Hudig & Veder is prepared for the future. And part of the future is digitization. At Hudig & Veder, we decided to be ready. Ready to exceed customers’ expectations and ready to simplify our team’s processes. How do we manage this process? How does it impact our future and what does it mean for our customers? Thom Lems, our project manager IT at Hudig & Veder explains.
Thom has been part of Hudig & Veder for seven years 
now. “My job is interesting and challenging. Every day, I try to develop the best IT infrastructure together with our software partners and with our teams. One of the best parts of my job is to involve our operational teams in this process of digitization and really help them out ,” explains Thom. “Currently, we are focusing our new operational system. With this new system we have one goal in mind: make work easier. With the use of this innovative solution, processes can be optimized even further and we as a company become increasingly sustainable, explains Thom further. “Daily processes will continue to be subject to automation. Where possible, workflows will be organized to be even more efficient and employees are given an increasingly controlling role. In order to make sure that the system fits with our processes, we have set up a team of key users that will test the system for a period of time. Each department will have the opportunity to customize the system slightly to fit its own processes. So at the end of the road, the system will fit perfectly with every activity within Hudig & Veder”.
"Hudig & Veder focuses on change management"
Or IT-strategy: integration
Lems explains: ”Our IT strategy is to focus on easy to integrate cloud systems that support our employees and our customers. Our customers are focusing on digitization as well. Therefore, we will have to be ready for their changing demands. For instant, currently we receive an increasing number of requests for extensive reports. These reports are easy to generate with our new platform. This way of exchanging data will contribute to a higher transparency for all parties within the supply chain. This helps us to continue to focus on serving our customers through an efficient process and on delivering the service and quality that our customers are used to”.
To smoothly implement this new system, Hudig & Veder focuses on change management. Digitalize to improve. In order to accomplish this, the new system is implemented through a scrum inspired method. This method divides a full project into small pieces (sprints) in which challenges are solved one by one. Being effective is what it is all about. Each scrum sessions starts with the operational team explaining their workflows. These existing workflows form the basis of the new system.
“Besides our training and testing program, we created a key user structure as mentioned earlier. A key user structure means that our operational team will have its own key users who will be able to make some changes to our software. If you train key users, it creates a situation of self-supporting teams. We believe in transparency and in the quality of our staff and are happy to give this responsibility. That is part of our Hudig & Veder culture.
We look forward to being fully operational with this new infrastructure in 2021. We are ready, but most importantly, the market is ready.