"Empower people to make good decisions": David Jensen, Photobox CTO, on post-merge IT

A recent merger has seen widespread duplication of effort, but there's a drive towards simplicity

Change is a hallmark of technology, and by extension any technology business. According to the maxim that ‘Every modern business is a technology business', then, change is a hallmark of business.

David Jensen, CTO of albelli Photobox, would certainly agree with. Since he joined the company in 2016 he has seen radical transformation, including a separation from Moonpig - which Photobox bought in 2011 - in 2019 and a merger this year with Dutch company albelli, with all the systems changes that go alongside.

"We were never massively merged [with Moonpig] from a systems perspective... [but] there's definitely been some additional complexity introduced with regards to the additional platforms that we have now, from both albelli as well as the existing platforms we have across Photobox, [Spanish brand] Hofmann and [German brand] posterXXL."

The eventual aim is to massively simplify the technology stack and bring all the backend systems together; but for now, Jensen is managing tech for four distinct brands: albelli, Photobox, Hofmann and posterXXL.

"At the moment, we're maintaining four different platforms that do, if you zoom out, effectively the same thing - but various degrees of quality means that we spend quite a lot of money on doing things that we could be spending on doing it once and impacting more of our customers."

Maintaining all these different siloed systems - covering everything from CRM to ERP to finance and HR - also slows down employees, stopping them from "taking the teachings and applying them," as Jensen puts it. Simplifying that experience is a key step to helping the company kickstart its innovation again.

A fluid approach

Any corporate M&A is rife with negotiation and decision-making. In IT's case, it's normally around which system(s) will reign supreme once the dust settles - but it's not always an easy choice.

Jensen's team initially wanted to take a best-of-breed approach, cherry-picking the best of all the different systems among the four brands. However, they quickly realised that the level of integration that would be necessary to do that was prohibitive.

"With the drive to simplicity, maybe that wasn't the right approach," Jensen comments.

Instead, after reviewing the different levels of maturity on each platform, they decided to pursue albelli as the primary system - with a few exceptions, like keeping the Photobox mobile app as the go-to app for all the brands.

Jensen admits that it was "bold" to make that decision without a fully defined timeline, but says, "I strongly believe in working in clear outcomes from long-term perspectives and being honest with people about where we're going and then letting them figure that out themselves, because they'll have better context."

We know what the end state offers

The cross-group reaction to the decision has been "mixed" considering there are probably two-three years of migration ahead of most teams; but having a firm and fast decision made on the future has been motivating.

"Now we've communicated that the Photobox app will be the futureproof app, that starts to unlock a subset of services and other aspects that we've worked on that will continue to form part of that future platform... People are starting to look at interesting problems and problems that have clarity around how they would move forward, because we know what the end state offers. And once you start getting people together to work on problems, they tend to get bit more excited than they are with the sort of unknown state, which is what we wanted to avoid."

Making fast decisions on IT systems was an important part of Jensen's role in the merger. He admits he dislikes "unknowns and lack of clarity...because then you're not able to empower people to make good decisions lower down the organisation." That means everything has to come up through the business and the senior leadership spend their time on operational tasks, not strategic ones. If that carries on for long, it's a difficult cycle to break.

Coming to a quick decision around systems had another benefit: It helped albelli Photobox prepare for its peak period in November and December, when the photo printing market makes most of its money. And on top of that peak, Jensen's team is "knee-deep" in managing systems for posterXXL, which are approaching end-of-life.

"That's the transformative OKR that we'll be aligning to deliver in the next 12 months. We're still debating what comes next with regards to that."

"That" will probably be the continued merging of multiple systems and cultures. As well as Photobox, Hofmann and posterXXL on a single platform journey, the new merged entity is also looking to bring in other brands: albelli, monAlbumPhoto, Bonusprint and Onskefoto.

It's a lot of work, but it promises to be rewarding. As Jensen puts it:

"To try and bring the people together, as well as the platforms, the processes and the technology... There are lots of different opportunities to learn and progress."