Ballast Nedam: 'Role of ICT management gets smaller with SaaS'

The role of ICT management is shrinking when using a SaaS solution. This was noted by Gerard Vermeulen, Financial Consultant ERP & Basware Consultant at Ballast Nedam, during Basware Connect Solutions in Rotterdam on May 16, 2019.

During the annual user day of Basware, ICreative and Ricoh, Vermeulen presented the award-winning Basware case along with Michiel Leenaers of ICreative. Earlier this year, the SaaS implementation was awarded the 2018 Customer Success Award.

There are many developments going on at Ballast Nedam. It has the ambitious goal of being among the top three construction companies in the Netherlands. It expects fifteen percent revenue growth in 2019 and it wants to take on more international projects. This requires the necessary of the supporting systems.

Refocus

'To reduce complexity in the IT landscape, we have been reducing the number of ERP environments over the past three years. We now have one ERP package instead of seven.' A unified purchase-to-pay process offered more and new opportunities for automation. 'In addition, the old invoice processing system, Basware IP, was end-of-life. At that time, we didn't know what else was possible,' Vermeulen says.

Reasons for a reorientation. With a large wish list, the construction company entered the market. Both the functional, technical and commercial wishes and requirements were solid. 'Ballast Nedam is a project organization with a lot of project-based procurement. We therefore looked closely, for example, at the management of authorizations and approval flows because a lot of mutations take place.' Also important was the links to be realized with other systems and the overall effort to implement it.

Steering Committee

The choice ultimately fell again on Basware, with ICreative as implementation partner. 'ICreative had been running with us for a while. That is an advantage because then you know what you have on each other," Vermeulen said. 'Immediately after the decision, a joint steering committee was appointed and appointments were planned. We then put joint effort into developing, testing and configuring. Progress and issues were discussed and handled through the steering committee, respectively.'

However, he does see that the division of roles between the parties involved has changed after implementation. The role of ICT management has been reduced. You notice that when dealing with problems. A new field of tension has arisen between what you could handle yourself in the past and what you can do now," Vermeulen says. He experiences the dependence on Basware and ICreative in these situations as a disadvantage.

Vermeulen, on the other hand, is enthusiastic about the monthly, automatic updates. 'You know what to expect and the fact that it is error-free is very pleasant.' Furthermore, there is no need for local installations and no need for database management.

Michiel Leenaers concluded by briefly explaining what solution ICreative has put in place. In addition to Basware SaaS, Ballast Nedam also uses Basware Network and ICreative Validation Services. 'The latter means that we perform an additional quality check on the incoming invoices before they go into the invoice processing system, for example on the orders present for cost invoices,' Leenaers said.