A strategy that lives in the organization
Ivo Domburg, Product Strategist at Luminis, helped Visma Advitrae develop, plot and implement an organizational strategy that is felt throughout the company.
Visma Advitrae specializes in educational logistics and is a provider of various Saas+ solutions to all sectors of education in the Netherlands. Over one and a half million students, teachers and professionals use its planning and scheduling applications on a daily basis.
Visma Advitrae feels a great responsibility to properly organize Lifelong Learning both through the software and through knowledge exchange. With the departure of the founder/owner, Advitrae began working with its teams to reframe the strategy and continue to shape it together toward the future. The 4 strategic pillars of the company are central to this and concrete goals were established for each pillar. Because Ivo worked temporarily from Luminis as Strategic Product Manager at Visma Advitrae, he knows the company inside out. This allowed him to co-manage and execute the strategy process of Visma Advitrae with the right precision and impact.
The people first principle
It was important to involve Visma Advitrae employees in creating the strategy. After all, together you form the company and carry out the strategy.
Therefore, in several sessions, guided by Ivo, all employees were asked to think along. This included agreements on how new initiatives would be handled and how goals would be evaluated. Ivo played a facilitating and motivating role in guiding and developing the strategy. A strategy that not only had to be on paper, but one that would be embraced by all of the employees. To achieve this goal, Ivo used various methods to gather input, facilitated sessions, researched what was widely supported and made the company’s vision fit the wishes of the employees.
Visma Advitrae's strategy was brought to life; we went from 1 to 100 strategy ambassadors and that was our goal. The Luminis strategist who implemented this process has the ability to keep moving forward and to make the strategy accessible and alive for different teams and people: from our customers to developers to the management team.
From 1 to 100 ambassadors
In order to gather all input from employees and thus have the strategy embraced by the entire organization, several tools were used. We organized several sessions, both online and physical, and let people respond to stimulating statements.
This resulted in now having not 1 but 100 ambassadors of the strategy. The strategy was translated into sharp goals and a translation was made to all teams. There are still regular sessions to provide feedback and reflect on whether the strategy still fits the trends in the industry. Ivo has done this so far with Visma Advitrae employees but also with their customers. By communicating through various means, from open session to visual means, individual goals are linked to the company-wide strategy and everyone can communicate this.
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