How do our consultants colour their days?

Some examples of Ordina@work.
You can read the full stories in Beyond magazine.

The software factory of Nike ELC: IT is closing the gap with the business	Six giant wind turbines cast their long shadows over the European Logistics Centre (ELC) in Laakdal, Belgium. Sports equipment, clothing and footwear from two hundred manufacturing plants find their way to thirty thousand customers via this distribution centre. Is there also production in Laakdal? No. And yet, there is a factory here, quietly tucked away. “Not for spikes or track jackets”, Peter Lathouwers qualifies, “but for software. We built a software factory with standardised processes, models, frameworks and tools. It enables us to offer our end users a fast, reliable service of consistent quality. Result: a significantly lower price tag for development.”
Child Alert improves communication through SharePoint	For the Child Alert project, Child Focus went in search for a technological system to ensure more efficient and faster communication in missing children cases where there is a major cause for alarm. The system had to be reliably stable and easy to integrate into the existing infrastructure, including the CRM system. The budget was tight. Ordina proposed SharePoint 2010 as a basic system, and within a space of barely five months, designed the Child Alert system in liaison with Child Focus. This now enables Child Focus to communicate much more efficiently with its network of volunteers. Furthermore, the extensive computerisation enables Child Focus to launch search campaigns up to 6 times faster.
Pharmaceutical company Heel Belgium optimises its quality systems	By 2018, all homeopathic medicines have to be registered and meet strict quality standards. At the end of 2010, Heel Belgium was the first manufacturer of homeopathic medicines in the country to complete a full registration procedure for homeopathic eye drops. “Oculo-Heel is only the first in a long line of medicines,” Véronique De Coen says. “The inspections and growing importance of product quality reviews have forced us to improve our quality systems. Such undertaking has a nice side effect: it enhances your organisation’s self-healing ability.”
Shiny exhausts, speedy consolidation: the fast close of Bosal	Consolidation is one of the most laborious processes financial departments have to deal with. Add ever increasing pressure to the mix and things get even harder. Financial information is alive and has a limited shelf life. Artificial preservatives no longer satisfy business leaders and stakeholders. Annual, even semiannual, reporting is a thing of the past. The CFO has only one option: fast close. A tough ask? Not necessarily. Bosal has reduced the consolidation process for 50 subsidiaries worldwide from twelve to three weeks. “Thanks to a reliable tool and a bold approach, we were able to complete the process in a couple of months,” says financial business analyst Marc Ytebrouck. “The end users continued to work in Excel. That's why they were quick to make the switch. The new process creates added value for the decision makers.”
Trust is good, control is better: GC Europe reflects on ten years of SAP	In September 2010, BusinessWeek ranked SAP in the top 30 of the best global brands. Frequent flyers know why. From Frankfurt to JFK, ‘The best-run businesses run SAP’ carries as much weight as 'Welcome with both feet firmly on the ground'. Customers like Adidas and BMW express their trust by shouting it from metre-high billboards. But does SAP score just as well with small and medium-sized enterprises? With over ten years' experience since it sank its teeth into SAP, GC Europe is more than qualified to answer this question. How did the company turn this experience into a success story? In which areas did SAP help improve business? Did the implementation run smoothly? No question is too awkward for CFO Jean Guns and IT manager Jörg Buehler.
Contact glue for fragmented communication channels	You have never had more means of communication at your disposal than today. And yet, efficient communication remains immensely difficult. We all excel at missed calls and unanswered e-mails. These will work their way into your carefully developed business processes, like an insidious poison. Ready to cause the most damage, right at critical moments: an authorisation is slow to materialise, a decision that will get things moving is not forthcoming, a key person cannot be located. Long live adrenaline. Unified communications brings an end to this impasse.
Margin reporting: the basis for a healthy business. The secret behind Balterio’s path for growth	“The culture at Balterio is very control-focused", explains financial manager Hans Vermaerke. "Rightly so, because success in our business is very much dependent upon the reliability of one’s budgeting and correct assessment of one’s sales margins. Our challenge therefore consisted in the following: How to set up a flexible and efficient budgeting process? We have succeeded in this thanks to our pragmatic approach, respecting both the vision and the wishes of the end users.”
Process and software validation at Alcon: co-sourcing offers highly trained project staff attractive career prospects	Looking to attract academically qualified profiles? Then the best thing you can do is to offer them career prospects too. That is not so matter of course if yours is project-based work, certainly now that the war for talent is raging so intensely. Switching over to a co-sourcing concept allowed drug producer Alcon to create a win-win situation for all parties involved. “We are now coping perfectly with peak periods”, relates HR director Karel De Cock. “In three years our young validation engineers can build up a strong market value. And our co-sourcing partner offers them an attractive career path.”
Getting rid of the dusty old filing cabinet. Why did the publishing company Cascade invest in digital asset management?	We are still feeling the effects of the Digital Big Bang today. The internet is expanding into an infinite information universe, and this at the speed of light. Computer illiterates will be the illiterates of the future. It has never been so easy to share documents, photos, videos, sound recordings and presentations with the rest of the planet. At least, if you have fully mastered the processes – from storage to retrieval and publication. This is why God created ADAM. Its mission: to go and create a digital asset management solution.
Logistics planning by Ewals Cargo Care saves customers money	“With our fleet of 4,500 semi-trailers and containers we offer our customers both capacity and flexibility. It is exactly because of our size and our international presence that our partnership is often strategic by nature: as partners we optimise the logistics process flows in order to achieve cost savings. For Ewals planning is therefore core business. We achieve this with the help of a virtual team of forty planners at six locations within Europe. Integrated into the back office, and monitored by means of effective management reporting.”
Worthwhile pioneering work for Securex Optimal: business counter simplified administration increases business and profitability	Becoming self-employed is a big step to take. However, at the Securex Optimal business counter, this step now requires somewhat less of an effort. Securex Optimal is focusing on simplifying its administrative processes. You will immediately notice it at the counter, when registering as a newly fledged entrepreneur. You will save valuable time, and so will your client advisor. So what is the secret? Direct access to the company registration database (Kruispuntbank van Ondernemingen - KBO), the National Register, and the Bisregister (KBO database). Securex Optimal was the very first private company to receive data directly into its own applications. The updates in the KBO and the Bisregister take place automatically. “This simplification means that we can now handle 10% more files. Furthermore, the profitability of the business counter has increased considerably”, says Manager Laurence Delcourt.
ICT Shared Services for federal government services: a portal for teamwork and information sharing	ICT skills in large companies are often dispersed among different departments. If you consolidate your ICT expertise and services in one single department you end up with an ICT shared service centre. This gives you tangible advantages such as lower costs, greater specialisation, better quality and continuity. This was also what four government services thought in 2003. They set up ICT Shared Services. Today the team works for eighteen government clients under the wing of Fedict. “We were growing fast”, says director Yves vander Auwera. “So, we needed a structured solution in order to gather and circulate information. We chose a portal with Microsoft technology.”
How do I document old applications?	Ageing applications are like elderly people: they cause headaches every so often. Imagine that you want to make some radical adjustments, outsource maintenance, or migrate to a new platform. Without documentation, that is a desperate task. KBC  found that transferring old mainframe applications to new platforms would be a huge challenge. One and a half million lines of code, five hundred programs and more than a thousand screens were not documented in the project management system. Insurmountable? No: departing from the program code, Ordina drew up a complete technical documentation in just three months. The applications are now ready for rejuvenation.
EFQM: webshop improves service provision	EFQM is helping European organisations in their quest for operational excellence. Thanks to a new web solution, EFQM is improving its contact with members. The employees are happy too, for the webshop automates the processing in SAP of orders and requests for information about publications and training activities.