Daniël Hammer reveals the exciting challenges of a Business Consultant for Drink-IT

Hello Daniel, can you tell us why you choose Drink-IT?

There are several aspects of Drink-IT that appealed to me.
I wanted to digitize companies and make them more efficient and effective. Exactly what Drink-IT is doing by delivering a reliable ERP product from Microsoft and all the innovations of the Microsoft Power platform. I saw an ideal match to broaden my knowledge but also strengthen Drink-IT. Furthermore, we work at Drink-IT on a project basis and not with full-time assignments at one company as is often the case at other consultancy companies. This ensures that there is a healthy mix of working at the office and at the customer, which provides a lot of variety. You also get the opportunity to prove yourself on several projects at the same time.

The focus on the beverage industry that Drink-IT has, is also something that appealed to me and I am very interested in the end products and the production process of our different customers. Of course, the international aspect of Drink-IT is also important to me, because we are so specialized in our industry, we have a lot of demand from abroad.

Another very big reason to join Drink-IT was its corporate culture! When I stepped in the office for the first time, it immediately appeared to be a family company with a very nice work atmosphere, where the Work-Life Balance of the employees is certainly taken into account. There truly is a work-hard-play-hard mentality.

What appealed to you in the position of Consultant?

The position appealed to me because as a consultant you have a great variety of tasks. You have the opportunity to get to know different companies, each with different processes to digitize and a different corporate culture and way of working. This ensures a dynamic environment and gives the opportunity to learn every day.

Furthermore, as a consultant you never work alone on a project, this ensures daily contact with other colleagues.

I mainly focus on the production - and logistics processes. Within Drink-IT it was possible to specialize in these topics as a consultant. For example, at Drink-IT there are a lot of applications within production, planning and warehousing, including its own integrated scanning application.

Finally, we work on many international projects, which means that normally there is a lot of travel involved. Although shortly after my start at Drink-IT, COVID-19 made its appearance and travelling became impossible. But hopefully, this will soon change.

Can you give us an idea of ​​what your week looks like?

Luckily, a week always looks different to me!

It depends on the project phase we are in. At the beginning of a project, we focus on explaining our best practices to implement the different processes. As we are delivering an industry solution, we tend to stay as close as possible to the standard solution and avoid customizations. If changes are needed, we make the functional analysis and coordinate this with the customer. We discuss with the technical consultants to get the changes integrated into the solution for the customer. The solution should also be tested, this is something I do. I have a lot of contact with customers in every project phase, for example, to give a demo, to map their processes, for workshops and their training.

Finally, I stay informed of the new developments within the Microsoft Power platform, which consists of Dataverse, Powerapps, Powerautomate and the well-known PowerBI. Regular internal training sessions are organized by a Train-The-Trainer (TTT) group to learn all the novelties as quickly as possible. A good example of this is the Microsoft Power Platform. When a Train-The-Trainer group was brought together, I did not hesitate and joined immediately. There were 10 of us who received training from the Power Platform and we were able to experiment with it. Afterwards, we provided training on the Power Platform to our NORRIQ colleagues to ensure the whole team got up-to-date with the Power Platform capabilities. I gave 5 training sessions myself.

I already had a first experience with a customer using the Power platform. Within the team,  we developed an app with Microsoft Powerapps, this app is in direct contact with their ERP system and will be used by the driver for deliveries and return registration when he is en-route. This was a very interesting project, as Powerapps is Low-code / No-code, I made a large part of the application myself. Of course, I worked closely with some colleagues to discuss functional designs and technical matters. Beforehand, we did workshops together with the customer in order to fully grasp the requirements and make this pilot a co-creation initiative.

Why should someone choose a job at Drink-IT?

Of course, you need to have a big interest in digitization, you shouldn’t be afraid of international projects and of course have a passion for the beverage industry.

Drink-IT is part of the NORRIQ Group, we are in the same office as the local Benelux department of NORRIQ and that has its advantages! For example, every Friday there is a drink at the office, where you can get to know the other colleagues better during a game or simply at the bar. For now, this is something we all look forward to starting again after the COVID-19 context. NORRIQ is very flexible towards employees in connection with their home office.  Finally, I would like to mention that team events are still being held during these COVID times! We already had a fit lunch, digital Friday drinks and even a remote summer event with a quiz and a beer tasting, for which everyone had received a beer package! Also in these times we stay connected to each other.

Thank you Daniël for this interesting talk, we are looking forward to seeing you evolve even more in Drink-IT!