CEO IEX Group about the IT assessment by IT's Teamwork

 

Customer case IT assessment - interview with CEO

IEX Group: media company with investor information

IEX Media is a subsidiary of IEX Group, a Euronext Amsterdam listed company. IEX Media is a media company that has been producing, distributing and operating financial and investment content under its own brands through cross-media channels since 1999. Its portfolio includes sites, apps, games, newsletters, events, video, seminars and print. IEX Media serves both the business-to-business and retail markets and in both segments IEX Media is the market leader in the Netherlands and Belgium with nearly 2 million unique visitors per month.

Since its establishment in 1999, IEX Media has grown to become one of the most widely used sources of information for investing in the Netherlands. IEX Media is an innovative cross medial company with a broad portfolio of titles. With our brands, we reach more than 2 million unique private investors in the Netherlands and Belgium. Mark Termeer is CEO at IEX Group, and among other things responsible for IT.

 
 
 

The backbone of IEX: CSI

Mark explains, "Our Subscription and Publishing System CSI is the backbone of IEX: since our inception, we have been developing it further with our own skilled development team. All subscriptions, investment articles and price data are created and managed in it. You can imagine that in 24 years we have built up a lot of functionality and data. This is a big assett for our company."

Why IEX choose for an assessment

Mark explains the reason for the IT assessment: "The cooperation with our IT colleagues has been going on for a long time and is very pleasant - that's worth a lot. Since I have not been in this position for very long as CEO, I wanted to get independent and knowledgeable insight into the status of CSI: IT developments are certainly not standing still, so getting insight into areas of concern, opportunities and risks is useful."

"As far as we were concerned, we didn't want to do that 'high over', but with real experts who understand the IT profession and take a practical approach to such an assessment with understanding and respect for our colleagues."

Approach of the assessment

From May through August, we had several meetings with the consultant, our architect and myself to outline frameworks, determine focus and exchange information.

Mark: "Over the years, we have developed a lot of functionality. With a very senior architect/developer from Superska - from IT's Teamwork network - our own architect/developer went through the development environment and architecture in depth.  

In the discussions, with an understanding of the practice, we reflected on our architecture, programming approach, etc. in a very practical way. This was done very respectfully: we have been working on this platform for 20 years now, so it is very easy to make 'brief comments' as an outsider."

Result

"Together with our IT colleagues, I now have a clear understanding of the areas for improvement, and we are really on the same page about them. So we have the same starting point, which is nice: together we know which technical and functional priorities we are going to work on.

That also means that we are going to give IT the space and time to implement measures, and it means that IT knows that we are going to call them to account and direct them accordingly."

Summary

Mark looks back with satisfaction, "Like many other boards, our board is a bit further removed from technology. Thanks to this assessment, we have better content understanding and grip, and there is better mutual understanding of choices and priorities.

I can recommend such a periodical assessment to any organization!"

 

 

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