The impact of speed
Highlights of the collaboration:
Korver Holland is a highly respected international wholesaler of plumbing supplies, specialising in hardware for heating, gas and sanitary systems, as well as PVC components. The company offers a comprehensive range of components. Enabled by expertise and active involvement in testing, import and export, and component manufacture and assembly. Korver Holland has a track record of meeting customer requirements in the best possible way, by building and maintaining strong, transparent relationships. The company has become a key market player because of its wide selection of sanitary fixtures and reliable, innovative, high-quality components, backed up by a strong reputation.
Replacement or innovation
“Like many other organisations, we reached a point where our local IT environment didn’t have the speed or volumetric capacity required for our operations. We operate on a competitive (retail) market, where time-to-deliver is crucial to success. IT should aid your core activities, not burden you with continuity and stability headaches. The key question we had to answer was should we replace our local IT environment, or take the maturity and continuity of our IT environment to the next level by outsourcing.”
Using new opportunities
“Whatever way you look at it, the stability of business-critical applications has become a specialist field because of the data volumes involved and the speed of technological change. Also, new technologies bring new opportunities, and we want the ability to exploit them. Day-to-day operational demands make it difficult to create the time and scope to do that. We’ve got multiple stakeholders working in our IT environment, so adaptation isn’t always quick and easy.”
Outsourcing
“Just as we have a partnership with our customers and suppliers, we also sought a partnership with an IT specialist who wants to operate as a true partner. It is not easy to outsource critical IT. At the same time, it is important that IT moves the organisation forward and that IT is regulated in such a way that it permanently meets proven standards and proven technology. Otherwise, the same problem will arise within a few years. Databalance helped us excellently in this by sharing and discussing all scenarios together, openly and transparently. In the end, we settled on a managed workspace running SAP Business One and our office environment. An important step for the stability and performance of our IT environment. Databalance was chosen because of the number of similar customers in the private-cloud environment and the commitment of both Databalance’s management and Korver Holland.”
Bespoke managed workspace
Our approach is based on delivering bespoke solutions to all our customers. For the simple reason that every organisation’s requirements, preferences and business context are different. We operate on a task-led basis, not a solution-led basis. No one solution is right for every customer. A family firm like Korver Holland, with a hundred years’ experience and a business model that depends heavily on volume and speed, doesn’t have the same requirements as other customers with other business contexts. We ultimately worked with Korver Holland to realise a managed workspace running in our private cloud, with SAP Business One and Office365. The solution represented a significant change for end users, but a major step forward in terms of tranquillity, continuity and forward stability.
“From our first discussion to the actual migration and delivery, Databalance was very engaged and ready to take responsibility for the project. Including liaison with third parties. I’ve been impressed by their expertise and approach, and I’m pleased that we chose to take such a big leap forward.” – Pim Quispel, IT Lead, Korver Holland
Customer collaboration
Like Korver Holland, we like to build partnerships with our customers. Because we firmly believe that no one has a monopoly on wisdom, we operate on a collaborative basis, working to identify the best solutions through open and honest dialogue. Solutions tailored to the customer’s business context, not built around a particular technology, supplier or resource. That philosophy enables us to build long-term, strategic partnerships that benefit both parties and facilitate shared progress. Each with our own field of expertise. Both leveraging the added value of knowledge-sharing and collaboration.
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