From Image to Imagination: Connect with Christian Reinaudo & Caroline Van Rompuy

The start of the new ADM working year was marked by inspirational stories about leadership, digitization and continuous innovation and change.

The event started off with an inspiring session by Jan De Schepper, President of ADM.  He elaborated on the topic of digitalisation by stressing the importance of 'amplifiers' within a company.  They take the risk of letting people work together. For with collaboration, the whole equals more than the sum of its parts. Amplifiers can do more with less.  They are therefore 'simplifiers', 'casting' the right employees to facilitate this collaboration and evaluating them in an innovative way. All this within a simplified environment.  Thus, the key message was clear: simplify before you digitize.

Next Ingrid Hoffman, Manager of ADM, presented the event calendar for 2018 – 2019 and invited the ADM-community to join the conversation on social media, whereas from now ADM is uniformly known as ADMbelgium.

As a reminder:

- LinkedIn
- Facebook
- Twitter - @ADMbelgium 

Christian Leysen – founder of ADM, Chairman of Xylos, Ahlers and board member of VRT and Agidens – took the floor to introduce Christian Reinaudo, CEO of Afgfa Gevaert, in an amical and humorous way.

Christian Reinaudo outlined the evolution in the printing and graphics industry and the move from film printing to digital printing. At the same time the healthcare industry more and more evolved into digital imaging systems and hospital ERP applications in addition to the traditional imaging systems based on Röntgen-technology. After all, new technologies continuously force the company to look for other business opportunities in order to expand their reach.

After an impressive turnaround and reorganisation of the go-to-market, top line growth however still lacked behind.  Agfa thus initiated 4 pillars to turn the tide. Firstly resisting the decline in their traditional businesses, secondly boosting their growth engines, thirdly analysing clever, profitable acquisitions and fourthly developing competences and a cultural change.

In 2017 Agfa announced "The Focused Growth Project" intended to reshape the Group by organizing the HealthCare IT activities into a stand-alone legal entity structure and organization within the Agfa-Gevaert Group. This project is expected to be finalised end of 2018.  

At this point, Caroline Van Rompuy, CIO of Agfa Gevaert, took over with a Pecha Kucha; a short, creative presentation named after the Japanese word for ‘chit-chat’, whereby every of the 20 slides is presented in exactly 20 seconds, making a total of exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

She explained the digital challenge that inevitably arose with the decision to form two separate companies and stressed the importance of focussing while they ‘ran and transformed’.  Splitting IT-systems while avoiding costs turned out to be quite a balancing act. 

In order to avoid a big bang, they opted for a waved approach, learning to surf first, alleviating bottle necks before they even arose. 

In all this, the talented team members turned out to be the critical success factors, forming 1 family with 1 leadership and a spirit to help one another.

As for the outcome: all targets were reached on time.  But the created team spirit was a priceless reward.  “Sometimes success is better measured in smiles received, giggles heard, and hands held, than in dollars earned and deadlines met.”

But rest assured, this is not the end of the story, but the start of an exciting digital time.
  
Or to put it in the words of Caroline Van Rompuy: “Never a dull moment in IT.”