Digital Transformation Project – the Erasmus Recruitment Days

13

October

2016

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l47zeel-eBg

We, team 88, have analyzed the concept, stakeholders, business strategy and the role of IT of the Erasmus Recruitment Days (ERD), a large recruitment event organised by and for students each year on the campus of Erasmus University of Rotterdam.

Pretty soon, we found that main problem was at the information strategy of the project, which is very dispersed and contains an unconnected portfolio of applications. The resulting business needs from the current misalignment, better data and attendance management, will be met by aligning the current IT landscape with the business strategy of the ERD – which is maximizing satisfaction of students attending the event. The following steps are recommended.

First, application rationalization results in Salesforce being chosen as CRM system, connected to the recently launched website. Second, a mobile application will be developed in order to retrieve from and provide students with real-time data on activities. Lastly, the website has room for minor improvements, which will be realized. In the end, the estimated costs, after amortization, will be 25,000 – 50,000 euros for the upcoming three years.

In order to ensure successful implementation and true value for the money invested, we recommend to carefully execute an implementation strategy, consisting of establishing a strong project team, mitigating and managing the foreseen risks, and lastly the constant tracking on the critical success factors.

When the digital transformation of the ERD is successful, the ERD should have:
• Significantly improved data management by gathering more information, storing this information more efficiently and distribute the information to stakeholders more effectively.
• Significantly improved attendance management with the help of a real-time overview of attendance per event.

After all, these achievements will result in a minimum number of no-shows and a more equal distribution of value per attending student due a smaller standard deviation of the distribution on the number of events per student. Next to that, there is a reduced operational workload for the committee, resulting in more human capacity during the event that can be invested in quality enhancement (e.g. personal communication).

Quality improvements can also be realized by smarter and more data-driven decisions, which are easier to make due to better availability to the data of the event. Although the business strategy is currently not focused on growth, opportunities for the ERD could be, in a couple of years, expanding to other faculties or cities. The new information system makes scalability and thus expansion of the event better realizable. And last but not least, the event gets a more professional appearance with the presence of a sophisticated and good-functioning web application and website.

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Unrevealed: The secret of the success of Coolblue

24

September

2016

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Pieter Zwart, owner of the company once had a dream: to become a multimillionaire. In 1999 he founded a company called Coolblue. Now, years later, he is listed on Quote’s top 100 of young entrepreneurs. Estimated capital? 165 million euros.

How did he manage to grow his company to the only webshop out of the 40,000 webshops on the Dutch market that has an annual turnover of over one billion euros? According to Mr. Zwart, it is all about customer centric entrepreneurship: a business culture where the customer is at the centre of everything you do.
His business model is based on two themes: EBITDA and Customer Happiness. While the first is not particularly striking, the second one stands out more. Coolblue’s mission related to this theme: put a smile on the face of every customer.

By trying to achieve this, Coolblue has some valuable and unique features for their 321 webshops. They, for example, never charge shipment costs, have a same day delivery, even on Sundays. Besides, their typical blue delivery boxes contain little jokes, clients receive handwritten postcards with an ‘enjoy your new product’ wish or invite you at one of their physical stores for a cup of coffee.

The interesting measure behind these ideas is the Net Promoter Score. While a positive NPS is, generally speaking, considered to be good, it is rather interesting to make a comparison with the industry. “NPS is about competition. If you are able to outperform you competitors in NPS, you are able to outperform them in growth and profitability”, as stated by Pieter Zwart.

With a NPS score of 63, Coolblue has the highest score in the Netherlands. Their aim is to create an even larger distance between Coolblue and the competition. Next to that, their most recent study in customer satisfaction showed 96 percent points. During a guest lecture at the Erasmus University, Pieter Zwart indicated that that is something to be proud of. Nevertheless, he wants to reach a 100% score on customers satisfaction. These two examples clearly indicate his greediness and persistence to keep improving.

That greediness, together with customer-centric entrepreneurship, the service of Coolblue and its playful marketing ideas, were the main success factors contributing the realization the( over-)ambitious dream of Pieter Zwart.

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Artificial intelligence and the labour market: How to survive as a Business (Information Management) student?

24

September

2016

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Artificial intelligence is on its way. What does it imply for the labour market? Which jobs are able to survive the digital transformation stage? Which jobs will not exist anymore because of machine learning? Anthony Glodbloom from Caggle, a company that the studies the consequences of machine learning, concluded that almost one in every two jobs have a high risk of being automated by machines.

Machine learning is not something new. It started making its way into the industry in the early nineties with relatively simple tasks like sorting the mail by reading characters from ZIP codes or assessing credit risk. Since then, machine learning experienced a steep development curve.

Nowadays, machine learning is capable of far more complex tasks. In 2012, Caggle challenged its community to build an algorithm that could grade high school grades. The winning algorithms were able to match the grades given by human teaches. Last year, an even more difficult topic was issued: write an algorithm that diagnoses eye diseases based on images from eyes. Winning algorithms in this case were able to match diagnoses given by human doctors.
Do teachers and doctors have to worry? According to Goldbloom are we, humans, powerless in case of regular and frequent tasks. Though, there is hope. There are things that machines cannot do.

The development of artificial intelligence has made very little progress in tackling novel situations. The fundamental limitation of machines is that they need to learn from large volumes of past data. Humanity does not have this constraint. We solve these type of problems thousands of times a day.

From this, we can conclude that the existence of our future jobs is related to two aspects. First, the amount of tasks that are standard and frequently returning, so called patterns. Next to that, the number of times you have to deal with new situations you do not know from the past.

So what does this imply for Business students? Let’s consider the goal of a marketing campaign: it needs to stand out from the croud to grasp consumers attention. Something that has not been done before, will receive attention. Business strategy means finding gaps in the market, things that nobody else is doing. Only humans can do this.
And for Information Strategy students in specific? Those are especially safe. As this field of study is relatively new and markets have not been satisfied yet. So no need to worry, many gaps are waiting to be found by you.

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