A new application landscape for tailored funeral services

DELA, the cooperative founded in 1937 under the name Draagt Elkanders Lasten, is the market leader in the Dutch funeral sector with 5.5 million members. It is a versatile organization. DELA is an insurer with its own asset management division, operates dozens of crematoria and funeral centers and works with thousands of suppliers such as florists, printers and catering companies. The face toward customers, members and next of kin are the hundreds of funeral directors.

They are project leaders who must flawlessly manage many small projects under emotionally difficult circumstances. The pressure they constantly work under is quite high.

This is explained by Nick van Dulken, product owner of the team Custom Funeral Services. He is responsible at DELA for all systems within the funeral care domain, supporting processes and new projects from the moment of death notification to the funeral and invoicing.

Impractical local solution

The applications used until a few years ago were so outdated that proper support had become nearly impossible. One example is LARA, which ran on the laptops of funeral directors. For them, it is a crucial application that helps organize a funeral during conversations with families.

"Such a local solution is impractical, for example when a funeral director becomes ill or if their laptop is stolen. That is why a more centralized solution had long been considered", explains Betabitter Roger.

After the acquisition of Yarden by DELA in August 2021, a significant number of new users would be added. That would push the application beyond its performance limits, adds Betabitter Sam.
"DELA also felt they could not present such an outdated application to their new colleagues. We wanted something that offered the same functionality, but not the look of Windows 98 or unexplainable bugs."

BlackOps

Roger and Sam were responsible during that period for maintaining the old applications. Elsewhere within DELA, a program was underway to develop a new application landscape for funeral services.

The risk we saw was that LARA would no longer work in that new landscape. That was our cue to build a new version ourselves as a backup.

But that is not the whole story. Why would two external consultants decide to build a new application?

"We really did use the term BlackOps a lot back then", Roger laughs. We were the maintenance team and had all the knowledge. We were convinced we knew which direction things needed to go. Our approach is that we just start building. And if we can show it works, everyone will follow. What I really appreciate about DELA is that if you come with a good idea, you get the space to invest your energy in it.

Proof of concept

Nick van Dulken adds:

We know examples of large projects where people think and debate for a very long time, but which ultimately deliver no results. Sometimes it is simply better to try something new quickly and pragmatically. For me, it mostly reflects the drive of the Betabit consultants to achieve goals and deliver something extra.

Roger and Sam, with Nick’s knowledge, built a proof of concept for the successor to LARA to present to DELA management.

"They were incredibly impressed by what we had built in such a short time", Roger and Sam recall. Their approach became the guiding principle for rebuilding the entire application landscape in Microsoft Azure.

A team of seven Betabit colleagues is now working on the development and maintenance of the new landscape. More than three quarters of it has already been migrated to the cloud. "Most users are very satisfied with the new system", says Nick.

They are pleasantly surprised by the speed at which we can now respond to problems or user needs. After a two-week sprint, we often provide a solution; in the past, this was nearly impossible to do reliably and efficiently.

New initiatives as MVP

With the new landscape, a modern, stable IT environment has been created that supports DELA’s commercial strategy and enables new initiatives.

"We want to offer members and relatives more possibilities to shape and organize a funeral themselves in our online environment", Nick explains. "This fits the times and helps relieve families. They always have insight into progress; see which actions they still need to take and can do so whenever it suits them."

The experiences with the rebuild of LARA are being applied here as well. New initiatives are first developed as a minimum viable product, after which a group of ambassador funeral directors tests them in practice. If customers find it valuable, a decision is made after one quarter to roll it out nationwide.

"Betabit seems to have a long future within DELA. I certainly hope so!", Nick says.

Betabitters are now so familiar with this domain. They understand exactly how crucial it is that our systems function properly. There is also excellent team dynamics. They are driven not only to deliver results, but also to embrace new techniques and responsibilities. That is very positive it keeps everything running and ensures continued innovation at DELA.