‘Innovation is a crucial part of our vision,’ says managing director Wim Beukers. ‘Allinq has existed for sixty years now. When I took office ten years ago, the shareholders‘ mandate was: make sure this company still exists in fifty years’ time. Constant innovation is a condition of existence. A must to continue meeting the needs of our customers.’ For Allinq Digital, innovating is first and foremost: cleverly applying what already exists. ‘I call that applied innovation. Things originally developed for other markets, we apply in our industry. That way, you skip a lot of steps. After all, the technology has already proven itself and the pitfalls are known. So why keep reinventing the wheel?’

In addition, innovation also has an economic imperative. ‘Our costs, such as salaries, continue to rise. Especially with current inflation. As our selling prices cannot go down any further, we have to take costs out of the chain to remain competitive. ‘Our customers demand a stable network at low cost. We can think along in this, so that, for example, a network becomes much more stable. With smart techniques, we can predict what is going to happen. So we can prevent outages in that network. A more stable network means higher availability and greater customer satisfaction.’ If we can use innovations and targeted investments to extend the life of the network, this means lower investment costs and a more positive cash flow. Interestingly, customers do not explicitly ask for better utilisation and higher customer satisfaction through network availability, but they are often pleasantly surprised when we come up with this.’

Innovation is made possible by people. ‘It starts with people. People who are curious about technological innovation. With us, they are given the space to work on solutions. Can we use existing ideas or techniques? Can we create budget space to innovate and enthuse others about new ideas? ‘If this succeeds, you see that people enthusiastically and curiously come up with ideas on their own. It is important not to reject those ideas immediately. We are investing in our future business. That means trying things now that might not lead to immediate solutions, but might lead to different ideas and possibly new models.’

‘So we encourage our colleagues to look for ways to do their jobs better today than yesterday. It’s about finding the root cause of a problem and coming up with a solution to eliminate it. This is how we create an environment where you feel free to think outside the box. ‘We are always looking for curious people who can think conceptually. To create something that has impact, they need to understand the customer’s business and be able to explain it to the customer. We now do this concretely with digital twins, for instance. With these, we create intelligent environments in which algorithms discover patterns to predict and prevent problems.’

One successful innovation Wim is proud of is In Control. ‘With this, we scan open trenches using Lidar technology. Very interesting! We can guarantee quality because we know exactly how the trench was actually dug. In the old situation, a lot of time was spent searching for assets buried underground. This solution is relevant not only for our industry, but also for the energy market, gas pipelines, hydrogen pipelines and heat networks. This increases the impact of innovation.’

Completely visionary is Omni-Linq, a pioneering concept and the future of digital asset management. ‘By bringing together many data sources, such as bodycams, lidar scans and drone images, we create a real-time 3D representation of the working environment. Omni-Linq then uses advanced image processing and AI algorithms to arrive at an unparalleled view of the working environment.’

Such solutions are well received by customers. ‘When I mention the benefits to their business case, such as occupancy, lower costs or network extension, they are always enthusiastic. The next question is then: how do you prove it? That was a challenge in the past, but now we can concretely show the benefits with the solutions already running. Customers are now really starting to show interest ánd to free up budgets to invest in innovation. This is how we fulfil our vision of staying ahead of the competition by innovating faster.’