm, the new cyber security initiative, a workshop or an inspiring keynote? WhatsApp me! Or fill out the form below.

Get in contact with Erik Jan

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