“How great it is when you can create an organization where you and your own team can lead your own innovation. What you do need help with, but you can do it together.” The need for self-reliance splashed from the stage, where technical director Joris Bos of insurer Anker contributed to the Novulo Composable Futures event last year. There was no room for self-reliance in the relationship with the old ERP supplier. As a customer, Bos had the feeling of being in the queue somewhere instead of having a partner who thought along with Anker's innovation plans. His feeling was familiar to more attendees in the audience.

Start with process optimization

Bos came into contact with Novulo and decided to do a discovery phase to see how Anker's business processes could be implemented with the components from the Novulo store. And to see where there were gaps that had to be bridged. “I didn't want to create a dependency again, so I constantly managed to manage myself. Let Novulo tell you how to do it and we'll do it ourselves.”

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After a process inventory, it turned out that considerable process optimization was also possible. “After all, you find out that you may not know your own processes very well at all.” This meant that during the project, more and more work was added instead of the remaining work decreasing. “I think it's good advice for every company to make room for process optimization when it comes to risk assessment and budgeting.”

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Bos worked on it with two developers, a business specialist and a tester in the form of a DevOps project. “If you're really going to tackle a complex major project, use sprints. If you know exactly how a project will go, you can do a waterfall approach, but in this case, sprints were nice.” Data conversion was an important point of attention that required a lot of trial conversions. “We are an insurer and have to deal with the auditor and supervisors. So you have to make it very clear how you did that conversion.”

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Architecture is tough

The process inventory showed that there were process elements that could not be filled in with the standard components from the Novulo store. Then it comes down to building a component yourself. “That's quite complex. You really have to do a 'study' to understand architecture properly. If you want to create that self-activity within the organization, you will also have to invest and send people to training.” Bos also emphasizes the proper organization of regression tests.

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In October, the first version of the new product - called Wave - went live. This was followed by fixes, adjustments and performance improvements. “The sentiment in the department is now very positive. Change is always difficult. But people ultimately see all the added value.”

Community is special

For Bos, it is important that Anker is now separate from a traditional software house. “When you buy a product, not only the product remains their property, but also the data model. We are now building our own composition with Novulo modules, partners and our own modules. This is followed by a unique data model that is owned by our organization. And you can also use the components that we build. That's what makes this community special.”