Meet Bert Teuwen

Tell us something about yourself, Bert??

I'm Bert, and I'm 60 years old, so this is going to be a long story (laughs).? By education I am a Germanist, but I only taught school for two months. I was born and raised in a nest of independent entrepreneurs: I realized fairly quickly that the educational environment was too ‘narrow’ for my personal mindset.?

Following my brief career as a teacher, I opted to work as a translator for a company that manufactured computerized control systems. There, I learned to use a PC, which was pretty unusual in the 1980’s. After a while, I became weary of translating and decided to start as a software trainer at Xylos. Here, I had to learn rapidly in order to teach others. In almost three years as a software trainer I learned a lot, but in the long run you know upfront at what point you are about to tell a specific joke (laughs). And if it becomes routine, it does not work for me anymore …?

After that, I worked a variety of occupations until landing in a commercial job at Xylos again. At a given point in time, I was - surprisingly - given the opportunity to lead a team of technical people.? The overall goal was to make the team and the business grow, based on a customer-focused, commercial go-to-market approach.? Combining commercial and operational successes actually resulted in the desired growth scenario.? As a consequence, I gradually found myself in a role as a business unit manager, combining various accountabilities, such as sales management, business development, operations management, team development, …

Over 2,5 years ago, I started at Cronos, which brings us to what I do here with Coalitions, now. I began my career at Cronos as a business coach. In the meantime, I worked on various commercial opportunities. In early 2021, I contributed to the development of a new strategy for Uptime Group, one of the clusters within Cronos. That also resulted in four new initiatives, one of which is Coalitions. On that one, I quickly placed my shoulder to the wheel.

I contributed to the development of a new strategy for the Uptime Group. This also resulted in four new initiatives, one of which is Coalitions. On that one, I quickly placed my shoulder to the wheel.

What does Coalitions do??

Let’s start off with the name ‘Coalitions’ …? There are two basic explanations for that.? On the one hand, we aim at forging valuable coalitions with our Clients: that starts with truly listening,capturing their strategic challenges and finding out what is keeping them awake at night.? In a co-creation mode, we then define a mutual objective and develop a long-term plan together to tackle the challenges that lie ahead of both of us.

On the other hand, the name ‘Coalitions’ refers to the positive role we want to play within the Cronos Group: we want to build coalitions of different Cronos competence centers to have a higher impact on realizing the defined long-term, strategic plans of the Customer.? That aspect relates to the DNA of the group, where each Cronos company offers its own specific solutions in its defined niche market.? That is an extremely powerful business model, offering scalability, diversity and innovation power to our Customers, which is pretty unique.? We are one of those believers that Customers can even leverage more on that added value, if we succeed in ‘uniting’ the expertise of different competence centers into an end-to-end approach. To play that role, we are building a team of project and program managers, architects, team leads, IT managers, … to help Customers with the development of their long-term roadmaps and to make sure that they are delivered according to the agreed requirements and timing.

The business of most of our Customers is going through an intense transformation process.? Digitization is very often one of the critical success factors in that context.? One of the severe struggles of most organizations is to get access to the digital talent that is needed to operationalize their digitization? and transformation needs.? If companies do not have an appropriate plan to attract digital talent and to keep them on-board, their strategic plans will slow-down or fail.? Our mission is therefore: to help organizations develop and execute an appropriate sourcing strategy for co-shaping and supporting new business perspectives, by increasing and managing their digital resilience.? We leverage the full potential of the Cronos Group to make that happen.

If companies do not have an appropriate plan to attract digital talent and to keep them on-board, their strategic plans will slow-down or fail.? Our mission is therefore: to help organizations develop and execute an appropriate sourcing strategy for co-shaping and supporting new business perspectives, by increasing and managing their digital resilience.???

Is that something you've always done, "forging relationships"?

Ah, there's the thread of the story! (laughs) Yes, it has always been at the center of anything I have done. Both with clients as well as? internally with the? people that were surrounding me. Building bridges and ‘connecting the dots’ between business, people and technology. Relationships and close collaboration through win-win partnerships are embedded in the Coalitions team's DNA.

My motivating force is the gratification I receive from doing something that has a hyper-positive effect and produces high impact for our customers and the people in the organization I am working for.?

What are your personal ambitions within Coalitions??

My motivating force is the gratification I receive from doing something that has a hyper-positive effect and produces high impact for our customers and the people in the organization I am working for.. That is what has driven me throughout my entire life.? With Coalitions, it is our ultimate goal to contribute to positive change and sustainable growth for Cronos Group and its companies.