Community experiences: getting started with Digital transformation

Linda Francis
Jul 3
3 min read

Last Wednesday, communications and digital professionals gathered at ING's headquarters in Amsterdam to exchange experiences and ideas about digital transformation, particularly artificial intelligence (AI). Three conditions for successful transformation defined the common thread: strategy, governance and a focus on people.

Participating in the meeting were professionals from organisations such as ING, Philips, Loyens Loeff, Stahl, Atradius and FNV. There was clearly an interest in hearing and sharing more about using AI tools such as Copilot in the workplace. How effective are they and how to deal with the challenges?

Implementing AI is people work

Anna Perrini began the meeting with her presentation on how ING is approaching the implementation of Copilot. Here they focus mainly on the people who will eventually have to make use of this AI. And not ‘big bang’ but first with a smaller group of a few hundred people.

Now they are in the next phase of informing and guiding a few thousand people. This includes a large group of active "digital ambassadors. That was Anna's main message: do it together with the people and enlist the help of the most enthusiastic. AI is really a new world for many people, keep that in mind and take the time to guide this change process.

It was very nice to see ING's approach to this with "learning by doing. Most of the other participants were also working on Copilot, so the presentation was very interactive with lots of exchanges back and forth.

Digital strategy is the foundation

Erik Hartman indicated that the deployment of artificial intelligence can never be successful if there is no digital strategy behind it. It is fine to experiment and start small. But at some point the AI has to prove itself and the organisation does need a foothold to make the right decisions - and investments.

That's where the power of a digital strategy lies. Erik took people through a methodology for developing and implementing a successful digital strategy. After a brief presentation of a best practice and a new problem statement, the attendees were divided into three groups with an assignment: Create a digital strategy to solve this new problem.

With the help of the TIMAF strategy game, people got to work enthusiastically. After half an hour, the three groups had each come up with a strategy that contained all the elements of a strategy and with which they could get to work immediately.

Nothing happens without governance

Bahar Gok from Atradius shared with us how to create a smart internal multi-channel communication strategy and how AI tools such as Copilot can support this cultural shift.

But Bahar gave us the urgent advice to do address (information) governance for a successful AI implementation. Because otherwise you will get the undesirable effect of “Garbage in, garbage out.” The AI will give too many outdated, irrelevant and unreliable results. With that, people lose confidence in the AI, and then the AI enthusiasm is quickly gone.

So at Atradius, they took cleaning up outdated information environments in SharePoint very seriously. Environments without a clear owner and recent updates are rigorously removed. So that the AI can use reliable, recent and relevant information.

Bahar gave many tips on dashboards and Microsoft tools, such as MS Clarity, that can help understand information, the use of information and also the use of Copilot. These tips were eagerly written down by the attendees. After which others also came up with ideas and experiences on the value and use of dashboards.

European community

Advatera is a European community of communication, marketing and digital transformation professionals. The community is active in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

You can join and participate in all online and physical meetings across Europe. There are weekly meetings somewhere in Europe. In the Netherlands and Belgium we organize 6 to 8 meetings per year.

TIMAF is a partner of Advatera. The TIMAF team facilitates the community meetings in the Netherlands and Belgium and Erik is also a speaker in Vienna and Switzerland during the Advatera events in 2025.

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Of course, all meetings are confidential and without commercial agencies, consultants and suppliers. All participants are professionals who come together to exchange practical experiences in a safe environment.

Meet more fellow professionals in Europe

This year Advatera is hosting three larger community events, where you will meet professionals in communications, marketing and digital transformation from all over Europe. A unique opportunity to hear the real story from "peers.

Check out the three events