Our cases

As the largest railway company in the Netherlands, NS operates the EU’s busiest railway system and serves nearly 6% of the Dutch population on a daily basis. To keep up with increasing customer demands, NS felt the need to create an integrated omnichannel vision and to strongly expand on the digital customer experience. NS asked SparkOptimus to jointly design NS’ omnichannel vision and bring expertise on how to position technology & organization as key enablers of change.

JET is the leading global food delivery platform, connecting consumers and restaurants across the globe. To ensure continued growth, the company established the Commercial Growth (CG) function, responsible for ideating, incubating, and accelerating existing and new revenue models that drive value for restaurants. JET asked SparkOptimus for support to set the ambition, define the path to get to this ambition, and kickstart & accelerate the most promising business initiatives.

BAM, a leading European construction-services business, has started the transition from an operational, process-oriented business to a company with a proactive, holistic customer approach and relationship. This way, BAM can anticipate (latent) customer needs and focus innovation based on relevant developments in the world. BAM asked SparkOptimus to support them in translating their strategic themes into value propositions based on customer needs.

The Rijksmuseum is the largest museum of the Netherlands with almost 2.5 million visitors per year. In February 2015, the Rijksmuseum opened its doors for the internationally acclaimed 'Late Rembrandt' exhibition. The museum had set the ambition to sell a vast majority of tickets online and to become an international online frontrunner. Rijksmuseum asked SparkOptimus to support them in professionalizing their online marketing and ticket sales.

Nederlandse Loterij (NLO) is the leading player in the Dutch lottery market, with brands such as Staatsloterij, Lotto, Krasloten, and TOTO sportsbetting. To maintain its leading position and prepare for new opportunities and changes in the market, NLO wanted to restructure its organisation and redesign its way of working to be more customer focused, agile, and data driven.

Independer is the leading comparison website and online broker for financial products in the Netherlands. Founded in 1999 to improve the financial industry and support consumers in their decision-making process, it now enables consumers to compare prices and T&C on a range of insurance and financial products, including car insurances, health insurances and mortgages. Aiming to further accelerate growth, Independer identified next-level CRM as a key opportunity.

Sligro is a food wholesaler, providing both food service and food retail with a total revenue of nearly €3bln in 2017. Sligro asked SparkOptimus to help them identify digital growth opportunities for the group. The opportunities were both transformational and disruptive and included Sligro’s B2B and B2C activities.

HEMA is a value for money retailer known as one of the strongest brand in the Netherlands. Over the years, it expanded to over 700 stores in 7 countries. HEMA has a clear ambition to continue to grow both online and offline. To achieve this growth in omnichannel sales HEMA asked SparkOptimus to help develop a comprehensive 3-year plan, which met the ambitions set for the future. Subsequently, they asked SparkOptimus to implement this plan.

Wehkamp is a Dutch e-commerce player offering assortment in categories fashion, living, baby and beauty and more for families in the Netherlands. To offer a great customer experience & continuously improve, Wehkamp wanted to complete its transformation towards a truly digital organization with a focused effort in their Buying & Sales (B&S) discipline. As the Buying & Sales discipline forms Wehkamp’s heartbeat the transformation included a step change in multidisciplinary cooperation across the organization, next to upgrading digital category management practices with data-drive insights & actions.

Funda is the leading platform for private real estate in The Netherlands and the most visited home mover website in the Dutch market with over 3.4M visitors per month. To maintain this position and grow into new opportunities, Funda asked SparkOptimus to develop a new Digital Strategy.

De Bijenkorf wanted to offer consumers premium services such as personalization via its new service program Privilege Membership. To be able to offer this program new solutions, technology, processes and data capture methods needed to be identified and implemented in the organization.

AkzoNobel UK Deco is the leading player in the UK decorative paint market, and forms part of the global paint, coatings, and chemical producer AkzoNobel. As digital developments are accelerating, AkzoNobel UK Deco asked SparkOptimus to support in defining an integrated digital commerce strategy.

After launching in 2009, Treatwell set out to transform the booking process of an industry that for years relied on pen, paper, and telephone: the hair & beauty market. In a matter of years, the company quickly grew its footprint to become Europe’s leading online platform for booking beauty & wellbeing services. After having completed a global rebrand in 2016, management considered optimizing & harmonizing its salon pricing model a top priority to scale its business to the next level.

The Kraft Heinz Company is one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world. Names like Heinz and Jell-o belong to its large portfolio of internationally popular food brands.

To serve its consumers and customers better digitally, Kraft Heinz asked SparkOptimus for help in achieving three main objectives: Design initiatives to boost digital sales across different routes to market; Identify eCommerce organizational and technology enablers at international level and in 3 representative markets (United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Brazil); define a roadmap to drive execution of the changes.

STADA is a global manufacturer of high-quality pharmaceuticals with 125 years of worldwide experience in consumer healthcare. With their vitamin and mineral supplements business growing rapidly online, and competition increasing strongly, STADA asked us to provide hands-on support to accelerate their sales on Amazon and upskill their own team in the process.

The overall objective of a digital due diligence is to provide a perspective on the value of a potential acquisition, its risks, and its opportunities. Typically, three types of clients request digital due diligences: a seller, a strategic buyer, or an independent investor. This case focuses on a typical ‘buying side’ digital due diligence.

ABN AMRO Verzekeringen (AAV) is a joint venture of ABN AMRO Bank (AAB) and Nationale Nederlanden (NN). AAV is dedicated to serving the insurance needs of AAB customers (businesses and consumers) and has a unique position in the market as both an insurer and a broker. Foreseeing rapid changes in the market, AAV asked SparkOptimus to help redefine its strategic position to achieve sustainable customer growth in the future.

Royal Auping is the leading producer and brand for sleep comfort in the Benelux. The omnichannel customer journey was a key pillar in their future strategy. Auping asked SparkOptimus to support them in making its omnichannel strategy and transition plan towards its digital ambitions concrete.

Achmea is the largest insurance company in the Netherlands. It provides health, casualty, and income insurance to over 10M individuals through its brands such as Centraal Beheer and Interpolis. Achmea’s Casualty Insurance division has set its ambition to become a digital and data-driven insurer and installed a team to lead this transformation; the Data & Digital Team. This team explores and tests new business models, redesigns customer journeys, and digitizes and automates internal processes. Over the course of 2019, 2020 and 2021, Achmea has collaborated with SparkOptimus in multiple focused stints to set up the Data & Digital Team, build up its capabilities and realize impact in its customer journeys.

ECI is one of the oldest Dutch online book stores. After a restart in early 2014, ECI rebuilt its core business processes and organizational foundation and was ready for the next step. They asked us to define a minimum viable product (MVP) for its new proposition and support the MVP implementation and launch of this new proposition.