Innsider celebrates Maarten Bakker’s professional milestone. This month, to congratulate Maarten Bakker – partner at INNOPAY - on five years at INNOPAY, we asked him to tell us more about himself and his work.
Maarten Bakker started working at INNOPAY in 2018, as a senior manager. He actually has a background in applied physics and loves the intellectual challenge of science, but he realised that the research profession was not for him. Instead, he joined the Accenture Strategy Consulting Group in 2006, where he learned the art of management consultancy and how to apply his skills during ever-changing and challenging client engagements. He gradually aligned himself to the financial services practice, and more specifically to insurance, which resulted in him acquiring new knowledge about the inner workings of a bank or insurance company from a financial, operational, technology and legal perspective. Since arriving at INNOPAY, Maarten has played a key role in starting and building the Data Sharing Coalition.
When platforms started to emerge and tech companies entered the financial services sector, FinTech became an important part of the work I did for my clients at my previous employer. But it also led me to question a lot of efforts by incumbents when pursuing a ‘winner takes all’ platform strategy. INNOPAY’s vision meant that it was a logical place to continue my management consulting journey, as it gave me some answers I was looking for. But even more importantly, INNOPAY is known and respected by its clients for cutting-edge thought leadership and expertise, entrepreneurship and flawless project execution. And because our people are not ‘one of many’ but are truly treated as our greatest asset, there is a lot more focus on personal development. As I know from experience, you don’t find this in the same way at the large integrators – but it’s what makes all the difference in how much fun you have doing your job.
I like the fact that working at INNOPAY means that you have responsibilities towards your clients, for our internal operations and for the personal development of yourself and your colleagues. This applies to people at every level in our organisation, from junior consultants to the partners. So while the focus of my day-to-day job has changed over the past five years, the core of my responsibilities hasn’t. I am still working on client projects, on new thought leadership, and on my own and other people’s development. I particularly enjoy helping colleagues to brainstorm about new clients and opportunities. I also have room for my ambition here, which is to grow INNOPAY for our people and our clients. Our Everything Transaction thought capital in combination with our high-end consulting skills is relevant for a large group of international clients. I want us to be big enough to matter while still remaining small enough to care. That will enable us to realise our vision.
I see it as a double-edged sword. The topic is receiving a lot of attention from policymakers, and legislation is coming – albeit very slowly. But there are no boardroom conversations on the issue, there are no digital transformations being started, and customers are not asking for it because they want the convenience that data brings them. So all in all, I think data sovereignty and digital sustainability are still fringe topics that have not yet proven their value in a business context. The danger is that they will become just another ‘tick in the compliance box’ for companies. It is up to us to help to realise change.
I see two interlinked game changers: legacy transformation and data quality. A lot of data is currently held in old legacy systems, and sometimes even Excel sheets. It can take years to unlock that data, and when you’ve finally succeeded, the quality of the data is often not good enough for the use case you want to realise. Companies need to focus on legacy transformation and data quality to get the basics in order, and then start building on new data-driven concepts from there. Without that foundation, it will be all talk and no action.