Merger organisation Levvel turned three IT environments into one, with a focus on a nice working environment for its 2,000 (healthcare) employees

Following a merger of three care organisations, Levvel has grown into an organisation with 2,000 employees across about 100 locations, including a number of larger offices and regional locations. From these locations and its groups and family homes, Levvel helps children, young people and (foster) families in difficult situations get back on track. Since mid-2020, Levvel emerged from a merger, which brought challenges in the IT field. From multiple IT environments, Levvel had to move to one future-proof IT environment with a pleasant digital workplace for all employees. A complex whole, to which Previder and partner Liquit were able to make a nice contribution. We talked about this process with Klaas Veerman, Management Board member with responsibility for ICT and Information Management at Levvel, and André Stokkingreef, account manager at Previder Zorg.

The complexity of a merger

‘Levvel was created from a merger of three organisations,’ explains Veerman. "We help young people and families who need temporary care or help, providing parenting support and youth-focused mental health care, both at our own locations and at schools and in home situations. We do this in Amsterdam and surrounding regions. Some facilities are also used nationwide. For example, our programmes for eating or anxiety disorders. The fact that we are a fusion of youth and parenting aid and youth mental health care is something that makes us unique. In practice, these two worlds often come together and it makes it easier to switch between care professionals around a family. This way, we work in one file. That is good for families and young people. But behind this merger wish is a huge IT complexity, which is not visible to many. We had three different ICT environments and processes. If there was a need to communicate between them, solutions that were difficult to manage had been built for that purpose. That put pressure on the organisation. So it was clear that we needed to build something that was easy to manage again, met modern requirements and offered more functionality for our users. One Levvel: one IT environment," says Veerman. Stokkingreef explains a bit more about what the situation looked like. "We saw that one organisation was already a bit more advanced in terms of IT and was running in the Microsoft Cloud with Office 365 and Teams, for example. While the other organisation was still working with its own hardware on site. The third organisation again had a mix of both. This, of course, did not work. Calendars could not be shared, folders could not be collaborated on, employees sometimes had three e-mail addresses to access the right data and systems, data was in multiple locations and employees had to constantly switch between different applications and systems, in which they had to log in and out each time."

Quest for the IT partner who dares to tackle such a complex project

It was clear that there was work to be done after the merger and the temporary solutions that arose in the process. ‘We had already properly described what we wanted in a functional design,’ says Veerman. "With a consultant, we looked at which IT parties could do this, because there are not many. We put the issue out to those parties and tested the answers. Does the proposal match what we described? We also found it important that the IT party meets the standard, gives us confidence that they can do it and have a good price. In the end, of the three parties with whom we went through an intensive selection process, Previder came out on top." Stokkingreef adds: "Bringing together three different IT landscapes into one new landscape is a real challenge. Many parties find that difficult. We dared to do that, but I am very honest that this was an intense journey. It took some blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are now." An additional challenge in this, was that the starting point of the trajectory was in the middle of the corona era. Veerman: "Everyone was working at home then, which is spicy in such a trajectory. We did have some tough conversations about cooperation, but we did get into the right mode and the project progressed well. There were challenges, but together we came up with solutions to them. Working together is just important in these kinds of projects, which is why we decided to sit together more often as a project team from Levvel and Previder. Sometimes that was even daily."

New digital workplace on a stable cloud environment

"For our employees, it was important to remove complexity. A nice, future-proof digital workplace on an environment in which everyone can work pleasantly together again," says Veerman. This did require a few things. Stokkingreef explains: "We chose Microsoft Azure as the cloud to build the environment on. We now have two types of workstations on it: a virtual desktop and a laptop workstation. Employees now work together efficiently, without constantly having to log in and out of everything. For both workstations, we work with Liquit to roll out the applications and make them available via single sign-on. Liquit is very suitable for large organisations, because you have a lot of control over the - possibly phased - roll-out of applications. Patches and updates are also rolled out in a controlled manner and they develop packages in the setup store that we can use by default. Liquit keeps up with development and unburdens us." A new, modern standard that is well secured and manageable was an important requirement for Veerman: "We now have one management environment and one management club, with first-line support at Previder for our employees. When Previder detects something that needs to be passed on to our own second- or third-line, they do it. To optimise this cooperation, we sit together fortnightly. We then look at where we need to improve, which tickets remain and whether we need to scale up, for example."

The success factor: employee support and knowledge

Not only was a complete cloud environment with a digital workplace set up, 2200 devices were issued to employees in a “distribution street”. Veerman says: "That was really one of the successes and required a lot of preparation. We planned around 80 migrations in a day. Between 8am and 2pm, colleagues had to go through the issue street for six weeks. Until everyone had been there. It was a well-oiled machine. Old devices were handed in, new devices were issued, and there was an explanation of the new workplace and devices for people who had not seen or sufficiently understood the e-learning. There was also a collaboration with the telephone company in this street. In fact, the new phones had to have multifactor authentication on them to unlock the laptop." Stokkingreef: "It was a logistical operation, but this issue and the attention we gave the employees really contributed to the success. The adoption piece was incredibly important, from e-learning to the explanation in the dispensing lane. After all, the most important thing is that the user is satisfied with the new workplace and can work with it effectively." The reactions from employees were therefore mostly positive in the end, says Veerman. "With substantive changes, things don't go right all at once, that's inevitable. There were some colleagues who could not work for a while and did not like that. But the vast majority of reactions about the migration, were positive. Problems we encountered, we were able to solve. So all in all, a successful project!"