Arjen de Vries

As a.i. Product Owner, Arjen has set up and managed a team within Port of Amsterdam that works in an agile scrum manner on digital product development. That worked out very well. Arjen has a very good knowledge of the digital domain (both the business and the technical side), can switch well at all levels and ‘delivers". With his seniority, accessible personality, result-oriented approach in combination with his good organizational sensitivity, Arjen has been able to connect colleagues from different disciplines within PoA and to take the organization into change / digital transition.

Arjen is an outstanding leader in the digital space. He has a hands-on attitude in everything he does and knows marketing, digital and strategy inside and out. He's generous with sharing his expertise in digital analytics with others and made an immediate impact through the organisation. During the 18 months of his leadership, he transferred a wealth of digital marketing, business analytics, and management experience along with developing the digital capabilities of our global marketing team 150+. Overall, I would say Arjen changed the game of digital marketing from support management to making profitable investments through martech.

I am very pleased with the collaboration with Arjen. He has set up a team consisting of a wide variety of personalities and levels within Port of Amsterdam and was able to make them work in an agile manner. He has succeeded in delivering concrete digital products and implementing improvements and has also set out a roadmap that sets out our digital ambition for the coming year. I experienced Arjen as someone who is straightforward, tenacious, driven, very flexible, amiable and as someone who stands for his people.

Arjen de Vries is a very skilled and experienced (Digital) Marketer with a wealth of agile and lean development and delivery experience. Arjen particularly excelled in his role as Global Digital Customer Experience Lead for AkzoNobel’s professional global brand initiatives (website, app). Arjen has impressive stakeholder-management, effortless management and direction of multidisciplinary teams and tie ability to set and deliver digital, content and activation strategies at global and individual country level. Arjen has prime position in my rolodex as THE go to all-round digital professional heavyweight.

Arjen is able to master new material quickly. In addition to being a sharp thinker, he is also a practical doer. Special interest in and knowledge of data-driven work and the digital elements of the marketing mix. He acts fact-based and also makes practical recommendations if the available information is incomplete. The contribution that Arjen has made has been very valuable and has been widely appreciated.

Arjen is a pleasant and knowledgeable person to work with. Based on analyzes and facts for our proposition, he has outlined a concrete improvement plan with emphasis on all digital possibilities that we can make better use of. This is very valuable for us and we can work well with it.

'After having a good experience working with Arjen de Vries at VNU Media I recruited him to set up the ‘Creative Studio’ of Layar. Arjen is a very customer focussed and result driven professional. He has a nice (and rare) mix of creativity and planning. He is able to not only come up with solutions for customers but also able to sell these solutions and make sure the execution is done in the right way (within budget, time and delivering the results).'

Arjen understands ‘digital’ like no other and can easily maneuver between 'the business' on the one hand and technology on the other. He has a broad network, is commercially minded and is a creative inventive thinker who is always looking for the best solution for customers and end users. Due to broad background, experience and social competencies, able to switch easily at various levels. A positive person with whom it is pleasant to work together.