Collaboration and specified expertise are key success factors for scale-ups to grow
Rapid growth is key for a scale-up but expanding comes with continuous challenges. The road ahead is full of difficult choices. Something which can be both exciting and challenging. Benefitting from expert knowledge and sharing experiences can pave the way to success. Econnections provides scale-ups tailored expertise and advice with their growth challenges. In addition, it provides the opportunity to connect and learn from other companies. It does so in monthly events, and pilot projects.
What scale-ups participating in Econnections have in common is their focus on sustainability and e-commerce. The program aims to accelerate the growth of scale-ups. Joep Arends (Deloitte): “We rather see scale-ups with a sustainable solution grow then less sustainable businesses. We connect scale-ups to large successful companies, such as bol.com, Deloitte, Google Cloud, IKEA, Mollie, and PostNL.”
Technology & Security event
Technology & Security was the theme of the second Growth Accelerator Day, which took place at the Google Cloud Netherlands headquarters in Amsterdam. In the morning, two presentations were given. The key learnings were:
- Apply three lenses of innovation in every decision making around technology: desirability, feasibility and viability
- Architecture decisions should be embedded in your long-term business strategy
- Build your cloud architecture with future scaling in mind: Integrate de-coupling points and Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD)
Present: Chargetrip, Deloitte, Drop&Loop, Google Cloud, Greenplan, Manyfolds, Mendix, Optiply, PlasticFri, PostNL, and Returnless.
Scale-ups benefit from experienced partners
While the participating scaleups believe in their added value to customers, they are still climbing the ladder to gain more presence in order to increase their impact. During the Growth Accelerator Day, individual expert sessions in the fields of IT, data and security helped the scale-ups in finetuning their strategies.
Pilot: Valuable collaboration
Returnless is of the scale-ups within Econnections. The scale-up offers customers a platform which smoothens their e-commerce returns process by digitising related activities and provide advice to reduce returns. Chris Boer (Returnless): “We automate and optimise online return processes. Though we are convinced we make these processes more sustainable, we have never validated this and lack concrete numbers. That is our main goal with this program, as we refuse to be part of companies that are just greenwashing their actions. The partner support us in getting the factual CO2 reduction evidence. Collaborating with these partners is priceless for us.”
‘Expanding our network and accelerating growth’
The German scale-up Greenplan has its focus on moving goods and people in an efficient and sustainable way. It does so by offering a smart algorithm to larger companies that serve e-commerce entrepreneurs. In one of the expert sessions during the Growth Accelerator Day the focus was on how to prevent making technical mistakes. Disruptions can be disastrous, especially if the Greenplan algorithm is unable to calculate shipments and customers cannot plan their trips. “Econnections helps us improve the sustainability journey of our customers. In addition, we can expand our network and accelerate growth.”
The power of the network
Digitisation is one of the steps leading to more sustainability in e-commerce. This is exactly what participants of the Econnections network prove. They collaborate, discuss, pilot new ideas, benefit from expert knowledge and learn from each other, which adds valuable experiences. Sustainable e-commerce will be one step closer due to innovation.
