Herman Kok Email & Phone Number

I started as a software entrepreneur during my studies in the late 1980s. With his then company, I launched the first meeting room reservation system (a specific front-office software package) on the market. In my contacts with facility managers (who then had different titles), I was always surprised by the internal focus of facility departments with their strong focus on supply and costs and the almost 'denial' of the demand side, the users. This led me to give workshops and lectures on customer focus and demand coordination, which also resulted in the publication of the book 'Marketing van de facilitaire organisatie' in 1997. This was the very first marketing book of its kind dedicated to the facilities sector. In the 1990s and 2000s, I focused with my consultancy practice on strategy and management, mainly of internal facility departments. During that period I wrote three more books, 'Een concurrerend facilitair bedrijf' (1999), 'Marketing in maintenance' (2000) and 'Marketing voor facilitaire dienstverleners' (2005) as well as a book contribution to 'De facilitaire regieorganisatie in bedrijf' (2010), together with then colleagues of TwynstraGudde as co-authors.Curious about the influence of the use of facilities and services on the operating result, I started PhD research in 2010 at Wageningen University, where the special chair in Facilities Management was located at the time. In 2015 I obtained my PhD with a dissertation on 'The added value of facility management in Dutch higher education'. Following this, I started the research company Shign in 2016, focused on workplace experience and improvement and today's appropriate and future-proof ways of working. Intrigued by the forced rapid adoption of fully remote working during the Corona crisis and now hybrid working, I - after extensive research - discovered a pattern in previous and contemporary workplace transformations. By sharing this knowledge through dialogues, master classes and summits, I give participants strategic insights for developing progressive work and workplace strategies.