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Novulo has an active ecosystem where customers and partners work together to share new functionalities and knowledge. Developed components can be shared with others via the Novulo Store, depending on agreements and interests. In addition to a weekly industry-specific co-development day, the roadmap is jointly determined and set out quarterly.
When you choose Novulo, you get an entire community 'for free'. This is an ecosystem with like-minded people who work together on new innovative solutions.
The participants ensure that the domain knowledge of each industry is brought into the platform and that new components are regularly developed. The cooperation has already resulted in a lot of innovation that can then be used industry-wide. But there is still a world open.
Remy Rotting and Martijn Bos are cozying up in the car on the way to Utrecht for the Assurantie 'co-development day' when the two experienced Novulo developers give a glimpse into this successful initiative. Every week, developers from both partners and customers meet to work together on industry-specific components. “The Novulo Store already has thousands of components, but how far we are in development varies by business process. Especially if you dig deeper into the insurers' processes, there is still so much to automate. It's about generally applicable processes in the industry.”
Rotting gives as an example that a lot of attention has recently been paid to the claim process, i.e. registering and dealing with claims. “The Novulo Store has more than enough functionality to do registration and processing. But the claims process is often still very traditional with labour-intensive actions. There is a lot to improve and automate in this to, say, throw off the yoke of administration.”
One of the Novulo customers - Maia - put a lot of work into creating and customizing components for this claims process last quarter. These can again be used by other customers. Developed components always remain the property of the party that developed them. They can be shared with the ecosystem, but sharing is not mandatory and may depend on the developers' agreements and interests. “The starting point is that everyone shares components, but it is possible that a participant has put so much time into development that others are allowed to use such a component, but the owner wants to get something in return.”
All component developments are done by Novulo customers and partners. Novulo only facilitates the platform and tools to do this properly. Like the “Architect”. This is the development environment within the platform, which allows developers to create new components themselves and then publish them again in the store.
In addition, there is also a digital community for developers. This environment contains accompanying information for the components and offers the opportunity for customers and partners to communicate via the platform. “The information is public and comparable to Stack Overflow. This should make the Novulo platform as accessible as possible.”
Before each meeting, participants submit the topics they want to tackle. The content therefore varies per week and the composition of the group of attendees also fluctuates. “But at the Insurance Co-Development Day, there are always a number of regular participants, such as van Maia and IG&H, one of the partners. The number of participants per organization may vary,” says Rotting. “This day is really for sharing knowledge between developers and Martijn and I can help with that from Novulo.”
In addition to the weekly co-development day, there is also a quarterly Roadmap Meeting for each industry to agree on what will be developed with the ecosystem. “Then more product owners come together, so a slightly higher management layer,” Rotting outlines the composition. “It's really the sense of togetherness that we strive for in this. So then it's agreed: “If you do this, I'll pick up that part.” But also: “The development you did last quarter is also interesting for me. Can you help me out with that? '”
The way in which partners and customers work together is a model for how Novulo is now also bringing parties together for other sectors and creating an ecosystem. By working together to develop standardized components, customers can take full advantage of the 'composable' platform. All with the aim of being able to create, adapt and expand applications faster.
Not every industry is the same, Rotting explains. “The insurance market is fairly clear in terms of generic business processes, especially in the number of 'top level' business processes (such as customer registration, policy administration, billing). This means that you can quickly determine a joint roadmap. Whereas with a retail ERP application, the amount of specific and unique processes is quickly overwhelming, including inventory administration, purchase registration, inter-company billing, delivery structures and rentals.” Nevertheless, we are now also having a lively co-development day in retail, and collaborative initiatives have now also been set up for other sectors such as automotive and aviation.
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