How Jeroen Wanten and his team are advancing data maturity at Renewi 

Jeroen is married, and a father of three. In his spare time, he enjoys road cycling and has a passion for collecting Lego. Professionally, he serves as a data manager at Renewi—a role in which he helps the organisation become more data-driven, not just strategically, but also technologically and organisationally.  

A future-ready data organisation built on four pillars 

• Data platform  
• Governance & master data management
• BI service
• Data science & AI 

These four divisions form the foundation upon which Renewi is building its digital future. 

From traditional IT to a digital and data-driven future 

The shift from classic IT to a broader digital & data approach is essential for Renewi to be future-ready. Here, ‘digital’ isn’t just a label but represents a more comprehensive vision than traditional IT. Renewi aims to evolve into a service partner for the business providing support and acting as a partner for all digital challenges and needs.  

This transformation is crucial for enabling Renewi to become truly data-driven. A standardised approach to platforms and data models also simplifies integration processes across the organisation.  

Challenges and success factors in data transformation 
Jeroen sees the main challenges in maintaining focus and scope within data projects. While many things are technically possible, success lies in making the right choices, aligning all available capacity and skills toward a common goal, and finding the right people to contribute to the success of the new data organisation people Renewi can continue to rely on in the future.  

Laying a strong foundation is key: trustworthy data, clear definitions, and a shared understanding of data products and their characteristics. Only then can data effectively guide strategic decision-making not just based on historical information, but also through predictive analytics and insights that help prepare for what’s ahead.  

Agile collaboration and steady growth 
The data organisation operates using an agile approach, which helps quickly map dependencies. This way, the team knows which other departments to collaborate with to deliver functionality or where the data team needs to provide input. By standardising processes, the organisation also creates room for other teams to work more independently in the future, for example through a service catalog.  

When it comes to team development, Renewi combines ambition with realism. The first phase focuses on building a strong foundation, supported by people with the right expertise and experience. Later, the team can be expanded with high-potential and junior colleagues, ensuring complementary collaboration.  

Key projects pushing data maturity forward 

Jeroen is enthusiastic about several ongoing projects. These include increasing data maturity and the reliability of available data, automating releases with built-in testing and validation, and most notably the digital core project. This initiative links a standardised data model to a renewed ERP system that will be rolled out widely across the organisation.  

Mapping out the customer journey based on reliable data is another important step. Lastly, Jeroen is looking forward to seeing how Renewi can responsibly, ethically, and sustainably integrate AI within the organisation.