customer story
OTTO WORKFORCE
A business friendship that lasts for years!
Since 2016 there has been a beautiful business friendship between Ponthus and OTTO Work Force. OTTO is the largest international employment agency in Europe, mainly active in the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, but with offices in several countries across the globe. As Program manager, Jack Vroomen is an important link in the connection between Business and IT. Working for OTTO is a good example of the added value that Ponthus can have for an organization. What started as a digitization project that was successfully carried out, led to a pleasant and challenging collaboration that has been going on for many years, to mutual satisfaction.
“We came into contact th OTTO through our network, for a project in which we would migrate the entire application landscape, which was physically on locaition in Venray, to a cloud environment. Apparantly I performed well at the time. Following that project more questions for other digitization projects were coming my way”, says Jack Vroomen with a smile. “In the meantime I am one of them.”
Ultimately Ponthus is usually focused on making employee’s work more pleasant and efficient with the use of IT. “The challenge is usually the same in all organizations: you look at the entire chain from start to finish, and you will run into efficiency errors, recovery costs and time. Employee’s are not always aware of their role in this chain and they do not sufficiently recognize the consequences of their actions. Digitization makes things immediately transparant. Because you often don’t see what people solve. They often also solve things that shouldn’t be happening in the first place. This results in added work pressure and busy schedules. This also occurs in well-organized companies. Everywhere. We mix the work done by the employees with IT with the goal to help employees work more pleasantly and more efficiently, with better results for the company as a result.”
Efficiency
If a project yields so much return and does it year in, year out, then it is very interesting for a company to continue to invest in this collaboration. That is how Jack went from one project to another. He has already had the opportunity to see behind the scenes of many organizations and knows what is possible in the IT field. His knowledge is greater than the knowledge that most companies have in-house and he now also knows a lot about OTTO. “I like to divide those complicated, intensive projects into smaller, clearer pieces of defined processes. This makes it easier for everyone to handle a part of the big project. That is very important, becaus I also have to keep everyone on board. Besides that, you get clear results per process.”
As a project manager, Jack also energetically set to work developing the OTTO Flex Employee Application. “In close sonsultation with a group of representatives from the OTTO organization, we worked out what the app should do well in advance of the project. The app is a means of communication so that flexworkers can view pay slips and ask questions digitally. At OTTO you talk about thousands of employees who work flexible, so that saves a lot of phone calls. By using an application for the questions, the involvement of the employees remains very high.” The contracts have also been digitized. Printing costs for a company with that many workers are considerable, as is the number of operations involved. “A positive effect of digitzation is that administrative work shifts to controlling tasks. You know whether something has been signed and files are complete.”
OTTO about Ponthus
Willem-Jan Herckenrath (IT Director OTTO Work Force Europe) about the collaboration with Ponthus: “In addition to the fact that Jack manages his projects well and keeps the goal in mind, he is very pragmatic and practical. He ensures that the people who are active in the project can focus on their task. He always has an eye for employees who need help with their assignment. He keeps the overview and ensures that everything comes together in the end result. OTTO Work Force is confident that a project will succeed if Jack is responsible. Results from the past may not be a guarantee, but they do give confidence and that makes the start of a new project a lot easier.”
He continues: “Our people learn from Jack, that’s why it’s nice that we can let young people from Ponthus also learn and gain experience from our organization. Giving young people opportunities is something that suits both companies and a business friendship.”
Jack is currently working on optimizing the processing of the working time of flex employees. After all these years the cooperation is still active and experienced as tight and good. “We can count on each other. The confidence that OTTO has in me and Ponthus is great, that’s why I’m always there when needed.” Because of the good relationship. Jessica de Leeuw of Ponthus was given the opportunity to gain work experience at OTTO.
Jack Vroomen: “Our work never ends. There are always changing circumstances that companies have to respond to.”
