The proof is in the partnership: 10 years of innovating together

42,536

orders

10+

years of collaboration

15,673

activated participants

42,536

orders

10+

years of collaboration

15,673

activated participants

Selfservice portal

Financial services

Centraal Beheer and Freshheads have been collaborating since 2015. We explore how Centraal Beheer can assist customers with everything that is not or only partially insured. The result? A series of smart, innovative services. Here are three great services highlighted: Good Job, Sustainable Living Comfort, and RoadGuard.

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Challenge

Opportunity in the market

Centraal Beheer sees opportunities to better help customers and users with digital services. This led to various initiatives in the areas of happiness at work, sustainable living, and mobility.

A happy employee is doing well, because: more productive AND less often sick. Within no-time, we built a simple prototype of an app that perfectly matches courses, health checks, coaching, and training to the needs of employees. Intended for the business clients of Centraal Beheer. “Employees of our business clients often find it difficult to do something about their happiness at work. They do not really know what they want or where to start, or they feel a barrier to asking their boss for permission,” explains Susanne Nieuwenhuis-Nijsink (product owner business services at Centraal Beheer). “While: employees who develop themselves and are actively working on a good work-life balance are happier and fall ill less often than colleagues who do not.”

Centraal Beheer also saw opportunities in the area of living. If you are going to renovate your roof anyway, why not make it sustainable right away? Together, we developed a tool that helps customers make their homes more sustainable.

In addition, Centraal Beheer approached us years ago with another challenge: roadside assistance had to and could be better. To such a great challenge, we naturally love to say yes.

“

At Freshheads they are honest: if they don't agree with something or think it should be done differently, they just say so. And that is exactly how it should be!

Susanne Nieuwenhuis-Nijsink, Centraal Beheer

Solution

One team, one mission

During every sprint, team Evolution from Freshheads in Apeldoorn works together with colleagues from Centraal Beheer. Gerard van der Kruijs (mobile developer at Freshheads): “Because we are continuously validating the prototype, new insights and wishes keep arising, which we can then nicely specify together as a must or a nice to have. Works a lot better than via email or phone. During such a day we keep each other sharp, we adjust each other. You really need the whole team for that.”

That way of working together is reflected in all projects. Violette Müller (designer at Freshheads): “What I find most difficult about this project? Sometimes we have to slow the team down a little: everyone is so enthusiastic and then wants everything at once. Whereas, our joint approach is: start small, and see what happens. If it works, you can scale up, if it doesn’t work you can make adjustments.”

Experimentation was also key at RoadGuard. “We could really experiment back then, do what we wanted. That is indeed necessary with such an innovative concept”, Gerard explains. We developed various prototypes and a service platform. The corporate start-up was given its very own branding, separate from parent company Centraal Beheer.

Process

Scaling up

The collaboration between Centraal Beheer and Freshheads revolves around continuous validation, learning and scaling up.

And now? Now the testing of the app continues: with more companies and more than a thousand employees, the research group is being expanded significantly, Mark Hesselberth, mobile developer at Freshheads, explains. "In addition, together with Centraal Beheer we are investigating whether we can hook up even more suppliers of services in the field of sustainable employability, to expand the offering. A chat function with a coach, which we are testing with half of the participants during the first pilot, will also be expanded further."

Behind the scenes, work is currently underway on similar modules, such as for wall insulation. “If you start doing everything at once, it becomes chaos”, Violette explains. “You fly all over the place. That is why it is important that we regularly work together in the office and have contact, such as with our daily stand-ups. Focus, focus, focus. By prioritizing step-by-step, we are developing a tool together with great added value for customers of Centraal Beheer.”

The collaboration between Centraal Beheer and Freshheads started around 2015. With RoadGuard we have now reached the final phase of our way of working: incorporate. “The Centraal Beheer team now has to do it themselves, without our help or interference”, Gerard explains. “Of course we help with that transition. We train and coach so that they will soon really have an understanding of what the product entails from start to finish. We are indeed making ourselves redundant”, Gerard laughs. “Then the circle is complete and we will continue to work together with them on new innovations and discover new opportunities.”

Result

Validate and prove

The collaborative approach yielded tangible results.

In the meantime, the prototype of Good Job has been tested with more than three hundred employees. The app was an immediate success: 85% of the employees created an account in the Good Job-app, and 60% took at least one solution from the Good Job offer (the market average is 10 to 15%).

Duurzaam Woongemak also showed quick results. The solar panel module has now gone live. Just enter your address and your expected energy consumption, and voilà: you immediately see whether your roof is suitable for solar panels and what the yield will be. A customer can then opt for an advisory meeting and for installation of the solar panels by one of the connected partners. Does it work? In the first few months after going live, there were 622 advisory meetings in total and as many as 1,823 new solar panels were installed.

RoadGuard also grew into a successful service. Instead of paying fixed monthly subscription costs, customers only pay for the roadside assistance they actually use. So, wonderfully innovative and transparent. Gerard: “Now, so many years later, RoadGuard has been integrated into the Centraal Beheer brand. That’s a very nice compliment for us, because the app fits perfectly with the new direction they have taken as an insurer.”