DRIVE MKB | International Creative Woman

Project description

As students who would donate their time and effort for a return in knowledge and personal development, we were always looking for projects with a positive social impact on society. The project was prompted by the Corona crisis. Retail and restaurants are sectors that have suffered especially under the crisis and the new (temporary) legislation endorsed by it. Although there had been a lot of creativity and entrepreneurship, to maintain turnover through home deliveries, limited openings and more, these sectors have shown they are less crisis resistant than their larger counterparts and have suffered severely. The project is called DRIVE MKB and is currently led by Carli Kleijnen who will be our project owner. It stands for “durable regional innovative flexible ecosystem.” It aims to help restaurants and retail and wishes to enable them in self-sufficient digitalisation, hoping to granting them more survivability and flexibility during times of crisis.

Context

The goal of the project is to prove the feasibility, technical readiness and attain a possible strategy for creating a digital community suited for the DRIVE MKB project. Unless other strategies prove better suited, this will be done in a business case, defending the benefits of a digital community for the DRIVE MKB project, and providing insight in the best way to initiate and implement such a community. Within 16 weeks – starting on the 7th of March – NextGen-Solutions will create a research-based business case on the creation of a digital community suited for the DRIVE MKB project.

Results

Business case

This document is essential as it applies all the research conducted for this project to the DRIVE MKB project. Since ICW was used as an example for a digital community similar to DRIVE MKB the research done for ICW can be applied to it. This provides insights on points such as sustainable business models, subscription models, and IT governance.

Subscription model

This section was essential as it provided ICW with the foundation to become self-sustainable by updating their business model to maintain a steady cash inflow. By outlining all points regarding subscriptions, such as different types, price points, and motivators for the members.

Advisory report

This report combined all the research conducted throughout the project to advise ICW on what their plan of approach should look like for the coming months. It outlines strategies they need to adopt, as well as subscription models, IT governance, and how they can use their data.

IT governance (security)

This section was critical in this project as ICW seemed to lack expertise in terms of data security, which provided strong reasoning to adopt the ISO 27001;2013 IT governance framework, which is focused on continuous security improvement. This outlines certain principles and guidelines that they should follow in order to improve their security standards and ensuring that their data is constantly protected.

Advice on data use and storage

An important characteristic of becoming self-sustainable is to ensure that there are appropriate data collection and storage practices implemented in the community. This is why we outlined a detailed plan to approach data collection and the best cloud storage platform to store their data on. Finally advise on possible performance dashboards was considered very useful as it provides insights on member engagement and general knowledge about the community.

Downloads

Advisory Document

Business Case

ICW Data

Project Plan

Research Document

About the project group

We are three students with a Dutch, Bulgarian and Egyptian background. All of us were attending semester 6 of ICT & Business at the Fontys University of Applied Sciences at the time of the project. All of us specialise in technical business analysis, applied data science, process analysis/automation and Business Intelligence.