E-mergo develops AWVN data portal

Algemene Werkgeversvereniging Nederland (AWVN) has launched a new data portal for its members. With the data portal, AWVN wants to professionalize and digitize its services for its members. Employers and trade associations that are members of AWVN get access via the data portal to various dashboards and benchmarks with information on collective labor agreements (CAO), compensation, social plans, mobility, and pensions. E-mergo is AWVN's digitalization partner and developed the data portal for them with Mendix. In this blog we discuss the digitalization challenges and how the data portal can support AWVN's digital ambitions.

About AWVN

AWVN was founded in 1919 to negotiate on behalf of its affiliated companies with trade unions on terms of employment. Today, AWVN is the largest employers' service organization in the Netherlands, and its advisors advise more than 1,000 employers on all aspects of being an employer.

AWVN's services include an extensive package of invoice-based advisory services. In addition, AWVN offers its members various data services (dashboards, benchmarks, and tools) that are made available through various channels. Doing this requires a lot of data. AWVN collects this data itself and also asks its members to supply data.

'The CBS of employment conditions'

AWVN has the ambition to become "the CBS of employment conditions" (CBS being the Dutch national statistics office). AWVN wants to achieve this by combining the data it has and using it for new and innovative data-driven services. The new data portal plays an important role in this. With it, AWVN wants to take a further step in professionalizing its services, by bringing various digital products together in a central platform and making the data directly accessible to members.

For AWVN, the data portal offers the ability to roll out new digital services faster. For members, the portal should offer more convenience and better insights. In the future, it will become possible for members to purchase new services directly through the portal.

AWVN's challenges

AWVN's digital products were developed by various external parties using different technologies. The lifecycle of these products is relatively short, and they are largely developed as monolithic applications. As a result, modifying the applications is time-consuming and difficult, and they need to be rebuilt at the end of their lifecycle. In the old situation, AWVN struggled with a number of challenges and bottlenecks that stood in the way of its digitalization goals;

• The data was collected in various ways and not stored centrally.
• The existing applications aren't integrated with each other and have no consistent user interface.
• The applications quickly become outdated, and rebuilding them costs time and money.
• For modifying existing applications, AWVN is dependent on various external parties.

The challenges mentioned above were the reasons for AWVN to build the data portal with Mendix, Qlik Sense, and TimeXtender.

The choice of Mendix as the low-code platform

AWVN selected Mendix as the low-code platform for developing new customer-oriented applications, of which the data portal is the first. The term "low-code" refers to the way applications are developed. With Mendix, applications are developed in a visual drag-and-drop user interface, where the user interface, data model, and application logic are modeled using building blocks (standard components). Thanks to the visual way of developing and the extensive set of standard components, manually writing code isn't necessary, which means applications can be rolled out much faster than with traditional development methods.

The AWVN data portal

The data portal was developed as a website for anonymous visitors and employers who are directly or indirectly (via a trade association) affiliated with AWVN. For anonymous visitors there's a general landing page offering information about AWVN's services. Employers who aren't yet members can request access via a button in the portal. AWVN members log in via OKTA (cloud identity provider) to get access to a number of dashboards.

The dashboards were developed with Qlik Sense and are displayed (embedded) within the portal. The data in the dashboards is dynamically filtered by Qlik Sense based on the user who is logged in (row-level security). This means every user only sees what they're allowed to see.

The AWVN data portal homepage

The dashboards are organized into four themes: CAO, Compensation, Pension, and Mobility. These themes are displayed as tiles on the homepage. After selecting a theme, one or more new tiles are displayed containing information about the dashboard and a button to open it. The dashboards are fully interactive, meaning users can adjust selections, filters, and visualizations themselves as desired. The datasets for the dashboards are read by Qlik Sense from AWVN's data warehouse, which was built using TimeXtender.

The portal has a management environment in which AWVN staff can adjust the content within the portal themselves, such as the texts in the tiles and the texts in various pop-up windows. In addition, an administrator can set, per theme, which tiles are displayed in which order and which dashboard should be opened per tile.

A CAO dashboard in the data portal

First experiences and future plans

The first version (Proof of Concept, POC) of the data portal was built by E-mergo in 10 weeks. Further development and management of the application are also handled by E-mergo. In the first version, the dashboards for the CAO and Compensation themes were made available. A pilot was started in early March with a small number of selected AWVN members. The first reactions were very positive, particularly about the fact that all relevant information and insights can be retrieved from a central web environment in a simple, consistent, and secure way. After the pilot phase, the intention is for all AWVN members to get access to the application and for the portal to be further expanded with new dashboards, benchmarks, and premium services.

Want to know more?

Want to know more about Mendix and the value of a data portal for your organization? Considering improving interaction with customers or suppliers through a portal? We're happy to discuss the specific needs of your organization further. Leave a message via the contact form below. We'll get in touch with you soon!

Written by Fabienne Heijn,
Mendix Developer