Careers
A surprising champion of company strategy is enterprise resource planning
Meet Pabus Vos, the Program Director for PRISM – a herculean task to redesign and implement standard processes across the company on a single IT platform. Known as enterprise resource planning, or ERP, the platform plays a critical role in our company strategy.
Big shoes to fill
“We had big shoes to fill,” says Pabus Vos, Program Director PRISM. “Just a handful of us in a small project room working to define a massive overhaul of our ways of working across the world – a program which would become known as PRISM.
“That project team has grown into a virtual team of 150 people. We could never have imagined it then, but we figured it out throughout our ‘grow’ journey.”
Shining example of efficiency
What is PRISM? We found that we needed a new IT architecture structure when our company introduced a new paints and coatings organizational structure back in 2017.
A five-year program called PRISM redesigned and implemented standard processes across the company, supported by a single platform. It’s helping us reduce costs, enhance efficiency and transform our ways of working – all critical to achieving our strategy.
Leading to grow
Pabus saw Phase 1 of PRISM successfully completed in 2020, even in the face of considerable challenges arising from the global pandemic. Now he’s overseeing the implementation of Phase 2A, continuing through to 2023.
“On a complex project like PRISM, you need to give teams the freedom to operate and organize project activities in their setting and cultural environment,” says Pabus. “Meanwhile, as a leader you need to set goals, quality standards and any non-negotiable approaches. Change management is a key component to being successful in all business environments around the globe.”
Stepping up digital solutions
Pabus hopes to find ways to let PRISM keep growing beyond the rapid ramp up: “We need to become even better at continuous improvement. We’re also building tools for ongoing business process conformity monitoring so we can precisely identify deviations. This will help keep standards high.”
“PRISM has, so far, been a massive achievement for the business, all PRISM project teams, IM organization and our service partners,” says Pabus. “We all feel very proud that it’s already adding value and contributing to AkzoNobel’s business results. In the future, I hope PRISM will be the platform for a next step up in digital solutions fit for a complex world.”
