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The accelerated digitisation in the classroom affected SLBdiensten, the intermediary between secondary and secondary (vocational) education and the software industry. The old system squeaked and creaked, but a new system would eventually cause the same problems. “A composable architecture brought the necessary future-proofing and a review of the business,” says Lisanne van Egmond, Director of SLBdiensten. “We want to be more than just that seller of licenses.”
Educational institutions have to endure a lot: digital teaching in addition to physical teaching, cyber security and privacy. While tech-savvy students quickly become aware of all kinds of IT developments, fewer and fewer schools have their own IT departments. For SLBdiensten as a software supplier such as Adobe Creative and Microsoft Teams, these developments necessitate a shift in the proposition. Not only offering software licenses at the lowest price with the best conditions but also advising on tooling and cost-efficient software management.
As a software supplier for secondary education, SLBdiensten works together with SURF for higher education and APS IT services for primary education. “We are negotiating jointly with a party like Microsoft. In this way, we realise the best possible conditions for all schools”, Lisanne outlines. SLBdiensten serves all 650 secondary schools, but there is still competition and a need for innovation: “We had one system for ‘everything’. All the necessary plasters were stuck on it. In addition, we were very dependent on certain specialists, and it became a challenge to continue to comply with the strict conditions from our suppliers to be able to sell the licenses. We had to innovate; the question was how exactly.”
SLBdiensten called in Lab Digital for advice on implementing a new commerce platform. Because there is no standard software available, customisation was obvious. But whether you opt for standard software or custom build software, both approaches result in dependence: on the software supplier or the IT specialist who maintains the customisation. That is why SLB first took a step back: what exactly is the target audience’s need? What technical scenarios are there to solve their obstacles? And which solution results in low costs and limited dependency?
Based on advice from Lab Digital, SLBdiensten opted for different software solutions for each domain: a CRM package for customer information, an ERP package for the products, a CMS for the front end that integrates with the commerce engine and a custom-built solution for the pricing engine. “Pricing is where our added value lies and what we want optimally arranged. So you build that. We use this to calculate the specific price per customer per license. Because of the number of variables, this can vary quite a bit,” explains Lisanne. Together, this set of separate solutions, with the custom build pricing engine, fully answer the demand from SLBdiensten. There is minimal dependence, future-proofing and yet low costs. “And that is called composable,” says Lisanne, “but for us, it is mainly a pragmatic interpretation of our IT needs.”
To properly use technology as a solution, you need to understand the business and the associated challenges. The previous director of SLBdiensten, Charles Stork, took the product owner role with his substantive knowledge. Lab Digital applied service blueprints to find the most critical bottlenecks in the customer journey and see which technical solutions can address them. These choices were then verified with prototypes, and complexity was flattened into simple concepts by visually depicting everything.
In practice, this also resulted in a fresh insight into the business. “What are we actually doing? Why do we work like this? We were challenged well. As a result, we not only looked at the infrastructure but rather at the underlying business processes. That is where the real profit lies”, says Lisanne. From her own background as a consultant at Deloitte, she had a lot of experience with agile working. It was completely new for SLBdiensten: “Stand-ups in the morning, thinking about the end product. That was exciting, though. You start without knowing exactly where you will end up, but that is where the power lies. You keep the outcome open to better listen to customer needs. Now we do all our projects this way.”
The architecture consists of the CRM package Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, the ERP package Dynamics 365 Business Central, Wagtail for CMS, commerce tools for the commerce engine and custom development by Lab Digital for the price engine.
IT specialist Broad Horizon Solutions joined in to implement the CRM and ERP package.
After an extensive discovery phase, Lab Digital’s multidisciplinary project team worked for seven months on the development phase, with a final go-live on November 1, 2021.
The website has become more user-friendly and helpful for users. Products are easier to compare, and there is much more choice in products and more product information to make the right choice. Making repeat purchases is also easier.
This project has ensured that we can support education even better in the coming years, says Lisanne. “We are expanding our core task, supplying software licenses to secondary and secondary vocational education, to the role of advisor. There is more time for that now that we have optimized the chain around the ordering process. We can now proactively advise schools about their digital ecosystem, join partners and much more that will become the spider in the web.”
Interestingly enough, that new role wasn’t foreseen when the project started, Lisanne notes. “That only became a spearhead during the process.” And other markets are also beckoning. “We are looking at Belgium and surrounding countries, where we can also help educational institutions on their way. And in the Dutch market, we can do more in the public sector, such as healthcare and local governments, for example.” SLBdiensten has become more agile, concludes Lisanne. “We can give a broader interpretation to our proposition: software and education, well organized.”