Getting the customer on board
Faster scaling of digital strategy thanks to low-code
Digitalisation essential for leadership position
Royal IHC is an international supplier of innovative and efficient equipment, vessels and services for the offshore, dredging and mining industries. More than 3,000 employees work on site and from offices worldwide to support customers on every continent. The company faces constant changes in customer requirements and global competitive pressures. To maintain its leading position and provide customers with innovative solutions, digitalization is an important part of IHC’s strategy. To define and implement the strategy, IHC is working with Ciphix.
- Growing demand for digitisation
Rising need for applications, dashboards and portals - Enterprise-wide digital transformation
Business buy-in necessary for better solutions - Respond faster to changing conditions
Instant insight needed for better customer support
Quickly scale with long-term partner
“Digitalization is of strategic importance for IHC,” says Jan van der Wouw, Director Digital Business at Royal IHC. “That’s why, among other things, we launched a specific digitization program aimed at digitizing existing processes and developing new solutions, called OneIHC. To realize our ambitions, we needed a long-term partner and a low-code platform that would allow us to scale the building of new applications in a faster and more efficient way.”
Aligning business stakeholders and IT
As the company saw growing demand for applications, dashboards and portals, the new low-code platform needed to improve collaboration between business stakeholders and IT to meet these requests. After evaluating several low-code platforms, IHC chose Mendix and business partner Ciphix. Key factors were the superior online and offline mobile capabilities, a shared vision on component-based architecture and the extensive knowledge and experience of Ciphix’s team.
Digital transformation should not be limited to one department, but should be done company-wide to have the greatest impact. IHC wanted to build digital solutions that improved product development but also supported customer service. To do this, it worked according to the credo: “Doing things right” and “Doing the right things.
Putting the platform to work
Many years ago, IHC began unifying processes and support systems resulting in a strong foundation. To accelerate application development, they began building digital solutions on the Mendix platform. This reduced the time to create, iterate and release applications from about six months to six weeks. In addition, reusable software components were created that further reduced the development time of other new solutions.
All ships and entities reside in IHC’s ERP system. These entities are linked via one API to the digital solutions in Mendix and then used in different apps, such as IRIS for operational intelligence, Searchlight for market intelligence and Optimus for asset condition management. This unification and standardization of the ERP system and API allows a development time for apps of only a few weeks.
Defining customer needs
Improving cooperation with customers was one of the main objectives. Implementing customer validation in the development process has proved very successful. For this, IHC works in projects with two-week development sprints, after which a working solution can be shown. These are reviewed with internal and external stakeholders. The feedback obtained is picked up in the next development sprint, while the benefits of the released software provide immediate results.
While customer insights are important, the company also conducts research on the behavior of targeted user groups. This data should help answer key questions, such as: to what extent is the solution desired by the customer? Is there a positive business case (is the solution viable)? And can we realize the solution given the constraints (is it feasible)? With this information, they can build better solutions, or-if that is the best solution-not build a solution.
For example, one solution is a mobile application that allows customers to access their list of ships, related parts and documents. During the initial review, customers appreciated the result, but requested additional functionality, such as a simpler search option. While the product was already released and in use, development of this search feature began immediately. More importantly, incorporating customer feedback built support for the solution, making it much easier to adopt.
Getting the customer on board
Customers expect IHC to quickly deliver new ways to maximize uptime and performance, reduce total cost of ownership and improve the experience.
For the latter, IHC works in three phases: working closely with customers to understand their problems and get ideas on how to help them; developing prototypes and a solution as quickly as possible; and the operational phase with a focus on customer onboarding. This last step is all about working with people. The users who will work with the app need to be able to make valuable decisions based on the information in their dashboards or other views.
Although the maritime industry has long been a stable environment, changes in other industries, the integration of supply chains and regulations in different countries have impacted the maritime sector, leading to a higher degree of complexity. IHC customers must report on their environmental footprint and comply with a wide range of safety regulations. Therefore, when IHC Digital Business delivers a solution, an entire team is ready to work with and analyze new data.
The challenge is to deliver data in a way that leads to actionable and useful insights. This can only be achieved by actively discussing requirements and opportunities with the client. Therefore, IHC’s digital team needs a combination of technical skills and soft skills; they need the knowledge to build a dashboard, but also the ability to analyze the product and the customer.
Developing in collaboration with customers
A good example of delivered applications including customer validation and co-creation is Optimus, a condition monitoring system. Customers were involved in every phase of development. IHC organized workshops with different groups of customers to discover whether there was an external need for a digital condition monitoring solution, and if so, what the details should look like. This revealed that rather than developing a solution to support the condition monitoring process, which was initially the plan, customers preferred a digital solution that would help them prove the value of a condition monitoring system.
In addition to insight, speed is key when it comes to innovation. It is necessary to get products to market quickly and then continue to innovate. IHC accelerated the process by using an “agile” way of working, not only during development, but also in the validation phase of the solution. Thanks to the development platform and phased approach, a prototype was built in just one week, which could be validated again with customers. After four “sprints” (over eight weeks of development), the first minimum viable product (MVP) was ready and named “Optimus.
The investment in customer validations meant that IHC not only quickly developed an initial MVP of the digital solution, but also had the cooperation of customers during the implementation process.
Watch the Royal IHC case video
From months to weeks
Another application developed with the new approach on the new platform is IRIS, which allows customers to react quickly to anomalies in asset performance and take immediate corrective action. Previous attempts with other software developers to develop a solution took more than 18 months without resulting in a working solution.
Within weeks, Ciphix developed a responsive web app for mobile use that gives users access to real-time operational parameters of vessels and projects in various views. These parameters are calculated by combining sensor data from the vessel with manual input from the vessel operator. To achieve this, IRIS has integrations with IFS (Backend) for ship names and OSIsoft PI system (IoT solution on the ship).
These parameters are combined in a daily report sent to the owner to keep him informed of the progress of his projects. The app is constantly being improved with regular use being the most important factor for optimizations.
The time-to-market dropped significantly. Ciphix was able to create a workable prototype in a matter of weeks. Business-wise, it has enabled IHC to outpace their competitors in becoming a more service-oriented supplier and to better advise and support their customers based on newly captured data.
Arjan van Limborgh, Product Owner Digital Business at Royal IHC: “Our job at Digital Business is to drive digitalization at IHC while continuously validating its value with our colleagues and customers. During this development, we received feedback on actual working software rather than abstract ideas or concepts, which provided deep insights and allowed us to adjust our developments to further increase value. I can honestly say that choosing Mendix and Ciphix for rapid software development has been crucial in achieving our goals.”
Related services
- Reduced time to market
Iterative sprints enable innovation in weeks - Better advice
Digitisation provides faster and more insight into usage data and areas for improvement - Higher customer engagement
Customer validation and co-creation create support and better apps
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