The situation
Dutch company PostNL has been in business for more than 225 years, reflecting its ability to transform and adapt to the ever-changing needs and preferences of its customers and take courageous steps to innovate. The company strives to be the “preferred delivery person in, from and to the Benelux” by offering a distinctive customer and consumer experience. “Generative AI is a promising technology and we thought that GenAI could help us realize our ambitions for growth and innovation. This technology will help us optimize processes, make the work of our colleagues more efficient and enjoyable and improve our services to customers. We were looking for a partner who could help us structure and organize the knowledge and ideas we needed,” says Bram Tilmanns, Program Director for Generative AI at PostNL. PostNL contacted its long-time collaborator, Deloitte Netherlands, to develop a plan to explore opportunities and possibilities for the responsible use of this new technology.
“Deloitte Netherlands’ approach focused on rapidly creating value and included three components: Delivering value to drive buy-in by showcasing the potential value of GenAI through the discovery, prioritization and development of a number of GenAI proofs of concept (POCs). To accelerate organizational change, (we) developed a vision of the organizational structure, governance and change needed to accelerate the adoption of GenAI at PostNL. And finally, a section called the Future Technology Guide, providing advice on technology relationships, including with the PostNL cloud. provider – to accelerate, orchestrate and integrate GenAI into their technical landscape,” says Morris Boermann, senior director at Deloitte Netherlands.
PostNL already had its ethical framework for working with AI – the introduction of GenAI required a renewed approach to this. “This new technology required safeguards to ensure that PostNL employees could use it in a reliable, trustworthy and transparent manner. We developed risk checklists and enriched existing ones. For example, consumers need to be aware when interacting with an AI system. In itself, this is a simple check, but it must be integrated into risk frameworks to ensure that the company complies with regulations.” says Naser Bakhshi, partner at Deloitte Netherlands.