Industry giant sounds the alarm: “Those who don’t digitalize now simply won’t make it.”
The Dutch manufacturing industry is receiving a major warning.
Digitalization specialist Delaware sees that countless companies believe they can handle the future — but according to the experts, reality is a good deal more painful.
“Many factories still operate as if it’s 1998. That’s going to hit them hard.”
That’s what Koen van Woerkum and Jan Koster, two heavyweights within Delaware, say during an episode of De Industrie Online.
Their message: the digital divide is growing larger than ever.
Factories grinding to a halt: “Everything has changed, but nobody wants to move”
The men from Delaware don’t mince words.
Digitalization is no longer a nice-to-have option, but a pure necessity.
Machines are getting smarter.
Customers demand faster.
Suppliers are getting stricter.
And the competition? They are digitalizing.
Van Woerkum puts it crystal clear:
“If you’re still living in Excel, you don’t stand a chance.”
Many manufacturing companies want to digitalize, but have no idea what they actually need.
And that’s exactly where it goes wrong.
The candy-store effect: companies click on everything — and shoot themselves in the foot
According to Delaware, digitalization feels to many organizations like a kind of IT supermarket:
AI?
Portals?
Dashboards?
Robots?
Cloud?
Everyone wants everything at once.
But Koster warns:
“That’s a recipe for disaster. Digitalization fails because companies want too much and understand too little.”
That’s why Delaware uses a Digital Discovery Assessment, a kind of digital X-ray that, in one or two days, reveals:
- which processes are truly important
- which technology is needed
- what it costs
- what the impact is
- and above all: where the resistance among employees lies
And that last point is the biggest bottleneck.
“Systems change with a single click. People don’t.”
What do companies most underestimate? People.
New software is installed quickly.
But new habits?
That takes months.
“Change management is no longer a side issue. It’s a profession. And without that profession, every project fails.”
Employees fear for their jobs.
Managers want to cling to ‘the way it’s always been done’.
And teams lose track because everything changes at once.
Delaware says it out loud:
“The biggest enemy of digitalization is not technology. It’s behavior.”
SAP becomes king again: “We no longer do custom work – that’s asking for trouble”
In the past, companies wanted to completely rebuild their ERP.
Today they demand the opposite:
Standardization.
Speed.
Reliability.
Less hassle.
No custom work that costs years of maintenance.
That’s why SAP S/4HANA is once again becoming the dominant player in the industry.
Delaware even goes a step further:
“We are the only partner in the Netherlands that can fully digitalize a manufacturing company end-to-end.”
Engineering, production, planning, HR, portals, service — everything in one ecosystem.
Roadmap instead of Big Bang: “Doing everything at once is suicide”
Delaware is mercilessly clear: the era of gigantic ‘Big Bang’ implementations is over.
A digital transformation must be done step by step:
- Get ERP in order
- Standardize processes
- Bring departments on board
- Build a roadmap
- Only then expand with AI, IoT and automation
Van Woerkum:
“We don’t want the operation to succeed while the patient dies.”
So no more crazy leaps.
No half-baked custom work.
No multi-million projects that go off the rails.
Calm. Logic. Roadmap.
That’s the new industrial reality.
Who benefits most from Delaware’s approach?
Not the very largest corporates.
Not the very smallest entrepreneurs.
But companies that:
- engineer, build and maintain products
- are growing internationally
- have complexity in planning and service
- are in the range of €200 million to €1+ billion in revenue
- or are small scale-ups with big ambitions
Or as Delaware puts it:
“Size doesn’t matter at all. Ambition does.”
The stark prediction: the next five years will be decisive
Delaware’s future plan doesn’t pull any punches.
✔ Grow larger in the Netherlands
✔ Set the digital standard for the manufacturing industry
✔ Keep developing all current clients for five years
✔ Help new companies that are now stuck
✔ Further expand the SAP ecosystem
The message to the market is unmistakable:
“Digitalizing isn’t something you do once. It’s something you have to keep doing.”
The warning to the industry is clear
Those who don’t digitalize now will be overtaken.
Those who don’t standardize now will stay stuck.
Those without a roadmap will get lost.
But those who do take the step?
They’ll build a lead that lasts for years.
Want to know how far behind your company really is?
Request the Digital Discovery Assessment and see within 48 hours where your digital opportunities lie.