Ymar Frenken
I work at the intersection of business applications, process, and delivery.
I started as a developer and still like being close to the work. Most of what I do now is understanding the business problem, translating between teams, shaping the approach, and staying involved until the thing actually works.
What I do
I've spent the last ten years working with business applications and the teams that depend on them. CRM, Salesforce, marketing automation, customer journeys, portals, integrations, and the operating questions that decide whether those systems become useful.
Mostly I work with organisations where the process has outgrown the way it's currently managed, and the next step needs both business judgement and technical fluency.
How I work
I don't start with a tool recommendation. First I need to understand how the business actually works: where decisions get stuck, where teams lose context, which handoffs are informal, and which system is carrying more responsibility than anyone admits.
From there I help design something that fits how the organisation actually operates. Sometimes that means architecture and process design. Sometimes it means leading delivery, configuring systems, wiring automations, or helping teams make better decisions together.
Experience
Managing Consultant, BRITE
Leading Salesforce programs for B2B clients. Implementation of data integrations and marketing automation. Hilti, Accell among others.
Salesforce Team Lead, DEPT
Built and led the Salesforce practice in Amsterdam. Sales Cloud and Service Cloud implementations focused on unified customer data.
Solution Architect, VML
Marketing Cloud architecture and implementation for international brands. IKEA and JDE were the big ones. Multi-brand campaigns, customer journeys, complex data integrations.
CRM Team Lead, HolidayPirates
Led a CRM team across nine international markets from Berlin. Segmentation, nurture campaigns, platform decisions.
CRM Developer, Zalando
Email, data models, and integrations at enterprise scale. Where I first learned what real volume means.
Principles
Process before tooling
Most companies don't have a technology problem. They have a process problem dressed up as a technology problem.
Build, don't only describe
I still configure systems, wire automations, and stay close enough to delivery to know whether the idea works.
Discovery is the whole game
Talk to sales, marketing, operations, and the people doing the work. The stated problem is rarely the whole problem.
Use what already exists
The gap between what companies buy and what they actually use is enormous.
Small teams move
Fewer meetings, faster decisions, nowhere to hide. One person who builds and thinks is worth a team that only coordinates.
Visibility creates alignment
When teams can see the same work, the argument changes.
The constraint is often imagination
Most companies underestimate what's possible with what they already have.
Projects and experiments
Personal
- From the south of the Netherlands. Lived in Berlin and Haarlem before moving back south.
- Studied communication and multimedia design. Was into video and imaging, ended up writing code.
- Built WordPress sites as my first business, then found out I was better at fixing how companies work than building websites.
- Collector of electronic music . Progressive trance and deep house mostly. You can find me on Spotify.
- Member of the Round Table, raising money for local charity.
- Tinkering with home automation and electronics when the kids are asleep.
- Two kids, Breda.
Education and certifications
Communication and Multimedia Design at ZUYD Hogeschool in Maastricht. A semester at Northwest Missouri State University. Eight Salesforce certifications.