IT and Business

'Just over 20 years ago, after I’d finished my Business Informatics HEAO qualification, I started work at ING in a department that was involved in implementing a treasury system. You needed a knowledge of IT and business, a combination that had always appealed to me. Via technical application management and functional management, I moved on to data base management.'

'At NN, I joined a department that was working with a marketing database and taking the first steps in the field of data analysis. For our internal customers, we made selections from our databases for various analyses, reports and specific information and commercial campaigns.'

'Data is now crucial for NN. With the data we’ve collected, we can generate a 360-degree customer profile, for example. Does the customer have a young family? Is he or she close to retirement age? With this kind of information, we can match our services as closely as possible to the changing needs of our customers and continue to surprise them in a positive way. Without data, there’s very little to manage. In recent years, we’ve therefore taken great steps in the direction of a data-driven organisation.'

Database migration

'In our team, we work in two-week sprints using the Agile Scrum method. I like this short, cyclical way of working because it allows you to deliver quickly. My team is currently working on the migration of our Marketing Intelligence Database from an Oracle platform to the Microsoft Azure DataWareHouse cloud environment. In this environment, we can quickly scale up the database and add extra memory and processing capacity.'

'On another project, I’m working on improving and maintaining the desired data quality. An optimum customer profile after all requires your data to be in order as a minimum. We use a tool called Informatica Data Quality to monitor the quality. If data is missing or not in order, we report this to the business, which deals with it. This means that our data gets better and better.'

Outside the box

'Working at NN means working in a professional environment, with specialists who help one under, understand one another well and are open to each other’s ideas. You can think outside the box here and come up with solutions that others haven’t thought of yet. I enjoy that, especially because your solutions are valued. I can also have a laugh with my colleagues, which gives me positive energy. Humour is important to me. A day without laughter is a day wasted.'