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Securing long-term success: Kramp Groep’s Strategic Improvement Plan for its IT Landscape, Security, and Data Strategy

#Cloud Native App Development#Cloud Native Architecture#Data#Data & Analytics#G Cloud#Modernising IT Infrastructure#Security

Kramp formalized its IT strategy with an IT assessment that helped them define a strategic improvement plan to bring its IT landscape, security and data strategy to the next level.

About the customer

Kramp Groep is Europe’s largest specialist in spare parts and accessories for the agricultural industry. Kramp is the essential partner for its customers and suppliers with over 500,000 products online available, 11 distribution centres and more than 3.000 dedicated employees in 24 sales offices spread over Europe. Kramp Groep was founded in 1951 and has its headquarters in the Netherlands. 

The Challenge

Kramp has grown enormously over the past 70 years. Even though the agribusiness has been a traditional business for a long time, Kramp has always tried to be at the forefront of digital advancements in a conservative sector. Because technology can be a bottleneck for future growth, they founded their “Kramp Hub” in Utrecht in 2017. The hub functions as an incubator for the technological developments of the group. Today the hub develops and maintains the company’s omnichannel e-commerce website and employs around 80 people. 

Staying up to date with technology posed a challenge for the technology department, as multiple projects and a lack of resources led to confusion over priorities. The absence of a centralised priority list caused internal departments to have varying objectives, making it difficult for the company to align the overall IT strategy with the company’s goals.

Devoteam G Cloud helped us to get a good outside in view on the key Tech domains to be incorporated to our overall IT Roadmap (EA, Data, Security and People of course).

Olivier Luxon CTO at Kramp Groep

The Goal 

Kramp wanted to develop a clear IT strategy to support the company’s overall objectives and future growth. The goal was to formalise the different pillars of the IT strategy by taking a step back and aligning the internal departments with the IT strategy and with the company’s overall objectives. 

For Kramp to achieve its objectives, it investigated these 3 key areas:  

  1. The first goal of the project was to assess the direction of Kramp’s IT landscape and identify areas for improvement. Because the IT landscape has to enable the company to achieve its business goal, this goal will help map all the technology the company needs.
  2. Kramp recently passed the 1 billion euro revenue mark, making it more susceptible to hackers. The goal was to define what security investments have to be made and why. In addition to analysing these pain points and defining points of improvement, the goal was also to raise awareness of the security priorities at the board level.
  3. Lastly, the goal was set to define a Data & Analytics Strategy. Becoming data-driven will allow Kramp to improve their operational efficiency, drive revenue and improve the customer experience. 

By evaluating Kramp’s performance in these key areas, Kramp’s management wanted to be able to set realistic, yet ambitious, technological goals, so they would be able to support the company in achieving its ambitions.

The Solution & Methodology

Devoteam G Cloud planned an IT assessment to help Kramp define its IT strategy. The assessment helped Kramp to evaluate the direction and maturity level of their IT landscape, security, and data strategy. 

Devoteam G Cloud quickly responded to our request with a concise plan and an experienced team. They performed the assignment in a fast and professional manner, that helped us to sharpen our strategy and improvement plans.

Mirko Schuurman Director Architecture & Security at Kramp Groep

1. IT Landscape 

In this assessment, partner Devoteam had a closer look at the role of the IT Enterprise Architecture and deep-dived into e-commerce, fulfilment, integrations and IT infrastructure. 

2. Security

For the security assessment, Devoteam used the CSC framework, which was also used by Kramp earlier, to assess Kramp’s current plans and identify areas for improvement. 

The CSC framework helped to define a weighted score by evaluating 18 security domains like a.o. data protection, access control management, email and browser protection, software security, and incident response. A maturity score is given for each of the 18 domains resulting in a spider diagram that defined the situation as is. Afterwards, the framework was used to define a desired maturity level. 

With the help of the framework, Kramp was able to create a clear plan consisting of practical next steps that will aid in improving its security score. These elements were taken into account: 

  • Understanding the risk of each security item vs. the benefits of implementing solutions. 
  • Considering the people, processes and technologies needed
  • Agreeing on priorities 
  • Estimating the time and budget needed to make the improvements

3. Data Strategy

The data strategy assessment was done by conducting a series of interviews with key stakeholders in which Devoteam focused on these domains: Data governance, data quality, data warehousing, data science and BI, data centre of excellence.

  • Finally, for data, Devoteam conducted interviews with Kramp’s key stakeholders to help define recommendations for their data strategy.

The Result

The IT assessment was a success for Kramp. The assessment helped to understand where they stand in terms of their IT landscape, security, and data strategy. Based on the assessment, Kramp defined a strategic improvement plan to bring their IT strategy to the next level. The plan included activities to improve data governance, build a Center of Excellence (COE), complete the migration of the current data warehouse to Google BigQuery, and build a data science platform with Vertex AI and a security improvement plan. 

  1. Kramp’s management team is now reassured to be on the right track with its IT landscape. They have enough information to prioritise and make clear choices. Resources can efficiently be allocated to the projects on their roadmap. 
  2. A Security Score was calculated using the CSC 18 Framework. Based on the initial score, Kramp has now set its target to achieve a score of 70 to 80 after the implementation of the prioritised action items. 
  3. Finally, the assessment also looked at Kramp’s data strategy. Before the assessment, Kramp’s main focus was to get their data warehouse up and running and to get started with data science. Yet, the assessment showed that Kramp had not enough invested in the invisible parts like data governance, skilled people and data integration. The assessment defined a strategic improvement plan with four different topics: data governance, a centre of excellence (COE), a data as a service platform, and a data science track. To track the improvements in these 4 topic areas, Kramp is now using a  star rating to measure their maturity. 

The assessment reconfirmed that we are on the right track with our data strategy. Vertex AI will support us heavily in the acceleration of the data science area. But it also showed that we need to put more effort into capability building & governance to make the maximum impact for the organization.

Chiel Schutter Director Kramp Hub