“What really makes the difference for me is the short line between users and the Gfacility team.”
Roelant Schalkers, functional application manager, municipality of ’s-Hertogenbosch
How the municipality of ’s-Hertogenbosch brought four helpdesks together on one platform was told by CIO Mathieu Rutte in our earlier customer case. This is the story of the person who configures and manages that platform every day: functional application manager Roelant Schalkers. Roelant has worked with Gfacility since 2023 and wrote about the experience in a public review on Capterra. The quotes in this article come from that review, apart from the one about automations, which Roelant gave us separately. All quotes are translated from Dutch.
At a glance
| Customer | Municipality of ’s-Hertogenbosch |
| Sector | Public sector, the Netherlands |
| Speaking | Roelant Schalkers, functional application manager |
| Working with Gfacility | Since 2023 |
| Domains | IT Service Management, Facility Management |
| Users served | 3,000+ |
The role: between the organisation and the system
A functional application manager translates how an organisation works into how the system is configured. The role gathers what users need, decides which processes and forms get built, and is the point of contact with the vendor. It is exactly in that seat that you find out quickly whether a vendor listens or only sells.
“The steps taken fit well with the needs I have experienced as a functional application manager. Functionality I used to miss has since been added, making the platform ever more powerful and complete.”
The start: lots of freedom, little fixed structure
Roelant is honest about where it chafed. Gfacility started out as a very flexible platform, and flexibility has a flip side for whoever has to lay the foundations.
“The first versions of Gfacility were strongly focused on flexibility. That offered many possibilities, but it sometimes made it harder for administrators to put a clear structure in place as the basis for standard business processes. The platform’s continued development has brought a positive change here, with more functionality and more ways to set up processes in a structured way.”
That is exactly the tension every functional application manager works with: enough freedom to follow your own processes, enough structure to keep them manageable.
Feedback that comes back in the release
What Roelant values most is what happens to feedback. Requests don’t disappear into an ideas portal; they come back in the product.
“The collaboration between sales, product specialists and development is strong. Suggestions from users are taken seriously and regularly show up in the very next release.”
And on what sets the collaboration apart:
“What really makes the difference for me is the short line between users and the Gfacility team. Suggested improvements are taken seriously and combined with a clear vision of the future. The result is a collaboration in which you notice that feedback genuinely contributes to the further development of the product.”
What it delivers
For Roelant it ultimately comes down to room to let the municipality work the way it works, without administration getting out of hand.
“The most recent release of Gfacility makes me, as a functional application manager, very enthusiastic. The possibilities are versatile, and the new functionality and modules give organisations a lot of freedom to configure the platform in a way that suits their own processes and way of working.”
Asked which new feature Roelant is happiest with, the answer is automations.
“The new Automation module gives me far more control over processes that could previously only be set up through Gfacility support. From automatically creating tickets with email as the source to extensive ‘if this, then that’ functionality on every field in every module. The possibilities are enormous.”
An automation rule listens for a change to a record, such as a new ticket, an incoming email or a status change, and then carries out one or more actions by itself. For a functional application manager, that means you agree how a process runs once, write it down as a rule, and from then on it happens the same way every time.
“In short, Gfacility is a future-proof product that keeps evolving and helps organisations keep a grip on their processes, services and collaboration across the chain.”
Configure it yourself, without custom development
That Roelant can configure the platform without us is a deliberate choice by Gfacility. A functional application manager sets up forms, workflows, statuses, permissions, the service catalogue and automations in the admin environment, without code and without needing a consultant from us. Custom development makes you dependent on the vendor and more expensive with every later change. So what the standard product cannot do, we say up front, instead of quoting it as custom work.
What you can take from this
If you are choosing a platform for IT or facility services, don’t only look at what it can do today. Also ask how administrators’ feedback reaches the product, how often releases ship and who you get on the line when something is missing.
See it for yourself
Gfacility unifies IT, facility and workplace service management on one AI-native platform, the same platform Roelant configures every day for the municipality of ’s-Hertogenbosch. Read more about Gfacility for government, or get in touch and we’ll show you how your processes fit.
Frequently asked questions
What happens to feedback from functional application managers?+
According to Roelant, suggestions from users are taken seriously and regularly show up in the very next release. Roelant names the short line between users and the Gfacility team, from sales and product specialists to development, as the biggest difference.
Isn't Gfacility too flexible to set up standard processes?+
Roelant is candid about this. The first versions focused strongly on flexibility, which sometimes made it harder for administrators to put a clear base structure in place. Continued development has added functionality and more ways to set up processes in a structured way.
Which new feature is Roelant happiest with?+
Automations. According to Roelant, the module gives far more control over processes that could previously only be set up through Gfacility support, from automatically creating tickets from incoming email to 'if this, then that' rules on every field in every module.