Master Thesis
NEW SERVICE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS:
A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY AT A SERVICE FIRM
AN IMPROVED NSD PROCESS IN ORDER TO SPEED TIME-‐TO-‐MARKET Pieter Kooij 2013
Master Thesis
NEW SERVICE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS:
A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY AT A SERVICE FIRM
AN IMPROVED NSD PROCESS IN ORDER TO SPEED TIME-‐TO-‐MARKET Date 5 July 2013 Author Name: P.J. Kooij Student number: s2140438
Address: Arent Janszoon Ernststraat 268, Amsterdam E-‐mail address: kooij.pieter@gmail.com
University
Institution: University of Groningen
Faculty: Faculty of Economics and Business Master: MSc Business Administration Specialization: Business Development
Service firm
Organization: PostNL NV
Address: Prinses Beatrixlaan 23, 2595 AK 's-‐Gravenhage Business Unit: Commerce
Department: Strategy & Development
Supervisors
First Supervisor: Dr. Ir. M. W. Hillen Second Supervisor: Dr. E. Huizingh Supervisor PostNL: Drs. P. S. van Buijtene
Preface
In order to finish my Master Business Development I had to write a Master Thesis. My motivation for this Thesis was to carry out independent research with a scientific purpose. It was important that my research would lead to relevant findings, which a company could actually do something with. Since it has always been my desire to work for a profit organization after I will have graduated, it was a good challenge to conduct my research at PostNL, a Dutch multinational. In addition, it was a nice coincidence that PostNL had a Business Development team, which closely matched my area of interest.
The University of Groningen allowed me to graduate with a business problem-‐solving project at a company. So, I attended recruitment activities to meet people from the field and to learn about companies. At the Recruitment Days I got in touch with PostNL and from the beginning it felt good. They gave me the opportunities to both write my thesis about a topical issue, and to participate in a business development process. Afterwards, I realized that these months had been very valuable and instructive, even though they somehow delayed my graduation.
Many people contributed to writing this thesis. First, I would like to thank my supervisors from the University of Groningen Michiel Hillen and Eelko Huizingh; completing my thesis would not have been possible without them. They gave me guidelines in thesis writing and encouraged me to keep improving my thesis. Besides, I would like to thank my colleagues during my internship at PostNL Strategy & Development. A special thank to Peter van Buijtene and Marina Schoenmakers, who both supported me to write my thesis and gave me the chance to participate in the development of a new service. I had a great time at PostNL.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends for their everlasting support and the faith they showed in me.
Pieter Kooij
Amsterdam, July 2013
Abstract
PostNL is the traditional Dutch postal company, and the market leader in mail and parcel delivery in The Netherlands. They offer products and services in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain and Italy. This thesis focuses on PostNL Business Development (BD). The preliminary research started with interviewing employees of PostNL’s Strategy & Development department about the proposed business problem: a “throw it over the wall” approach in New Service Development (NSD) projects, which leads to rework and delay in development time. The interviewees confirmed the lack of an efficient NSD process and the lack of a corporatewide applied NSD process. They emphasized that the current NSD process – called the probaat method – was not used. In addition, from the interviews was found that the current NSD process did not consider any accelerators, and that the agreed development time often failed. Hence, the management question of this thesis is: “How
should PostNL BD redesign the NSD process in order to shorten the time-‐to-‐market?”
An extensive problem analysis followed after the preliminary analysis. Through a multiple case study, insights into the current NSD process at PostNL BD were obtained. Qualitative data methods – interviews, documentation analysis, and observations – were used to reveal the main causes of time-‐to-‐market failure in the NSD projects: (1) a complex business case and capex request, (2) no clear phases, (3) no clear gates, (4) no clear performance measurements, (5) poor cooperation between departments and (6) conflicting interest. The first cause, a complex business case, is beyond the scope of the NSD process redesign. The last two causes, successively poor cooperation and conflicting interests, appear to lie in the organizational culture and will be very tough to be improved with a redesign. Therefore, focus will be on improving phases, gates, and performance measurements.
After the business problem was validated the objective of this research became clear:
“Advise a redesign of the process for incremental innovations at PostNL Business Development in order to improve time-‐to-‐market of NSD projects.” From the interviews it
was concluded that attention to one process for all incremental innovations is very valuable. The research question underlines the effort of making a general NSD process applicable for PostNL BD. Hence, the research question of this thesis is: “What should the redesign for
incremental NSD projects look like to improve time-‐to-‐market at PostNL BD?”
Next, a literature survey was carried out to get insight into the concepts of NSD processes, time-‐to-‐market and accelerators for development time. The knowledge gained from the literature is combined with the design requirements and boundaries, which led to the redesign process. The probaat method served as starting point, because the users mentioned that the core of the model was useful and the additional costs of the redesign should be as low as possible. By means of comparison with clear sequential phases and gates from literature the redesign was drawn. Every phase was divided into sub phases that will be performed (partly) simultaneously in order to speed time-‐to-‐market. In addition, accelerators in the phases and performance measurements at the gates were added. The gates became decision points where projects will be (1) continued, (2) adjusted, or (3) killed.
The final redesign was tested in biweekly meetings with the BD manager. Unfortunately, the implementation of the redesign in a real NSD project did not happen. Therefore, conclusions regarding improvement of time-‐to-‐market are difficult to draw. Nevertheless, implementing the redesign can be considered as the first step in improving time-‐to-‐market of future NSD projects. However, it must be emphasized that it will remain important to review the redesign periodically in order to continually enhance the NSD process.
Content
1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background PostNL 1 1.2 Market trends 2 1.3 Business problem 2 2 Problem diagnosis 4 2.1 Validation structure 42.2 NSD process at PostNL 5
2.3 NSD projects 6
2.4 Cause and effect 11
2.5 Research question 13
2.6 Research approach 14
2.7 Potential academic contribution 14
3 Literature review 15
3.1 Key concepts 15
3.2 Development models 16
3.2.1 Sequential development models 16 3.2.2 Concurrent development models 17 3.2.3 Iterative development models 17 3.2.4 Overview of development models 17
3.3 Time-‐to-‐market 19 3.3.1 Benefits 19 3.3.2 Risks 20 3.3.3 Accelerators 20 3.4 Performance measurements 22 4 Design specifications 23 4.1 Functional requirements 23 4.2 User requirements 23 4.3 Design constraints 24
4.4 Overview of specifications 24
5 Redesign 25
5.1 NSD process 25
5.2 Use of time-‐to-‐market 26
5.3 Redesign 27
5.4 Redesign in detail 29
5.5 Test 36
6 Discussion 38
6.1 Conclusion 38
6.2 Scientific contribution 38
6.3 Limitations and further research 39
References 41 Abbreviations 44 Appendices 45
1
Introduction
This Master Thesis has been written as final part of the Master Business Development at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. The study was conducted at PostNL Business Development (from here: PostNL BD), a team that focuses on short-‐term innovations of one to two years ahead. This BD team operates within the Strategy & Development (from here: S&D) department of PostNL (see appendix A) and delivers both B2C as B2B services.
1.1 Background PostNL
PostNL is the traditional Dutch postal company, and market leader in mail and parcel delivery in The Netherlands. They offer products and services in mail and parcel markets in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Italy. The organizational structure of PostNL is depicted below in figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 Organizational structure at PostNL (PostNL Intranet, 2012)
The vision of PostNL is to become the best European parcel and mail service in 2017, operating in the Benelux, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy (‘Waar staat PostNL in 2017’, future plans of PostNL). PostNL’s strategy focuses on; maintaining the profitability of mail business in the Netherlands, growing parcels business, and creating profitable growth in international business. They specialise in bringing people closer together with their high-‐ quality delivery and retail network. PostNL’s retail network consists of more than 2300 shops (in retail shops), which makes them the biggest retail chain of the Netherlands. Besides, they are gradually growing in e-‐commerce, which expands their presence customers’ daily life. E-‐ commerce is stimulated by mail (e.g. direct marketing or printed advertising material) and by providing direct support through managing the whole logistics process for online retailers or offering them a ready-‐to-‐use web shop. With all these services they try to offer customers solutions to the growing gap between sender and receiver (PostNL annual report, 2011).
In the Dutch mail market, the emphasis is on ensuring continued profitability of the letter mail business. To achieve this in a declining market, which also has recently been fully liberalised, PostNL introduced a flexible business model with a delivery week with peak-‐days versus off-‐peak volumes. This is accompanied by a large reorganization of the workforce and a centralization of the sorting and other pre-‐delivery actions to sustain profitability (PostNL intranet, 2012). The reorganization was frozen last year, because of poor delivery quality.
Parcels
In order to grow in volume and profit the main priority of parcels is to maintain their current market share in the rapidly growing business-‐to-‐customers (B2C) standard parcels market, while strengthening the position in the business-‐to-‐business (B2B) market and adjacent markets. Sustaining market share in the B2B market has to be achieved by delivering value-‐ added solutions like secure delivery, payment on delivery, and fulfilment services. Besides, PostNL aims to further develop the shop logistics model to capture synergies in the B2C, B2B and consolidated parcels shipment markets (PostNL intranet, 2012).
International
In order to achieve profitable growth in international business, PostNL’s activities are concentrated in the three European markets where liberalisation is most advanced: Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy. In these countries they are trying to capture the position of leading challenger to the established national postal services. They pursue this by developing mail and parcel consolidation models and joint procurement activities. Moreover, PostNL want to become the biggest parcel delivery company in the Benelux in 2017 (PostNL intranet, 2012; ‘Waar staat PostNL in 2017’, future plans of PostNL).
1.2 Market trends
There are four pivotal trends in society that influence the future plans of PostNL. First of all, Internet and mobile phone have become increasingly important. So, advertisements through Internet and mobile phones will continue to grow and as a result of this electronic communication mail volumes will further shrink (‘Waar staat PostNL in 2017’, future plans of
PostNL). This influences the strategy of PostNL, because over the past years mail volumes
decreased while parcel volumes increased because of the emergence of Internet. As a result, a new relation between business units Mail in NL and Parcels arose (figure 1.1).
A second trend is the influence of customers on companies, for example, by use of social media. Customer will increasingly demand customized products and services, so companies should address these demands to retain customers (‘Waar staat PostNL in 2017’, future
plans of PostNL). It can be noticed that customers are becoming more in charge of new
product and service development. So, the ‘voice of customers’ cannot be neglected anymore if you want to develop differentiated and superior new products (Cooper & Edgett, 2008). The third trend is the increase in international parcels (‘Waar staat PostNL in 2017’, future
plans of PostNL). PostNL utilizes this trend by investing in foreign liberated markets. As
mentioned before PostNL wants to become the biggest parcel delivery firm in the Benelux.
The last trend is becoming more efficient with supplies and goods, in order to achieve faster delivery and cost savings for customers (‘Waar staat PostNL in 2017’, future plans of PostNL). PostNL clearly recognizes this trend and becoming more efficient in the new service development process at PostNL BD is pivotal in this study. Efficiency in the development process can be achieved inter alia by controlling time-‐to-‐market. In the next paragraph the preliminary business problem will be discussed.
1.3 Business problem
Since the last piece of the Dutch mail market was released in 2009, PostNL received increasingly competition in the entire mail market. To stay competitive PostNL BD wants to redesign their innovation process in order to become more efficient and to shorten time-‐to-‐ market. Pivotal issue in this thesis is that PostNL will be seen as a service provider. A quick benchmark learns that all large international postal companies (CanadaPost, USPS, RoyalMail, Australia Post, etc.) offer products and services, but in the core postal companies
deliver a service from sender to receiver, whether or not assisted with products. Therefore, the innovation process in the thesis will refer to New Service Development (from here: NSD).
By her former monopoly, PostNL unfortunately does have limited knowledge about developing new services to stay competitive. It seems that PostNL is one of the service firms that is just beginning to realise the need to be active in NSD. This regularly results in lacking necessary expertise in-‐house (Kelly & Storey, 2000). There is dissatisfaction within the organization about the speed of introducing innovations to the market. Innovation projects at PostNL are assessed on financial metrics and on time constraints. However, some managers at PostNL believe that innovations should have different metrics to be assessed on during development, because it is tough to predict how new services with high uncertainty will evolve, in both time and financial resources. Only assessing on financial and time metrics could kill promising projects.
It is important with a preliminary business problem to find the underlying performance problem in order to prevent designing a solution that is not a real problem (Van Aken et al., 2007). For resolving this preliminary business problem several interviews were held with important stakeholders within PostNL BD. The purpose of the preliminary analysis was to get to the core of the problem and to get a broad view of the organization around the perceived problem, see Appendix B. After a first analysis based on interviews with stakeholders it can be concluded that projects rarely meet the prearranged time constraints. Although, financial metrics are sometimes achieved, the development time often delays. For this reason and the global speed of developments this research will focus on improving the time-‐to-‐market of the NSD projects. From interviews striking findings about the current NSD process and time-‐to-‐market emerged:
“The innovation process used to be very tightly organized. Nowadays, however, the process is much looser and every manager uses its own approach. (…..) Therefore many projects don’t achieve their time-‐to-‐market anymore since the NSD process became less determined. This has to be improved.” (Theo van Aalst, director S&D).
“Currently the NSD process is often known by a throw it over the wall approach” (..…) “It is important that the development time of new services will accelerate, because currently the development process at PostNL is cumbersome and time-‐consuming.” (Peter van Buijtene, Manager Business Development).
“Time constraints are regularly not met, due to a lacking NSD process with clear phases and gates” (…..) “PostNL can enhance their new service success when the development time of services is better controlled.” (Philipine Vonderhorst, Business Development manager).
It can be concluded from the interviews that the current innovation methodology differs at every NSD project and there seems to be little knowledge sharing among NSD stakeholders. The interviewees endorsed that there are often no clear gates to make decisions and that there are often no clear agreements regarding decision-‐making. Consequently, all these flaws (negatively) influence time-‐to-‐market. Without having a clear innovation process and proper knowledge sharing a lot of work will be done twice or have to be done again, which delays the innovation process. Thus, PostNL Business Development is seeking for an improved methodology for their New Service Development. Their current development process is not dealing with different kinds of innovations, nor is it sufficiently efficient with respect to development time. Hence, the preliminary management question of this thesis is:
2
Problem diagnosis
In order to solve the problem of PostNL BD it is necessary to define the real problem, because only that makes it worthwhile to be subject of this business problem-‐solving thesis. A problem-‐solving project typically starts with an intricate problem mess consisting of issues, opinions, judgments, interests and power in the organization (Van Aken et al., 2009). In the paragraphs below the problem diagnosis will be elaborated. First, the validation structure will be discussed. The second paragraph indicates the current NSD process at PostNL and the third paragraph outlines the NSD projects that will be researched. The fourth paragraph shows the cause and effect diagram that structures and categorizes the problem mess. Then the research question will be formulated, which elaborates PostNL BD their real problem. This will be investigated through the research approach, which will provide the structure for this research. The last paragraph will mention the potential contribution of this research.
2.1 Validation structure
Factual information is needed to check the validity of the problem statement of PostNL BD (Van Aken et al., 2009). After the earlier preliminary analysis an extensive analysis was conducted this time. As it is hard to come to the core of a problem, several qualitative data methods have been applied. First, a documentation analysis of NSD projects with BD involvement was performed. Corporate documentation is often more reliable as an information source than the opinion of employees (Van Aken et al., 2009). By means of this method, knowledge and insights were gained about PostNL and about the current way of operating NSD projects at PostNL BD.
Five NSD projects were chosen to study extensively through interviewing project members. The interviews were held with employees of the Business Unit ‘Mail in NL’. The interviewees had different functions and different backgrounds, but did all participate in one of the NSD projects. The interviews were twofold; the first part was to discover how the NSD project was executed, while the second part was about how an optimal NSD model should be designed. These improvements will ultimately be applied in the redesign. As Van Aken et al. (2009) mention qualitative methods are usually most suitable for exploring causes and effects. A semi-‐structured approach was used with a list of questions, but also with sufficient room for additional information. The interview structure is presented in appendix C.
Categories of innovation
Researchers have stressed that there are six categories of innovation (Booz, Allen & Hamilton, 1982; Crawford & Di Benedetto, 2008; Huizingh, 2011), which are:
(1) New-‐to-‐the-‐world products. These are inventions that create a whole new market. (2) New-‐to-‐the-‐firm products. These are products that take the firm into a category new
to it. The products are not new-‐to-‐the-‐world, but new-‐to-‐the-‐firm.
(3) Additions to existing product lines. These are line extensions, designed to flash out the product line as offered to the firm’s current markets.
(4) Improvements and revisions to existing products. Current products made better. (5) Repositionings. These are products that are retargeted for a new use or application,
but it also includes products that are retargeted to new users or new target markets. (6) Cost reductions. These are new products that simply replace existing products in the
line, providing the customer similar performance but at a lower cost.
The first category refers to radical innovation, while category two to six are incremental innovations. Innovation projects at PostNL differ across all categories of innovation. Within the researched NSD projects there is a large spread in incremental innovations. Basic, PAV
partijpost and MijnPost are improvements and revisions of existing products. The projects were initiated to optimize the production branch of PostNL to be resistant against declining mail volumes. Successively, the number of delivery days (Basic), the product range (PAV partijpost) and the logistics and usability (MijnPost) were revised and improved. Moreover, Secure e-‐mail is a new-‐to-‐the-‐firm product, which yields PostNL new sales and profit through hybrid secure mail service for important documents. Doxxer is also a new-‐to-‐the-‐firm innovation, by which PostNL tries to create new sales and profit through online customer IDs to communicate with companies. Table 2.1 gives an overview of the selected NSD projects.
Project Type of innovation T2M achieved Financially positive outcome
I. Basic Improvement No Yes
II. Doxxer New-‐to-‐the-‐firm No To be defined
III. MijnPost Improvement No Yes
IV. PAV partijpost Improvement No Yes
V. Secure e-‐mail New-‐to-‐the-‐firm No To be defined Table 2.1 Overview NSD projects at PostNL BD
The five chosen projects were initiated between 2009 and 2012. Some of the projects are still running (a pilot), but made it to the last phases of the NSD process. The NSD projects have been chosen because they reflect a variety in types of innovation and outcome. Moreover, the five projects were selected because of the availability of interviewees and documentation, though sometimes limited. It was decided to interview two different employees per project, but most of the times it was possible to interview three employees per project. The variations in phases and results of the projects made it possible to analyze the probable causes of failure of the NSD process, which will be analyzed in paragraph 2.3.
Besides, information was gained through participative observation at the S&D department. Participation in corporate processes and activities revealed much of the organizational processes and culture (Van Aken et al., 2009). The way, for example, how collaboration took place and how projects are designed, monitored and evaluated, showed how processes could be improved from literature’s perspectives. Occasionally in this thesis there will be referred to observations. So, information was gathered from multiple perspectives.
2.2 NSD process at PostNL
The current innovation process of PostNL is called the ‘probaat method’. It is a sequential development method, wherein phases and predefined activities in every phase provide structure and sequence in the process, see appendix D. There are six different phases within probaat method; (1) idea phase, (2) definition phase, (3) design phase, (4) realization phase, (5) implementation phase, and (6) aftercare phase. The description of the process is fairly detailed, but gates (go/no-‐go moments) are missing. After interviewing and checking documentation, it became clear that this process dates from the TNT era and hardly anybody uses the corresponding ‘probaat documents’. The execution of NSD projects at PostNL BD often has many similarities, but very few project managers use the official probaat method.
The probaat method gives the average time spent per phase and it divides the process: - 15 – 20% for the fuzzy-‐front end: the idea and definition phase
- 75% for the actual development: the design, realization and implementation phase - 5 – 10% for the after care
However, it is doubtful whether this is a correct indication of the development ratios, whether this applies to every innovation, and whether it contributes to the NSD process.
More than half of the interviewees had never heard of the probaat method. Almost every interviewee recognized a clear project management model in it, but in practice they use their own methods adapted from their experience. Most of the NSD knowledge they have is based on project management models like Prince2, waterfall and Agile developing. Nevertheless, it can be concluded that the non-‐users followed a different execution process and definitely not the probaat method. There is no generally applied process at PostNL BD, indicating that the probaat method is not obliged to apply for NSD projects and that project managers do not naturally prefer to work with the probaat method. Therefore, it can be concluded that the process is not clear enough and not detailed enough. Most surprising in the current way of operating NSD projects is the lack of having clear gates during the execution process. Although the NSD projects often had evaluation moments, it became clear from the interviews that outlines for go/no-‐go moments seem to be vague.
Several problems tend to arise when using a sequential development process, within PostNL BD also known as a “throwing it over the wall” approach. Due to the structured process with clearly defined and sequential phases, new activities start when the previous activities have been completed. This often results in a lack of integration and coordination between different functional departments and other stakeholders involved (Valle & Vázquez-‐Bustelo, 2009). PostNL interviewees recognize themselves in regularly recovery of failures, thereby resulting in a long development time and additional design costs. Moreover, quality problems grow, because there is a failure in communication and understanding between the designs of the service, the production of the service, and the needs of consumers.
2.3 NSD projects
The researched NSD projects will be discussed individually and striking outcomes will be mentioned. For every project a cause and effect overview will be drawn. The general requirements that have to be met to become a BD project at PostNL are:
(1) More than 1,5 million net present value.
(2) Cross business unit, the project needs to have influence on several PostNL products. (3) The project is strategic and has impact on customer satisfaction.
(4) The project requires at least a half-‐year. (5) The project has a commercial approach.
I. Basic
Business customers want a mail service that guarantees the prearranged day they deliver (dagzekerheid), but they do not want to pay more than necessary. In the past, PostNL offered roughly four services: delivery within 24 hours, delivery within 48 hours, economy delivery and budget mail delivery. The two latter services were the cheapest, but their quality was much less compared with the 24 and 48 hours delivery. At the same time, competitors of PostNL were offering delivery services that were cheaper than the 24 and 48 hours service of PostNL, but also had a lower quality in terms of delivering on the agreed day. PostNL responded to this competition and the gap in their portfolio with Basic; a 72 hours delivery service, which had a better quality than economy and budget mail, and was cheaper than 24 and 48 hours delivery.
Initially, Basic was supposed to relate to a mail delivery of approximately 100 million pieces per year. However, in the years to come Basic evolved into Basic 48 (two days delivery) and Basic 72 (three days delivery) and it turned out to relate to almost 1,5 billion pieces per year. This huge increase in mail volume resulted in an involvement of many employees and departments that previously had never been taken into account.
After interviewing it became clear that clear phases were lacking and much iterations took place, because a development model like the probaat method was not used. The project leader had little experience when Basic started and he took care of the planning with an own project management model. Though the development process initially was not comprehensive, a very complex project plan and a capex – a financial business case at PostNL – have to be made. There was no assigned steering committee and go or no-‐go moments were lacking in the process. They tried to evaluate after every phase, but the project just kept continuing. The project team tried to have a meeting every two weeks, but there was a moderate dedication of the team members. Because of the corresponding reorganization many people and jobs got involved, which resulted in political hassle around the development process. This aggravated the duration of the project, as well as the fact that many people were replaced during the project (e.g. from the Marketing department there have been four different employees in the project team) and the fact that there was no steering committee that assessed the performance.
Unfortunately, time-‐to-‐market failed inter alia because service requirements and multiple IT systems kept changing during the development. Moreover, poor cooperation between departments and little flexibility within the organization delayed the development process. Beforehand, it was never made clear what the exact outcome of Basic had to be and nobody could have expected what influence Basic was going to have on the entire organization. Conflicting interests started rising at different departments and time-‐to-‐market was pressured by account managers, who had to create business expectations to contract a minimum amount of customers to make Basic successful anyway.
Multiple IT systems involved à Inexperienced project leader à Uncommitted team members à Poor cooperation between departments à No clear performance assessment à
No steering committee à Time-‐to-‐market failed Conflicting interests à
Changes in project team à Service proposition changed à No clear phases à No clear gates à Complex business case and capex à
Figure 2.3 Cause and effect overview of Basic
II. Doxxer
Doxxer is a new-‐to-‐the-‐firm innovation, which was founded inside out. PostNL figured out which network strengths they had and connected it to the trends in the market. For years now, mail has been getting more digitalized and at the same moment PostNL knows where – almost – every Dutch citizen lives. Therefore, PostNL is the only company that can combine this trend with the specific information to confirm that someone really is the person who he/she says to be. Moreover, PostDanmark, Pósturinn (Iceland), Zumbox (United States) already successfully offer a same kind of concept. The idea of Doxxer is that through an online ID, which first has to be personally confirmed, consumers can get connected with Dutch utilities and enterprises in a way they prefer through this B2C platform.
Prior to the development of Doxxer, the development team decided to organize themselves externally in Haarlem, in the same office where Doxxer’s software developers (called: Chazz)
are located. So, from the beginning they were not operating from the head office in The Hague, which gave them the freedom to develop a platform that is far from the core business of PostNL. Of course they had access to the assets of PostNL. A steering committee and the Board of Directors in The Hague were informed about the progress and budget of the project. The development team was multidisciplinary with a focus on IT development. Because of the high IT content of the project they made use of scrum development, a development tool suited for highly technological driven projects.
The core of scrum development is iteration and dividing every development projects into small pieces. These pieces are developed in two till four weeks and are monitored during daily scrum meetings of maximum 15 minutes. Time-‐to-‐market seems easier to maintain by dividing Doxxer into short sprints and by focussing on the main components of the platform. However, delay was caused by rework – Doxxer was a restart of the former ConnectMe – and an extensive concept phase before a business case could be made. Besides, the business case and capex request were extremely complex due to the many uncertainties in the development process. Also knowledge sharing between an externally located venture as Doxxer and other PostNL departments went stiff. Later on there was delay in the development phase, because companies were not so keen to be the first to participate in Doxxer and the service proposition kept changing. There seemed to be a threshold for companies, as long as no other companies get involved, this can be a misfit with the market or high uncertainty for companies about the success of the concept.
Despite many factors being favourable to a successful launch, it is still uncertain if the service will make it to the market and in which proposition the service will be launched. If there are not enough companies willing to participate, than there is a possibility to make it a PostNL oriented platform, although this would have taken a huge investment for such a ‘disappointing’ outcome. Anyway, it is certain that time-‐to-‐market failed.
Technology pushed à
Poor source corporate knowledge sharing à
Service proposition changed à Time-‐to-‐market failed No clear performance assessment à
Complex business case and capex à
Figure 2.4 Cause and effect overview of Doxxer
III. MijnPost
MijnPost was founded out of MyPost, which was an out-‐dated application for business customers to organize their mail flow on account. It was obsolete in terms of ease of use, user interface and functionality expansion. MijnPost is the improved platform for business customers to organize their mail flows and the solution to the complications of the past. It enables the customer to run the same processes easier and supply them with extra functionalities. Hereby, the amount of users is increased, as well as the amount of shipments. At the same time, it saves PostNL money (in the future) and gives them insights of their customer groups. So, marketing could become more focussed and processes became more transparent.
Despite these positive outcomes the NSD process itself was a failure. The initial time-‐to-‐ market was not achieved and the capex request was transcended thee times. The longer development time was caused by the different IT systems that were involved. Moreover, the cooperation between departments was tough and there seemed to be little flexibility within the involved departments. Through this delay the market and technologies got changed and
requirements of MijnPost had to be revised several times. Also clear phases as in the probaat method were not used, but the project team acted on own insights and experience. Several phases were completed, but they were never written down beforehand. Once account managers started to make first promises to business customers it became clear that the new service was forced to launch. This ensured that go/no-‐go gates faded and development costs increased after all.
The barriers encountered mainly in the definition and development phases, because it is hard to define what the service exactly will look like and to make a correct business case. Interviewees said that as soon as the project team started to develop concepts people inside the organization begin to doubt the definition and want to change or add things. This conflict in interests occurred several times during the development of MijnPost, which made the process slow and expensive. Besides, delay was incurred by much rework of replacing project members during the project, because of the long development time of almost three years. So, this was more or less a vicious circle.
Multiple IT systems involved à Little flexibility à Poor cooperation between departments à No clear performance assessment à
Little attention for milestones à Time-‐to-‐market failed Conflicting interests à
Changes in project teams à No clear phases à No clear gates à
Much rework à
Complex business case and capex à
Figure 2.5 Cause and effect overview of MijnPost
IV. PAV partijpost
The full name of PAV partijpost is ‘Product & Assortiments Vereenvoudiging partijpost’, this means product range simplification of bulk mail. Through the years PostNL built a portfolio that was not up to date anymore. Their service offerings became incoherent and complex, but there seemed to be little reason to change this complexity because of its profitability.
At some point, it became clear that something had to change because business customers were not satisfied anymore and with the introduction of Basic the offerings would change again. So, PostNL realized that they had to reorganize the portfolio. After two unsuccessful attempts to reorganize the portfolio, two S&D employees started the project with external advice from Arcato. This time they addressed the project small and in line with the corporate strategy. Guideline was to simplify the portfolio and to retain the earnings. In this way it was tried to enhance the customer satisfaction and fulfil their needs. Despite the project started with two employees, eventually – almost – the entire mail division got involved, in particular the account management department. The project team grew to seven FTE’s and the project got major influence on how IT at PostNL was organized. The total duration of the project was two and half years, of which one year implementation. The goals set were improving customer satisfaction and retaining revenue at the same time.
When PAV partijpost started the planning was too optimistic, which resulted in quickly postponing time-‐to-‐market when they realized that the project in reality was much bigger. However, the new time-‐to-‐market was not achieved either. Clear phases as in the probaat
