CIO Confessions EP.6 – Rasmus Rasmussen on Healthcare Technology

[00:00:00] Gert Jan van Halem: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to a new edition of the CIO Confessions podcast, where I, Gert Jan van Halem, your host, have conversations with CIOs and CTOs, and we talk about experiences, learnings, and views on the market and the changing role of CIOs and CTOs. 

[00:00:16] Jingle: This is the CIO Confessions, a podcast by Devoteam.

[00:00:26] Gert Jan van Halem: Today, we are exploring technology that profoundly impacts human connection. We’re honored to have Rasmus Rasmussen, the official CIO of Demant. Join us. Demant is a global leader in hearing health care, dedicated to empowering millions to experience the richness of sound and engage fully with the world.

[00:00:43] It is a global company with a presence in more than 30 countries and a staff of more than 22 000 people. With this team, they cover hearing care, hearing aids, and diagnostic products and services. The synergies between their business areas enable Demant to help millions of people experience the joy of hearing for [00:01:00] many years to come.

[00:01:01] Rasmus is at the forefront of the month’s digital evolution, navigating the complexities of a global organisation while ensuring technology serves a deeply human purpose. We’ll be discussing how he balances innovation with the sensitive nature of health care, the challenges of securing sensitive data and how he fosters a culture of technological excellence within a company that prioritizes people.

[00:01:25] Welcome, Rasmus. Great to have you in our podcast. You have a lot of experience in leading IT organisations, so looking forward to hearing all your insights. Could you first of all introduce yourself to the listeners? 

[00:01:36] Rasmus Rasmussen: I can. Thank you very much for inviting me. My name is Rasmus Rasmussen, that’s right. Been in Demant for more than 13 years.

[00:01:44] Before that, I worked in other Danish industries companies, actually started my career in bank and finance fast forward to the last let’s say 16, 17 years I’ve been in IT management, different levels of that. 

[00:01:59] Gert Jan van Halem: Great to [00:02:00] have you and looking forward to your insights, as I said, and in my introduction, I also said that Demant has three different business areas.

[00:02:06] So you do hearing care, hearing aids and diagnostics. That seems to be quite different things to do in one company. So what challenges does that bring? 

[00:02:17] Rasmus Rasmussen: Yeah, you’re right. It is a challenge or and, we are a company that, so hearing care is. Retails. Something that you you can look at it as a dentist or you book your dentist and then you can come to the dentist and then get your feelings or whatever you need.

[00:02:31] That same goes for us. We have a job you need to book at a time and then you can go and get your hearing aid fitted or serviced. That’s one business unit. That’s something totally different from our hearing aid. IT solutions where we have where we produce our hearing aids. So it’s R&D, it’s sales and marketing, it’s production of it.

[00:02:54] So it’s totally different, two totally different things. And then the last one is diagnostics, that’s figuring [00:03:00] out if you have a hearing loss. Everybody has tried it. A lot of people have tried it. Can you hear this? Beep! Beep! Those tones where we are marking, leading in the world of that. And that’s also totally different because that’s, we produce stuff that are very focused, big boxes and it’s I need this and that.

[00:03:16] And not for a mask, where the hearing aids are more for a mask. We do that. So it’s very different. So we, what we have done in IT. I’ve been here 13 years. Before we looked at everything as the same, but 4 or 5 years back, we changed our organisation to be more close to business, to understand the way they think in those business units.

[00:03:38] So we divisionalised our IT, so we have people that are working. Every day they wake up in the morning, they think about how can we improve in retail? How can our POS point of sales work better? How can our sales web marketing work better in hearing care? And then we have people that are doing only stuff for our hearing aids, production facilities.

[00:03:58] How can we improve in that? How can [00:04:00] our R&D be better? And the same goes for our diagnostic business. How can we do that? I have the responsibility that goes across, so everything that they, that are not focused in these different business units, stuff like when you have been out traveling, how do you do concurrent when you have been out traveling what about business intelligence?

[00:04:18] How do we do integrations? Stuff that goes across HR systems. They shouldn’t care about that in the divisions. We do that in the, in what we call EPIS, which is Enterprise Platforms, Infrastructure, and Security. So I have the responsibility for the application stack in that area, and the infrastructure, and also all the security.

[00:04:35] But it has changed a lot since we did the reorganisation. So we are close to business to understand business much better. 

[00:04:42] Gert Jan van Halem: And is it that if you’re in platforms, that’s always a bit hard, right? Because business, they understand that you need a platform, but they don’t understand platforms. Yeah. So how do you make that connection with business?

[00:04:52] Rasmus Rasmussen: That’s complicated, right? But we have, so if you talk to business. They don’t understand it, but our business IT understands it. [00:05:00] So they understand, okay, I really need a platform for this. When we do Azure for all our R&D, R&D people, they understand it. That’s not a problem.

[00:05:07] They really don’t care about. The, how the platform works, they’re just happy that we handle the platform. We do the FinOps, we do the stuff like that, so they can do their coding on top of it. So it varies from business units to business units, how they understand what is needed and what’s not needed.

[00:05:23] But it helps us that it goes through IT people. 

[00:05:26] Gert Jan van Halem: And in that platform, because I understand that in IT you also have the dedicated people for retail and the other areas. But in the platform area, do you see that difference in how do I support the care people? How do I support the aid people? How do I support the diagnostic people?

[00:05:43] Rasmus Rasmussen: Yeah, it is. The bigger market is more important. So if we have invoice handling, all right, it’s a very sexy topic, but it is needed, right? You have to get it. You have to get it. So invoice handling, it is more important to get that up and running if it’s broken, [00:06:00] or improve it in the U.S. where we have 40 percent of our income compared to Holland, right? So we have to give them more rather than care in the bigger markets. That’s the way we do it. Of course, if it’s also regulations from the local countries, then we also need to focus on that. So it depends on the situation.

[00:06:18] Gert Jan van Halem: And while we’re here in the Demant office in Denmark at the moment, and for me, of course, the first time that I come in, but When I came into the office it’s a great, nice, light, open office. So great to be here. But I also, I had some time waiting around. So I saw all the hearing aids being displayed and and a short video on what’s happening and what struck me, what I should have known up front, maybe, but what struck me is that it’s a very technical topic.

[00:06:43] It’s, you try to put a lot of stuff into a very small machine . 

[00:06:47] Rasmus Rasmussen: It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. First of all, we sell something that nobody wants. Nobody wants a hearing aid. But when they need it, they really want it. And then you, if [00:07:00] you’re selling something that nobody wants, then you have to do it as small as possible.

[00:07:04] It’s still stigmatised to have a hearing aid. So we really want to do it as small as possible. And we put more and more technology in. AI engines in the hearing aid. We have to be rechargeable. Be as small as possible. We have a lot of microphones. A lot of amplifiers. A lot of loudspeakers in it.

[00:07:20] So it’s a little complicated to, you put so much technology in it. So it’s a very, Sexy business to be in if you come, if you enter the door. 

[00:07:28] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah. And that’s somehow the weird thing, right? Because I didn’t hear of Demant before. I think a lot of people don’t, everybody knows what a hearing aid is.

[00:07:37] You are the biggest player in the market and it’s really research driven. You showed me a department that make their own tools to create hearing aids. So it’s a very typical niche, but very deep technical. 

[00:07:49] Rasmus Rasmussen: That’s very niche. I think there are if you look at the global market, there are only five players in the global market.

[00:07:54] And by the way, five of them three of them are Danish. But it’s, we have we have our DNA in [00:08:00] sound in Denmark. That’s, that, I think that’s why but it’s very R&D engineering driven. And you can see that walking around in the offices here. It’s a huge R&D department with A lot of software engineers and a lot of mechanical engineers to get that to get that up and running.

[00:08:14] Gert Jan van Halem: Great to see, and it probably also means that as the IT department, you’re not even the most key department around. 

[00:08:21] Rasmus Rasmussen: No, not at all, right? We’re just supporting. So we are here to support these guys. But if it doesn’t work, then we are the key department. We’ve, we figured that out because now we’re maybe segwaying into another discussion about IT security.

[00:08:34] But we were heavily hacked more than five years ago. And then we figured out. Wow, IT is very important for us. If you are a R&D engineer, you can have your own toolbox, you can have your own whatever you can do, but all of a sudden you can’t exchange data, you can’t do so all of a sudden the IT department was the kings of the castle for a short period of time.

[00:08:55] Gert Jan van Halem: And it’s I have the idea that in, in a period that, that something like that, we all talk about, oh, we [00:09:00] shouldn’t get hacked, but it might happen, but when it really happens, you learn, right? And you learn fast because you need to fix it. What was your biggest learning from something? 

[00:09:08] Rasmus Rasmussen: Oh the biggest learning.

[00:09:09] I had a lot of learnings that so we were we were down, totally down. The whole company, if you look at that whole company, we were down for around six weeks, the whole company. But there was so we were up and running operations production within four days. And then we opened, then we slowly onboarded Italy , or the different markets over time. But learning, I think the, I learned, so it was those six week up to two months where I worked in that area made me three years older, but also three years more clever in, in being an it manager, understanding people. I think the, where I learned most were probably in handling People that are under huge pressure.

[00:09:55] Handling people under huge pressure is not easy. Because they [00:10:00] normally you know how they work, but if they are under huge pressure, they totally turn into somebody else. And understanding how people are working, looking in the eyes every morning, every night, we worked around the clock for those six weeks, looking at people.

[00:10:17] Telling them what not to do, what to do was a huge learning for me that because under pressure, you are, you’re not yourself. 

[00:10:27] Gert Jan van Halem: And is that because that’s not telling them to do and what not to do is not a technical discussion probably, but it’s more on how do you act? What do you do? When do you stop? When do you continue?

[00:10:36] Rasmus Rasmussen: Correct. So in the beginning, people start saying I can work the whole day. Yeah, 24 hours. Yeah but being in IT for a long period of time I knew that this was going to take a long time. So if you work 24 hours or 25 hours, you’re going to be out of the office for 12, maybe more hours. So we have to find who are our key people.

[00:10:59] We did that [00:11:00] in, then they work in shift. So 12 hours, 12 hours, send them home, go home in a taxi because you cannot drive a car anymore. And other people that are more in the admin part, they worked less. So that was my eight hour shifts to cover everything. So we divided that up.

[00:11:15] We did that in the morning, the first day we were hacked. Okay, who is our key people and divided them in these two buckets, three, two, three buckets. And then we use that all the way through those six weeks. 

[00:11:26] Gert Jan van Halem: And after that after six weeks, it’ll be a little bit longer.

[00:11:28] Maybe kind of stuff is back to normal, right? And it all works again. What was the biggest change you make to make sure that when it ever happened again? 

[00:11:36] Rasmus Rasmussen: You know we had so after that, it takes some time to get the bruises off and, get back, we have people that were ill and stuff like that, if you work like this.

[00:11:46] I had a severe throat disease for, I was actually out of the office for two days. I haven’t been that for my 13 years. So I was ill for two days, right? That’s not normal. So we, so people get back online and, get up, up and running again, and then we [00:12:00] decided to create a program for what happened if.

[00:12:05] Maybe when it happens again, right? Sad to say. We discussed what we’re going to do. And we did it in, in, in three levels. Get the basics right. I thought we were in a good shape. We figured out we were not IT wise. So that was the first couple of years we did that. Next level was more into how can we secure next level.

[00:12:26] And now the third level is to be much more in control of what’s going on around the whole company. But we did that the program and I we asked for the approval of , First of all, spending the time and spending the money and our CEO said just start right away and reported to the Board of Directors three times a year.

[00:12:45] So the Board of Directors were also very interested in what’s going on. Our CIO was presenting for them. And now we are in that good, in a decent place now. So we only present for them once a year now. 

[00:12:58] Gert Jan van Halem: And it’s also so it’s a [00:13:00] really I said it in my intro as well. It’s a people focused company, right?

[00:13:03] It’s about the people we want to take care of you. And even in stress situations, we tell you when to stop. And when we were allowed back again, but that’s also I could imagine that working here is a special kind of people how do you find the right, because it’s also a market where it’s not easy.

[00:13:19] How do you find the right people? 

[00:13:20] Rasmus Rasmussen: Oh well good question. So now we have you, you are sitting in the outskirts of Copenhagen, right? The young kids, they want to work in city center. That’s the way it is. So we have a hard time attracting people, even though it’s the most sexy business I’ve been in technology wise we have a fantastic environment, but it’s still hard to attract people.

[00:13:42] If we work, if you are in engineering and with sound stuff like that, then it’s easy because then we are very famous. But IT wise, you could work in whatever. So we do a lot to attract people, to get them out here. We have a big facility in Poland. We don’t do outsourcing. We do nearshoring and they are based on [00:14:00] our own environment, our own people.

[00:14:02] So we are building a lot in in, in Szczecin, in Poland and also in Warsaw where we can attract people. But we also did a research on where Should our next hubs be to find the right talent to attract them. So we have maybe 200 people sitting in Szczecin so we are the biggest player in in Szczecin because we have a factory there as well.

[00:14:21] So we are very well known there. But we looked at the different areas of Europe and different areas of East to, to see where we can build a hubs. And we ended out in building a hubs in KL Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia recently where we As we speak, we have 50 ish people that are doing IT, but very soon we also have software engineers that do software for our diagnostic business.

[00:14:44] So we have a tech hub in Malaysia as well. But it was not easy to find, figure out where should that be, visiting universities to see where they get, where do they produce enough IT people to, to create a hub there. 

[00:14:58] Jingle: IT Confessions Box. [00:15:00] Every IT career has its challenges. In the Confessions Box, our guests share their lessons learned and resilience gained.

[00:15:10] Gert Jan van Halem: But it’s also, from a people perspective, Poland’s relatively close to Denmark, culturally relatively close. This is other side of the world, other time zone, other culture, other people. How do you bring that Demant’s feeling there? How do you make them one team? 

[00:15:27] Rasmus Rasmussen: So it is another time zone. But we are a global company and we have a lot of people working for Demant in that time zone as well.

[00:15:36] So we are huge in Australia, we are huge in Japan, China, whatever. So the support for that area need, is needed. That’s one thing. But it’s also to support our global set up, they do that. They can also support in European time zone. But they work mostly in their time zone. To bring the Scandinavian and the Demant culture into a Malaysian office is not easy.[00:16:00] 

[00:16:00] So what we have done is we moved one of our persons from that sits, that had been sitting in Australia, a Dane to build this up, and we also moved our head of infrastructure in Poland, in Szczecin now he lives with his family in KL and he was the one we onboarded some years back, where we’re gonna, okay we will need to grow  Szczecin , we onboarded Paweł Spikonewicz we onboarded him and now we’ve done it in  Szczecin .

[00:16:27] Now we moved him to to KL we moved him to Southside, but he also wanted it, right? So he brings his family there and now he is building up the same. So we have both the Poland and the Danish culture in KL to bring some kind of the Scandinavian and the Demant culture in that.

[00:16:42] Gert Jan van Halem: Interesting to see how that works out.

[00:16:43] Rasmus Rasmussen: It is, it is, it’s working very well. But it’s not easy for us because you are. You are another time zone, you’re far away. It costs some mileage in an airplane to get that in control, but yeah. 

[00:16:55] Gert Jan van Halem: And then, so you’re a global organisation, also IT is around the globe more or less. [00:17:00] Do you organise that with specific elements of your organisation in specific parts of the world?

[00:17:05] Or is it one organisation with everything everywhere? 

[00:17:08] Rasmus Rasmussen: Yeah, yes and no. It depends. So we try to have some of those hubs, where you can say, okay, we do that in that hub. But it creates, it needs some critical mass to do that. So in our diagnostic business, a lot of software will be developed, in Kuala Lumpur.

[00:17:26] Then they have a hub for that. In, in, if you look at my area, we need to support the same globally. We cannot create a division or a setup there with doing service. No, we need to support them 24/ 7. So that’s spread. So all the people have a global manager. And they work within network server or HR systems and depends on where they sits in the world.

[00:17:50] So they report into a Dane or into a Polish person. Oh, it depends. 

[00:17:55] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah. So that, and I, if it’s okay, I want to step back a little bit to the research part [00:18:00] and the platforms that you have to support them because I’m not sure, but the research people normally also have their very specific applications and tools that they need to get their stuff done.

[00:18:10] And I guess that it all ends up on your platform. You have to run it. 

[00:18:15] Rasmus Rasmussen: Yeah, yes. Working with R&D can be challenging because they really know what’s going on in their area. That’s their area. We support them in some of the areas and some areas they do it themselves. You can call us Shadow IT. But it’s so close to our products and so close to what we do that if we from IT come and come, all those rules, you can need to do this and that, we will break it.

[00:18:42] So there are areas where we allowed stuff. You need to be safe. You need to do it in our environment. You need to have it secured and whatever. But else we knock yourself out within these guardrails on our platform. That’s the way you do it. And then, of course, we have a lot of dialogue about.

[00:18:58] How do we, I need this [00:19:00] and that on my Azure yeah, but then you consume so much. Okay, it makes sense then. So the FinOps stuff is very important for Azure. Because if we let it go, it will be extremely expensive. Because nothing wrong with R&D, but they don’t think a lot about financial stuff.

[00:19:16] We do that a lot in IT. So that’s a nice dialogue we have about that. And it makes sense. Okay, it makes sense for us and they would do this and that. So a lot of dialogue with these people is needed. 

[00:19:26] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah. And then it’s bringing together, this is what we need to do from a corporate perspective.

[00:19:30] This is what you need in our R&D let’s see where we meet in the middle. 

[00:19:33] Rasmus Rasmussen: Yeah, that’s the way it works and been working for a lot of years So we are in some areas. We are a startup company That’s the way it is. We have that can do attitude. It’s very important for us.

[00:19:43] Let’s fix it. Let’s do it together we do that and sometimes okay now it makes sense to move it into more production environment Then we do that. 

[00:19:51] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah, and you also you don’t want to limit R&D people, right? They have to be on top of front of their field. 

[00:19:56] Rasmus Rasmussen: We shouldn’t limit them, but they [00:20:00] develop The best hearing aids in the world, why should we limit them?

[00:20:03] But of course you have to be in control. So it’s a dialogue. 

[00:20:07] Gert Jan van Halem: And you mentioned Azure, so you run everything on cloud? 

[00:20:09] Rasmus Rasmussen: No. So we do, we have a strategy, that’s a fantastic word. But normally we say cloud first, if it makes sense. And it makes sense. For a lot of those software as a service, we have those Salesforce or all those service now, that’s of course, that’s native in the cloud that’s needed then we have platforms where we have a lot of stuff done on Azure, mostly for our services in R&D that’s on Azure.

[00:20:38] What the, all the development is based on that. And we do that. Okay. And we we help them to containerize or whatever it is and then we do, if you look at infrastructure service we have some where it makes sense for our web services or whatever. It makes sense to have that in the cloud but we are handling 3 500 servers [00:21:00] ourselves in the basement.

[00:21:01] And the cost for that is non comparable to what it is if we do it infrastructure in the cloud. We can handle that out much cheaper ourselves, but we look at the workload, what is needed, what is not needed every time. We actually look at some of the platforms now, can we do a mesh for that?

[00:21:17] Can the production be in Azure? And then the workload be on prem in the basement for a test and development or whatever. So we do that also to save some money, to do it smarter, to use the technology as it is. 

[00:21:32] Gert Jan van Halem: But that also brings the traditional question, is my test environment comparable to my production environment?

[00:21:37] Rasmus Rasmussen: Yeah, that’s a huge problem. I’ve always been a huge problem. And if you can have, do that at Azure Stack then it should be more or less containerized. It isn’t a container. It doesn’t matter where, what you do, it’s the same container in, in, is it on-prem or in the cloud.

[00:21:54] That’s something that we are playing around with to, to improve the costs because it is, it can be costly if we [00:22:00] don’t monitor it very closely. 

[00:22:01] Gert Jan van Halem: So it’s mostly cost driven if you decide this goes to cloud or this we do in the basement. 

[00:22:05] Rasmus Rasmussen: So it’s it’s based on what is the need. So if it’s a web service that supports all our websites or whatever globally, it doesn’t make sense to have that in a basement in Denmark or wherever it is.

[00:22:19] Then of course it’s natural it’s in the cloud. But if it’s something about. I need to do something that doesn’t make sense for a end consumer than it is in our own basements. It could be when we do some test tests for hearing aids. A lot of a lot of noise processing. We can do that ourselves.

[00:22:36] But when we peak, maybe we can do that by ourselves. By the more compute power in the cloud. So we can do that mesh as well. So we have our own service. And if we break the level, then we can do some more in the cloud. That’s that’s what we’re working on. 

[00:22:47] Gert Jan van Halem: But that also means that because that sounds very logical, but I know that technically it’s not easy to scale up in the cloud when you do everything in your own data center that needs quite some effort on your platform to make it work.

[00:22:59] You [00:23:00] invested in that already to make the hybrid cloud 

[00:23:02] Rasmus Rasmussen: We do. So hybrid cloud we, it’s still in the playground area for that. There are areas where we have tried it out, but, working in a technology company with R&D and with our people, that’s where the magic happens, right?

[00:23:15] It, they will, that’s going to work within, A few months, that would be natural for us to do that. And also so talking about Haprikite, it could also be looking at Google or looking at other environments, AWS. Can we move that compute power around? It is not that easy as many years in IT, Gartner back in those days says that’s going to be the shit.

[00:23:35] It’s not easy. But we have a lot of Google as well, mostly for our data. But let’s see where that goes. 

[00:23:41] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah, but it’s interesting efficient to say, okay, I want to have that flexibility in my platform. But yeah, the technology I’ve seen a lot of cases that we tried it with. It’s a hard thing to crack.

[00:23:52] Rasmus Rasmussen: Yeah, and very often you try. Okay, many years back, cloud first, everybody did it. We dipped our toe and looked [00:24:00] at the invoice afterwards. Oh, maybe that’s not that clever. And I see more and more people trying to say, How much can they pull back to their own server rooms? So it has to make sense. I think that’s so important for me to say.

[00:24:13] And of course, one of some of my friends, they also in IT business, they’re mostly like, like use CTOs and they should just go for the cloud. It’s simple. Yeah, but you also have to look at the cost, right? But it depends on your situation. 

[00:24:27] Gert Jan van Halem: And I think that’s a very sensible way to, okay, what do I need?

[00:24:30] Where do I use it? And then find the best place that makes a lot of sense. 

[00:24:35] Rasmus Rasmussen: And then we should in IT support that. So it doesn’t make sense for the end users where it consumed. 

[00:24:41] Gert Jan van Halem: And then being a deep technical company, there are more deep technical companies that also see hearing aids might be a niche that we want to move in a bit.

[00:24:49] And I with that, Apple, they when I prepared for this interview, I saw Apple moving into hearing aids and. And actually performing quite well I don’t know a [00:25:00] lot about hearing aids, but it seems very logical what they did and making sure that their ear pods could use it, could be used as an hearing aid device.

[00:25:07] And I thought that might be some kind of a disruption or maybe you are building that disruption yourself already or 

[00:25:12] Rasmus Rasmussen: And that’s not, now I’m talking about something our product managers should do, are doing much more about but of course we are a firm believer of the care. We’re firm believer of, you need to go into to see an audiology person and, or or a doctor to get you fitted so it fits you.

[00:25:27] And nothing wrong with Apple and their products and what we call over the counter standard solutions that are you can fit yourself, but we are firm believer of your fitting that is, so you, so we amplify these areas where you need it and don’t amplify where you don’t need it.

[00:25:43] So we don’t have any products over the counter stuff. We do we do it that is. It’s fitted for you either ITE, so it’s in the ear so it’s fitted for your ear channel, or something that are standardized, BTE, behind the ear, but software wise fitted for your [00:26:00] purpose and no one else. 

[00:26:01] Gert Jan van Halem: So in that sense, you don’t really see this competition or disruption.

[00:26:04] It’s a part of the market that might work well for some people, but it’s not where you focus on with the care. 

[00:26:09] Rasmus Rasmussen: We’re not focusing in it, but but we’re, of course, we closely monitoring what’s going on, of course, but we don’t have any products for that for now. So we think that you should see professional services instead of doing yourself.

[00:26:22] But it might be that we in the future see that there are a business for that. 

[00:26:26] Gert Jan van Halem: Yep. Thank you so much Rasmus for your insights. I think my key takeaway is it’s a people business. We can talk technology even in a deep technology company like Demant, but still, it’s a people business. And it’s about how do I work with my people and how do I make my people shine in their environments? 

[00:26:42] Rasmus Rasmussen: Yeah, and it’s so important to so people is, we help people that have a hard time of hearing get their life back, right? But also people that works here is so important for them to have fun, right? So actually, if you look at our strategy, it is happy people as well.

[00:26:58] Part of our IT [00:27:00] strategy, because we are spending so many hours in the office, we need to be fun. And I know when you are. Let’s look at football players or soccer players, whatever you call it. Kids playing, if they have fun they’re going to be good at that. If they don’t have fun, they’re going to do something else.

[00:27:15] The same here. If you have fun at work, you’re going to be good at it. So it is a people business. It is important for us to to create our own talent, to be best. 

[00:27:24] Gert Jan van Halem: I would say that’s the best conclusion ever. Thank you. Thanks for your time. And for all the listeners, thank you for joining us again today and hope to see you or hear you in the next one as well.

[00:27:34] See you soon. Bye bye. 

[00:27:36] Jingle: Discover other podcasts on https://devoteam.info/podcast/. Devoteam, AI-driven tech consulting.