Renson – Brochure 2019

No speed limit on innovation

P R O J E C T PA R T N E R S

No speed limit on innovation WRITTEN BY D a l e B e n to n PRODUCED BY A n d y L l oyd

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Koen Van Loo, CIO of Renson Ventilation, explores how the company’s investment in IT enables efficiency and innovation

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y its own admission, Renson Ventilation is a rapidly growing competent company

that is constantly one step ahead of the game. In order to remain one step ahead of the game in an industry space as technically driven and niche as that of ventilation, sun protection & ‘outdoor living’ products, investing in innovation is key. For Koen Van Loo, CIO of Renson Ventilation, he and his team take their responsibility to innovate very seriously.

As Van Loo highlights, investing in innovation is within the very DNA of Renson.

“At Renson we deliver high quality products to a number of markets,” he says.

“So we operate in the upper end of the market, meaning our products are very well known for their exclusive quality.”

“We do that by continuously innovating and Renson invests heavily into innovation. Right now, more than 10% of the company is active in R&D. Once 4

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upon a time, innovation was achieved by

fundamentals of the company. This

upgrading existing hardware but now we

is where Van Loo came into the busi-

look to create better and smarter prod-

ness in 2017. “The first thing we did was

ucts each and every time.”

create a performing IT organisation. This

Traditionally, like many others, Renson

saw Renson scale up its entire IT infra-

was a hardware-focused company in

structure. From here, we can now look

which it hadn’t invested much into the

at implementing IT projects that will

IT organisation across the company. In

continue to drive value for the business,”

recent years, to stay ahead of the game

explains Van Loo. “The main program

in a rapidly evolving market, Renson

that we have been focused on has been

looked to invest in its IT/ infrastructure

the upgrade of our old in-house built

and realised that in order to be able to

ERP system. This has been in place for

cater to the changing demands of the

around 25 years and we are currently

market it needed to upgrade the digital

replacing that with SAP S4 Hana.”

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“ Once upon a time, innovation was achieved by upgrading existing hardware but now we look to create better and smarter products each and every time” — KO E N VA N LO O CIO R E N S O N V E N T I L AT I O N

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Van Loo is keen to highlight that Renson’s digital investments are also in response to a market trend for mass personalisation. With products ranging from ventilation to sun protection and outdoor living, each being tailored to the specific needs and wishes of each client, Renson is no stranger to mass personalisation.

With the implementation of a new ERP system, Renson will be better placed to implement a new e-commerce module that will allow the company to configure its products even better to changing client demands.

Renson has always been a company driven by technology, but in recent years the company has embarked on a focused IT transformation that can be broken down into three programs. The first program, called Sunrise, is a complete overhaul of its ERP system.

For this, Renson will define a five-year program that will see a new implementation to better serve all of its internal businesses. The second program is linked intrinsically with the Sunrise program. Renson is opening a new plant, aiming to become the ultimate international reference for a comprehensive garden experience, showcasing all of Renson’s outdoor products together with outdoor solutions from its partners.

This ties into a wider automation project for Renson.

Van Loo elaborates: “We are living in fast evolving times, and more and more innovation is coming from connected devices. Nearly every new device we implement has IOT connectivity now. We are gathering a lot of data that is used to assist our customers and optimising their device usage,” “For instance, there will be a swimming pool and outdoor lighting products that work together. That w w w.re n son .eu

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data will inform the customer expe-

described by Van Loo as a ‘future proof’

rience and in turn, create and enable

portal, will allow for greater communi-

healthy spaces for our end customers.

cation between all stakeholders. These

In working together with our partners,

will include online stakeholders, archi-

that also ties into our third IT project

tects, installers, dealers, and multiple

around our stakeholder platform.”

organisation types. “There you have, in

This third IT program looks at the

a single platform, an ordering platform

complete renewal of Renson’s online

and a configurator to build your prod-

stakeholders platform. Renson’s exist-

ucts exactly as you wish,” he says. “You’ll

ing infrastructure saw multiple stake-

have digital twins of your products. So

holders operating within separate plat-

you can see if something in the product

forms, meaning that they were not fully

will work or not. You can customise and

integrated and each platform suffering

tailor the product and order replacement

from limited capabilities. This new portal,

parts with ease. You can control your w w w.re n son .e u

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“ Some people call it customer intimacy, but the fact of the matter is, we want to deliver” — KO E N VA N LO O CIO R E N S O N V E N T I L AT I O N

devices and receive feedback from them.

It’s incredibly important for us in terms of introducing new products that are tailored to specific needs. The ordering platform is an example of a program that will augment operational efficiency for Renson, while the other programs focus on the customer and adding value and better experiences for them.”

Stakeholder engagement is a cornerstone of Renson’s enablement of innovation. In bringing together and driving seamless communication within the stakeholder ecosystem, the company can better realise efficiencies and value both to itself as a business but also to the end customers. These end customers are very much a part of this ecosystem and remaining close to its customer base drives Renson, through its IT investments. Each and everything that the company does is designed with the customer in mind. “Some people call it customer intimacy, but the fact of the matter is – we want to deliver,” says Van Loo. “We want to be able to deliver made to measure solutions. This is evident in just how customised our products are, no product is the same as any other product that we’ve ever made. Even if our configurators aren’t able to configure following the wishes you have, we 14

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have a separate engineering department that can build these products by working closely with the customer. It’s very important to us.”

Renson is very much a business-to-business organisation, or

Koen Van Loo CIO Renson Ventilation

in Van Loo’s own words a “business

Koen Van Loo is an experienced digital exec-

to business to business” organisa-

utive. He became a Master Business Engineer

tion. A dichotomy like this often means

in Management Information Technology at

that the companies will rarely engage

the University of Louvain (Belgium) in 1994

directly with the end customers. With

and started as a functional analyst and IT

Renson, the digitalisation programs

project leader for Partezis, a major healthcare

rip up this traditional perspective and

organisation in Belgium.

bring the company closer to those end

In 1998 he switched to ADMB (now Liantis),

customers. “Once upon a time we’d

one of the biggest social security players

simply have a photo of a person’s house

in the Belgian market, where he became a

that we use as a means of understand-

member of the board as a CIO.

ing what product they want and how it

In November 2016, he founded his own

would fit,” he says. “Our transforma-

company Awesome Singular Guidance for

tion means that we are delivering not

coaching and advising companies with their

only products but services too, mean-

digital strategies and operations. First mission

ing the contact with the (end) customer

was to advise Athena Graphics, a flexo print-

becomes more intense.”

ing prepress company, on its digital trans-

Renson has been operating since

formation as Chief Digital Officer. Besides

1909, establishing itself as a true market

some smaller missions on advisory boards, he

leader thanks to its drive to be one step

is now mainly active as CIO for the Renson

ahead and to deliver unrivalled prod-

Group, realising some major turnaround

ucts tailored to end customer needs, but

projects: setting up a performant digital

in order to have successfully achieved

organisation, a turnaround companywide

this level of success it has had to

greenfield SAP S4/Hana implementation and

embrace innovation from an IT perspec-

a complete new digital architecture to future

tive but also from an internal capability

proof the organisation.

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perspective. With the implementation of new IT infrastructure, the required skill sets have changed and while Van Loo is keen to stress that Renson already has a truly skilled workforce, Renson does look to educate and train its staff through the help of partners. “It is possible for us to find the people that we need with the right skills, but sometimes when it comes to specific skill requirements we use partners for that and we try to educate and train our own people with the knowledge that those partners have, thanks to their global experience,” he says. “As an example, we aim to have complete autonomy over our SAP integration in the near future and to get there we are benefitting from competence centres and we also have agreements with Delaware in which our people can ‘look over the shoulder’ of their staff and learn how to use their software as they go through the implementation of SAP.” With a number of IT implementation programs in place to lay down an infrastructure that will enable innovation and a clear investment strategy for building the capabilities of it’s workforce, Renson is firmly positioned to build on its market leading position and embrace the future with certainty that it can continue to 18

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operate for the next 100 years and beyond.

Van Loo is all too aware of the challenge, and opportunity, that the future has in store for Renson and he feels that in order to truly build on a century of success, the company must continue to embrace digital innovation. “As I look to the future of Renson, I want the company to look to further augment the digitalisation and the performance of its operations,” he says. “If there is a digital need within the company, then we in IT have to be a trusted experience centre. That means we should be able to inspire and help the business find the right digital solutions.” w w w.re n son .e u

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“As we look to implementing more digital programs, we have to really perform and form an idealisation to realise that in the most efficient way. We should be a very agile business, because the market is very agile and opportunities can change in the blink of an eye. We as an IT team that’s performing need to be able to follow that market agility seamlessly.�

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“ If there is a digital need within the company, then we in IT have to be a trusted experience centre. That means we should be able to inspire and help the business find the right digital solutions” — Ko e n Va n Lo o CIO Renson Ventilation

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