Arjan Jong

As head of Vattenfall's Procurement Strategy & Insights function, I lead the data, digital, and analytical backbone of one of Europe's largest energy procurement organisations — spanning 12+ spend categories, hundreds of strategic suppliers, and operations across the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and the UK. Five platform-level achievements that define this role: - Spend Analytics 2.0: We unified 92% of Vattenfall’s spend into a single, AI-ready analytics platform—enabling predictive insights and data-driven sourcing decisions. - Digital Garage: We built the innovation engine for Procurement, delivering AI copilots, chatbots, and agile experimentation that accelerate digital transformation. - Strategic Supplier Management: We redefined SRM with segmentation, performance tracking, and innovation scouting—elevating supplier relationships to strategic partnerships. - Procurement Academy & Knowledge Base: We modernized learning with immersive tools and AI-driven onboarding, building a digitally fluent procurement workforce. - Data Strategy & Architecture: We established the governance and integration backbone that connects tools like CASA, S/4HANA, and Supplier Dashboards—ensuring trusted, actionable data across the enterprise. We centralized Master Data governance and unified data policies and guidelines for all MD areas in Vattenfall. In short, FPES is where Procurement’s strategy meets execution—through data, design, and digital innovation.

Leading innovation scouting, strategic supplier development, and Group Strategic Account Management. Driving Supplier Performance as a value-creation engine and acting as the strategic interface between Procurement and Sustainability to embed ESG and long-term resilience into our supplier ecosystem.

Led the translation of data into commercially viable products, insights, and decision intelligence across NL/UK, Germany/France, and the Nordics. Built a cross-sector data innovation ecosystem connecting startups, corporates, academia, and public institutions. Elevated organizational capabilities in advanced analytics, AI, and emerging technologies to strengthen strategic competitiveness.

Drove new business model development and market entry initiatives using Lean Startup, Value Proposition Design, and Design Thinking. Connected corporate strategy to validated innovation pipelines, translating experimentation into scalable commercial propositions. Designed and launched the international Innovation Program for BA Customers & Solutions, embedding entrepreneurial capability across regions.

- Built on earlier cross-border process and B2B service leadership roles to take full end-to-end accountability for Invoicing & Collections (SME & B2B), Heat services (consumer & business), and the E-Mobility Expert Centre. - Shifted from segment-level service management to structural operating model transformation: redesigned the organisation, established a new dedicated customer service unit with external partners, and executed large-scale offshoring (~100 FTE to Asia). - Delivered ~75% structural cost reduction and ~90% automation of offshored activities, embedding process standardisation and digital enablement at scale. - Pioneered early pilots with conversational AI agents (incl. Amelia), marking the transition from operational optimisation to AI-driven service innovation.

- Owned Contract-to-Cash process architecture and performance across multiple customer segments and geographies. - Led international simplification and standardisation efforts to reduce complexity, improve service quality, and strengthen operational control. In collaboration with Sales rationalized the loss making product portfolio for efficiency and value contribution. - Built a new externally partnered service unit for B2B and Heat customers, enabling scalable and performance-driven delivery.

- Led full contract-to-cash operations for business customers and directed a 200+ FTE service organization in Amsterdam. - Integrated service operations with commercial and energy service units to improve customer experience and performance outcomes. - Secured COPC re-certification, embedding structured quality management and continuous improvement at scale.

- Led the Pre-Contract team and owned Sales & Marketing process governance within BU Distribution & Sales in an international environment. - Directed the Process Optimisation Program for Vattenfall Customer Service Germany, delivering structural simplification and realising 63 FTE in efficiency gains. - Aligned commercial processes across borders to improve transparency, control, and execution speed. - Received special recognition for cross-border transformation impact and delivery excellence.

- Led all customer service operations for Nuon’s largest and most complex business clients, including multi-site corporates, Public Sector accounts, Housing Associations, and the Service Desk for Large Heat customers. - Accountable for high-touch, contract-specific service delivery across customised energy solutions, balancing commercial performance, regulatory compliance, and service excellence. - Partnered closely with Key Account Management, Sales, and Operations to ensure seamless contract execution and long-term client retention. - Managed complex stakeholder environments where reliability, precision, and responsiveness were critical to strategic customer relationships.

- Led end-to-end customer service operations for Nuon’s Medium Client segment, covering large business customers with both high- and low-capacity connections (excluding corporate key accounts). - Accountable for contract-to-cash execution, service performance, and operational governance across a commercially critical B2B portfolio. - Balanced efficiency and scalability with segment-specific service differentiation, ensuring reliable delivery, margin protection, and customer retention. - Worked in close alignment with Sales and Account Management to translate commercial propositions into consistent operational performance.

- Supported the Management Team Operations of the Health Division in steering operational execution, policy implementation, and performance governance. - Coordinated operational risk oversight and ensured alignment between strategic decisions and execution across multiple locations. - Acted as liaison between the Health Division Operations MT and the Intermediary Division MT during a pre-merger phase, facilitating cross-divisional coordination and organisational alignment. - Gained early exposure to executive-level decision-making, governance structures, and large-scale organisational complexity.

- Led the “Goed, Beter, Best” performance improvement program for Avéro Achmea Health and Occupational Health Insurances within the Intermediary Division, aimed at strengthening commercial performance, operational efficiency, and portfolio discipline. - The program evolved into a crisis taskforce after a flawed pricing strategy led to operational disruption and financial losses. Played a key role in recovery and stabilisation efforts, supporting pricing reassessment, operational control restoration, and performance governance improvements. - Contributed to structural integration between the Intermediary and Health divisions, strengthening cross-divisional alignment, accountability, and pricing governance. - Gained early executive exposure to large-scale performance transformation, crisis management, and organisational integration in a complex insurance environment.

- Led the Occupational Health Mid- and Back Office organisation within the Intermediary Division, accountable for operational performance, service quality, and team leadership across multiple locations. - Played a central role in the post-merger integration of Levob into Avéro Achmea, aligning processes, systems, and teams to ensure operational continuity and performance stability. - Subsequently supported the structured transfer of the department to the Achmea Division Occupational Health (2006), managing organisational transition, stakeholder alignment, and workforce integration. - Built foundational experience in change management, post-merger integration, and operational restructuring within a complex financial services environment.

- Led the Commercial Relationship Management team for Health Insurances within the Intermediary Division, accountable for portfolio performance and commercial outcomes in collective health agreements. - Drove revenue growth, contract retention, and intermediary engagement within a competitive market environment, balancing pricing discipline with relationship strategy. Led intermediary portfolio management, contract negotiations, and retention strategy in a competitive B2B environment. - Supported the integration of AXA Health into Achmea under Project “Sunrise,” contributing to portfolio harmonisation, stakeholder alignment, and commercial continuity during transition. - Developed early expertise in commercial governance, integration support, and performance accountability within a complex insurance landscape.

Selected for a tailored management development program with cross-functional rotations across product management, team leadership, and application control. - Contributed to product portfolio development and market positioning initiatives, gaining early exposure to commercial strategy and pricing dynamics. - Led operational teams during rotation assignments, building foundational leadership experience in performance management and service delivery. - Worked within application control and system governance, developing insight into process discipline, risk control, and operational continuity. Did my first explorations with SQL and data lakes uncovering a nationwide fraud - Laid the groundwork for a career combining commercial accountability, operational transformation, and cross-divisional integration.

Digital transformation is mostly a people and governance problem wearing a technology costume. The IMD sprint sharpened my thinking on exactly where interventions actually land — and where they don't. The "Digital Transformation Orchestra" framework reinforced something I'd observed at Vattenfall: sustainable transformation requires a conductor more than a composer. The programme also pushed me to articulate where AI creates genuine strategic differentiation versus operational efficiency — a distinction I now apply directly in how I frame procurement's AI agenda.

Five weeks on something procurement leaders rarely invest in: how to actually be heard. The programme worked on the craft of communicating ideas with clarity and conviction — storytelling, trust-building, and the subtle mechanics of influence in rooms where you're not the loudest voice. I brought these tools directly into stakeholder management across Vattenfall's European leadership and into the thought leadership writing I do through Leaders of the New School. Turns out that making complex ideas land is a skill, not a gift.

Cultural Sciences: - Cultural History - Philosophy - Literature Studies - Art History

Came for the change management frameworks, stayed for the "ambidexterity challenge" — the tension between running today's organisation while building tomorrow's. That tension sits at the heart of everything I do at Vattenfall: keeping procurement operationally solid while pushing the function toward AI, data intelligence, and strategic relevance. The programme crystallised why so many transformations stall: not technical failure, but political and cultural resistance that leaders underestimate because they're too focused on the decision itself.

Procurement doesn't operate in isolation — it's a node in a larger ecosystem of platforms, suppliers, data flows, and digital alliances. This programme reframed how I think about supplier relationships: less as transactional contracts, more as platform dynamics where value is co-created rather than negotiated. The digital business models module directly influenced how I think about Vattenfall's Digital Garage and the kind of innovation partnerships procurement can broker that purely commercial functions can't.

Three weeks that essentially validated the strategic direction I'd already been pushing — and gave it sharper language. The "wicked problems" framing from the Maastricht module was particularly useful: procurement deals with exactly these kinds of problems, where there are no clean solutions, only better or worse responses. The program also brought me into contact with senior procurement peers from outside energy, which pressure-tested assumptions I hadn't realised I was making about what "good" looks like in the function.

Understanding how organisations manage innovation portfolios, make stage-gate decisions, and create conditions for creative breakthroughs gave me a different lens on product development and innovation scouting. The "creativity as a process" module planted a seed that eventually grew into the Curiosinarium: the idea that imagination isn't a personality trait but a structured practice that organisations can deliberately cultivate.

I was early to blockchain — perhaps too early. But the value wasn't in becoming a blockchain specialist; it was in learning how to evaluate distributed trust architectures at the moment before they became mainstream noise. That analytical discipline — engaging seriously with an emerging technology before everyone else has an opinion — is the same approach I've taken to GenAI in procurement. The pattern is the same: hype obscures genuine signal, and the leaders who do the rigorous work early are the ones who can cut through it later.

A provocation at a time when I was deep in operational execution: what does it actually mean to create customer value, and how do organisations build and sustain the momentum to grow? For a customer operations professional, "customer" usually means internal stakeholders — and this programme recalibrated how I think about customer operations' value proposition within the enterprise. The concept of "power offers" stuck with me: the idea that the strongest value propositions are those that remove friction so completely that alternatives become unthinkable.

Three weeks at Fontainebleau that functioned as a compressed MBA for people mid-career. Strategy, finance, marketing, operations, organisational behaviour — all taught at pace, with a cohort that pushed back hard. I was elected Class President for the May/June 2011 intake, which I mention not as a footnote but because it was the first time I consciously led a group of high-performing strangers toward a shared experience — and discovered that I found it natural. A number of the peer relationships from this programme have remained professionally meaningful for over a decade.