The Mid-Office Platform has become an integral part of NED’s digital thinking and working methods
It wasn’t even that long ago that NED employees were walking from one NED building to another with employee paper files. “With the Mid-Office Platform, that’s no longer conceivable. The entire post-placement process has been digitized with the help of Platform for temps and hirers ” says Janno Elst. As manager of business development at NED, he works closely with Textkernel.
A high level of ambition for automation
Evelien van het Reve, as account executive new business at Textkernel, was involved in the initial contact and contract between NED and Textkernel. Evelien: “I supervise the sales processes. What struck me about NED was their high level of ambition in terms of automation; very progressive.”
Janno explains, “At the end of 2019, we started the digital transition for NED. We quickly moved away from the idea that one package had to be able to do everything for all our processes. Instead, the choice was to choose the best package in parts and then tie the various packages and processes together. Through Solid Online, we found a way to tie the software together. The Mid-Office platform came out on top for the entire onboarding process, i.e. all post-placement processes such as Time Capture and time interpretation for invoicing in Easyflex.”
Automating partial processes
Evelien: “Quite a striking choice. After all, most customers want one package for everything. NED explicitly opted for a link. We started at NED with a demo about The Mid-Office platform and an inventory of their wishes. You interpret each process and then start automating it. Not easy, because the staffing industry is very complex because of all the legislation and the various collective labor agreements.”
Instead of an all-in-one package, we chose to pick the best package in all areas and then tie the various packages and processes together. Textkernel came out on top for the entire onboarding process.
Janno ElstManager of Business Development
Aligning processes
What is special is that the entire coordination process on the implementation took place online. Janno: “It was in the middle of corona time. Tom Maring, the customer success manager, was the first that we saw live.” Tom: “Indeed, the entire rollout and implementation went online. With success! But it still works very nicely when you get to know each other better live. This allows us to better respond with the Platform to the needs of our customers. That’s why we organize customer panels, which NED also recently participated in.”
NED participates in customer panel
For this customer panel, Janno traveled to Enschede. “It was well worth this considerable drive! A useful and productive day where we also met fellow competitors. Meaningful to hear what they were up against. From this customer panel came a top 5 of development points that Textkernel will continue to work on. One of the points I mentioned is the digital signing process. Now employees sometimes have to sign as many as seven different digital documents separately. The idea is to further bundle those processes so that the signing can be done in badges. Together, we are always taking the next step to shorten the onboarding lead time and reduce the risk of errors. We have come a long way, because those days of running back and forth with paper files are definitely over. Akyla has delivered overview and efficiency. For example, we processed 47% more hours per FTE in 2022 compared to 2021. That makes us happy.”
Tom Maring: “That is exactly what we are committed to. The goal is to make our customers happy with their success. If that success is partly due to our systems, then we are happy too. In any case, we have a meeting with NED every six weeks to make adjustments and exchange developments; a very open collaboration. The people at NED are friendly and critical at the same time; we understand each other. Probably because we are similar companies: with a friendly atmosphere but sharp on the content. When it comes to practical questions, they can go to our Service Desk.” Janno concludes, “That is always easily accessible and comes up with solutions quickly. The user-friendly Mid-Office Platform is simply impossible to imagine NED thinking and working without.”
The Mid-Office Platform has delivered oversight and efficiency. For example, we processed 47% more hours per FTE in 2022 compared to 2021. That makes us happy.
Janno ElstManager of Business Development
