Subsidiary Idlegcy NV launches app to make GDPR customer-oriented

Idlegcy NV is a subsidiary of Participium. Idlegcy wants to help companies to handle their customers and business relations data with respect. The company has now developed a web application to help companies manage GDPR rights: idmanager. With idmanager, anyone can manage GDPR rights centrally, instead of approaching each organization individually. The digital identity is therefore much easier to manage.

Tomorrow, 25^th of May is the GDPR deadline. Dozens of companies and organizations have prepared themselves to be compliant and to protect themselves against potential claims. From tomorrow any individual can contact any company to review their data, change them or have them deleted.

That means that you have to contact all those organizations one by one… very cumbersome indeed. That is where idmanager comes in. On one overview page, idmanager shows the organizations that keep track of your data. It takes merely two clicks to clear them. The app allows you to contact the data manager in any of these companies.

The application is free for all people who want to manage their data and privacy. Companies and organizations that pay the bill of idmanager, when they connect idmanager with their IT system.

More information on http://www.idlegcy.com/idmanager

Predicting the success of self-steering

Prof. Jan De Visch has developed a model and a survey questionnaire to estimate the chances for success of the introduction of self-steering.

“If too many parameters are counter-indicative, it is better to focus on some minor improvements first, before starting the real job of changing towards a form of self-steering”.

His presentation of March 22 contains the ten questions as well as a short summary for each of the questions.

• Download the presentation
• Feel free to contact Jan De Visch directly, if you’d like to receive his questionnaire

Industry 4.0 experts Forte in search of 3 new top experts (m/f/x)

Forte is one of Participium’s companies. Forte is the customer intimacy specialist among B2B management advisory companies and offers an end-to-end range of services, from strategic advice, sales & marketing planning, to sales, communication, staffing and training. Forte has noted that Industry 4.0 will shake up several sectors. And that this will thoroughly change the role of sales & marketing. Are you also convinced of this and do you want to make the changes happen?  Then this is your chance to jump on the Forte train …

Forte is looking at short notice for:

Transformation Architect. You have experience in B2B sales and marketing, you’ve held a middle management position in a division or business unit of an industrial organization for several years, but now you feel that the corporate world can’t provide you the freedom you need to really have impact in the coming years. Then this vacancy is worth your attention. The Transformation Architect ensures that our customers can (continue to) take the lead as Industry 4.0 shakes up their sector. You outline the transformation plan with which we redesign the strategy, the sales & marketing functions and even the internal organization of our clients.

We will gladly give you more information about this top job and the responsibilities that go with it, if you send a mail with a short motivation and very brief CV to diether.claeys@forte.eu

Change Lead. You have experience in B2B sales & marketing and you are an expert in getting the board members on board of a change process. At Forte, change processes starts from the market. We ensure that companies remain relevant and can take the lead, as Industry 4.0 thoroughly shakes up their sector. It is essential that you know how to lead a mixed team of colleagues and employees at the customer to results, regardless of the DNA of our customers. You will be responsible for planning the change project, monitoring and anchoring the changes, achieving and visualising the quick wins, adjusting the plan to a changing market and competition, etc. It is your responsibility that the margin of our strategic customers increases drastically over a period of two to three years.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. We will gladly provide you more information on this top job and the responsibilities that go with it, if you send a mail with a short motivation and very brief CV to diether.claeys@forte.eu

Business Developer “Utility Building & City Infrastructure”. Do you want to become our Mister or Misses Network? If you know the ins and outs of the intriguing new ecosystems “Utility Building and City Infrastructure”, this is your chance to help the leading mid-sized players in the world to stay relevant, now that Industry 4.0 thoroughly shakes up their industry. At Forte you can offer them a unique combination of customer intimacy, technology and advice. You are supported by the strong quality brand Forte to help you achieve that one goal our whole organisation is passionate about: increase the margin of the customers drastically in a few years’ time.

We will gladly provide you more information about this top job and the responsibilities that go with it, if you send a mail with a short motivation and very brief CV to diether.claeys@forte.eu

Three essentials of self-steering

As we mentioned earlier prof. Jan De Visch held an interesting lecture about self steering, at the event of february 8, organized by the Argonauts and Unizo, and sponsored by Participium.

This is what we learned from prof. Jan De Visch.

There are three essentials of self steering

1. Organize around the customer and organize around the customer’s value streams. The client will dictate your organization.
2. Grow in how your organization develops its internal cooperation. Everyone has two jobs: the main task and the task to cooperate with others. Developing job 2 is key for the future success.
3. In search of the operating model that fits best with the DNA of your organization. This is the canvas Jan De Visch has developed to illustrate the strengths and focus points of all of the new working models. There is no one size fits all … every organization has to look for its own way of working (together).

Download Jan De Visch’ presentation (in Dutch)

Participium in the media

Earlier this week, we wrote about the article Computable.be posted on the new role of Paul Indekeu as CEO of Participium. Other business and tech news channel followed the example of Computable.be. Read the article

The news and knowledge platform for Flemish entrepreneurs dVO De Vlaamse Ondernemer focussed on the financial aspect of the changes, with Paul increasing his contribution to 500.000 euros and the possible growth this can bring along. Read the article

And even abroad the changes at Participium didn’t go unnoticed. Business and technology website Dutch IT channel dedicated a page length article to the internal changes at Participium. Read the article

 

Changes at Participium don’t go unnoticed

We are pleased to see that the important changes that took place in Participium’s board of directors don’t go unnoticed. Computable.be the online platform for ICT professionals, posted a news item on its website about the new role for Paul Indekeu and our future plans.

Journalist Suzanne Martens correctly assessed that this is indeed relevant for the readers of Computable.be. The companies Participium has started up are directly or indirectly linked to technology. And we are convinced that technology is a necessity to increase the services delivery quality and to enable a steady scaling up for the long term.

Thank you Suzanne for writing about us!

Read the full article

Serial entrepreneur Paul Indekeu on board of Participium for growth

Paul Indekeu joins Jan Lagast in the Board of Directors of company builder Participium and of all its participations. Lagast has successfully started up the organization and found an experienced colleague in Indekeu, who will help support the further growth.

Last week Participium completed a series of operations at the notary through which Paul Indekeu joins founder Jan Lagast in the board of Participium and of all companies in which it participates. Paul Indekeu joined Participium as a co-investor about a year ago. In the meantime, he has increased his contribution to 500.000 euros and was appointed managing director in Participium and its participations. Founder Jan Lagast remains chairman of the Board of Directors.

Jan = from 0 to 1, Paul = from 1 to …

Indekeu and Lagast are passionate entrepreneurs. Both started their own company early in their careers, long before the word start-up existed. In contrast to the classic start-up and VC world, they both believe in return over the medium term. No matter how similar their vision and values ​​may be, their experience and expertise is very complementary. Where Jan, a visionary, is very strong in coming up with ideas and giving them shape – from 0 to 1 – Paul Indekeu is very strong in realizing growth. He brought SoftCell at the end of last century in just 10 years from 3 to 150 employees and at the beginning of this century he was the man behind the success story of Compex. When he started there, it was a Flemish SME with 50 engineers. A few years later, it had 150 employees in 4 countries, and was subsequently noticed by Siemens. Now Indekeu will help realize growth at Participium.

Industry 4.0, GDPR, self-management and blockchain

Participium has so far created three groups of companies:

• The first group works under the Forte brand. Forte helps technological and industrial companies to become even more relevant now that Industry 4.0 shatters their existing value chain. Forte has, among other things, an advisory branch specializing in ‘customer intimacy’, a training center for industrial sales & marketing, and a staffing company for project sales engineers and B2B marketing managers.
• Then there is the branch IDlegcy. IDlegcy helps companies to correctly deal with the digital identity of customers and employees – even after their death. One of the companies in this branch has its own proprietary technology (patent pending) using blockchain to ensure that online accounts are correctly closed upon death. IDlegcy is now working on an app to fully comply with GDPR obligations.
• The third branch is Funky & C °, consultancy and IT implementation support that helps companies team managers and project managers to provide the information they need to be able to deal with new organizational forms such as self-management. FunkyTime NV is the creator of tools in this branch. The last legal entity FunkyTeam NV will be established shortly for the advisory services.

In 2018 we will focus on realizing growth in these companies. Meanwhile, Indekeu and Lagast take the time to look for a new investors, faithful to the name ‘Participium’ and the logo ‘+ = x’ which implies that with some extra people, a few extra investors and a few extra projects a nice multiplier can be realized for the human and financial capital of the company.

Jan de Visch knows when and why self-steering will be successful (or not)

From many years of experience in changing organisational structures professor Jan De Visch from Flanders Business School has gathered a number of indicators for the success of self-steering. “If the stretch is too big, it will certainly not work, so I always recommend starting with one aspect when laying the foundation for self-management”, says De Visch. A short survey suffices to quickly assess whether your organization is ready to start with self-steering.

That was the subject of the evening session about the chances of success with regard to introducing self-management. This evening session is part of a series on self-management organized by The Argonauts. Another session on how to recruit, grow and retain self-managed employees follows 31st May. The focal point of this is a two-day bus trip in October through a number of companies that have successfully introduced self-management. Participium supports these sessions because we take the subject seriously and think about introducing self-management in our own company.

Download Jan’s presentation (Dutch pdf)

 

Marginal cost of SaaS is not near-to-zero

I just happened to see a post on LinkedIn referring to a strategic advisor’s page on SaaS strategy. The picture wants to focus the reader on stimulating growth to outpass the operational fixed costs of a start-up in SaaS. I agree that one has to ensure the turnover gets bigger than the operational costs. Not arguing that part of the picture at all. But … the same picture shows the biggest lie in the SaaS industry. The marginal cost is NOT near to zero. And that is really bad news.

The first months are all about servicing the customer to keep them

Let’s redesign the above picture to a graph that is closer to reality. Often, SaaS companies will offer their software as a service for free for a while. You can plan that part, and estimate the cost for developing and marketing the offering. That’s the guaranteed cash burn. That’s why you attract investors in the first place. The issue is, customers will not stay if you do not spend time with them. You have to help them capture the value from your offering, and that costs a lot of time. Huge amounts of time, in comparison to the price you are planning to charge for the software in the future. Marginal cost at that point is far from zero. It’s probably the unexpected and biggest cash burner for months in a row. That’s really bad news.

 

 

From a certain moment in time, you will decide that you have had enough of the free users, and want to start charging money. Of course, you will loose some users, but hey, you also gain money from the others, so why bother, because the biggest challenge in the planning is to estimate the turn-over for the coming months. Again, you do not want to loose clients, and by now you will have learned that these clients need services too. Be sure though, that the clients will also be needing much and much more services than you expected in the beginning. Do not forget, they are now paying for the offered SaaS, and you do not want to loose the scarce clients you have convinced to stay with you until this point in the history of your start-up. So be sure, again, the marginal cost will be huge, and much more than anticipated.

Result: the lie about marginal costs puts break-even beyond expectations

There is a way to cope with the marginal cost: include it in the financial plan from day one. Or, even better, sell customer value services to the clients, and add the SaaS subscription as a plus. That way, your client services generate a real gross margin, and your SaaS increases the repetitive character of the generated margin per client.

Yes, this is the business model that is Participium’s favorite. And no, it is not easy. As is no business model that ever leaves the academic books, and is put to the test in real life.

My search for participation and a self-steering organizational structure

Today, prof. Jan De Visch has given me the opportunity to tell my own story. My 50 years of searching. Searching for the right company structure to make people love their work. It has not been an easy search. Today, it seems bon ton to dislike Taylor and classic company hierarchies, but that was not the case when I started my business experience.

Over the years, I have been working on many of the levels of maturity that are described by Frederic Laloux in his book “reinventing organizations”. Red — the maturity level of the medieval lord who is the dominant boss of a group of power seekers — is great when you need a high quality and a high control over a very small team. Great for fast start-up, yet weak for scaling-up. That’s when the “amber” level can be much more successful. In amber, everyone has a rank because he or she got to that rank. Great for creating large churches and armies, but not great for output-driven organizations. We tried some of that by allocating people to a rank, but soon we discovered there were more ranks than people. Orange works better for knowledge workers, since that level rewards people for their merits. This is thé level for Industry 3.0 companies in which bosses design the organization and have workers do the job that was designed for them. Not a great system for knowledge work, though. The boss cannot be everywhere controlling everyone’s work. We experimented with ‘green’, by introducing co-ownership and having people feel they own part of the business. That worked much better. We had our people take responsibilities over the client’s results and take team responsibilities over the long term. But, when times were bad or changes were needed, this level of maturity stalls the company. So, I almost went back to “red” out of frustration, until I read about the color “teal”. And that’s where I felt back on track. This is the organizational concept that we are now looking into. And that’s why the journey organized by the Argonauts is so important for us.

Self-steering looks promising, but we are not there yet. We have a lot to discover, learn, and try. But what I already learned, is that there is no text-book always-right model for company organization. I also discovered self-steering is more wrongly than rightly understood. Self-steering is about getting and taking responsibility. It has nothing to do with ‘go as you please’. Although there is no daily boss or chief in a self-steering organization, for everyone from cleaning lady to general manager, there are much more people to take into account and ask for their opinion than ever before.