This year marks a special milestone for Be Informed as we celebrate our 20th anniversary. We’re celebrating how far we’ve come while reflecting on the experiences, ideas and people that shaped Be Informed along the way.
To celebrate our 20 years, we sat down with colleagues who joined Be Informed early in its journey. In this first conversation, our Chief Solutions Officer, Ronald Heller, shared his perspective on how customer needs have evolved, what has changed over the past two decades, and why The Digital Regulatory Twin, trusted regulatory knowledge and AI are creating new opportunities for our customers.
1. How have customer expectations changed over the past 20 years, and how has Be Informed adapted?
Twenty years ago, customers mainly wanted automation. The goal was relatively simple: automate decisions, automate processes and reduce manual work.
Workflow engines were everywhere, case management was just emerging, and business rules gave organizations a much easier way to adapt than changing application code.
I spent a lot of time building rule-based applications during that period. They started as form-driven solutions and gradually evolved into service-oriented architectures with reusable services. It was an exciting time because businesses began to realize that they could change a rule instead of having to rewrite software.
Today, customers expect something very different.
They don’t just want an application. Instead, they want an end-to-end solution. They also want to understand how legislation becomes policy, how that policy drives operations, and how they can explain and audit every resulting decision.
That’s exactly how Be Informed evolved.
We’ve moved beyond automating individual decisions to creating Digital Regulatory Twins that connect legislation, business design and operational execution within one model.
That traceability, from regulation all the way through to the operational application, is becoming essential, particularly for organisations operating in highly regulated environments.
“Some of my best memories come from our 5- and 15-Day Challenges: intense teamwork, late nights, plenty of laughter, and the excitement of turning customer problems into working solutions.” – Ronald Heller
2. What makes Be Informed different when working with customers on complex business challenges?
Regulations are constantly changing. They involve many different stakeholders and demand a high degree of transparency.
That means we don’t begin by thinking about implementation. We first work with customers to understand the legislation, the business intent behind it and the operational reality in which it has to work.
What makes Be Informed different is that we don’t separate legal interpretation, business analysis, and implementation. They are simply different views of the same model.
That distinction is important.
Instead of having separate interpretations living in legal documents, policy documents, process descriptions and software code, customers can work from a single source of truth.
And because they are updating knowledge rather than rewriting software, they can respond to regulatory change much faster.
For me, that is one of the most important ideas behind the Digital Regulatory Twin: connecting regulation and execution while preserving the reasoning and traceability between them.
3. Can you share a customer success story that demonstrates the value of this approach?
Rather than pointing to one specific customer, I’d describe a pattern I’ve seen many times over the years.
Organizations often come to us with one particular challenge. They may want to automate a licensing process, improve a benefits application or manage a complex compliance decision.
Initially, the focus is understandably on solving that immediate problem.
But then they begin to see that the same regulatory model can do much more.
It can support policy analysis, explain operational decisions, and demonstrate compliance. And when regulations change, it can make understanding and implementing those changes significantly easier.
At that point, the conversation changes.
What began as a solution for one process can become a foundation that other departments and use cases can build upon.
That’s where I see the real value: greater consistency, lower maintenance, faster adaptation to change and much more confidence when regulations inevitably evolve.
4. What opportunities do you see for helping customers succeed in the years ahead?
The biggest opportunity is helping organizations deal with growing regulatory complexity.
AI will undoubtedly be an important part of that, but AI on its own isn’t enough.
Organizations need AI they can trust. And trust requires transparency, governance and explainability, particularly when organizations use technology to interpret regulations or support decisions that affect businesses and people.
We’re taking Be Informed in that direction.
AI becomes another capability within the platform, helping with legal analysis, modelling and regulatory interpretation while keeping results traceable back to their source.
I think that’s where the future lies: combining trusted regulatory knowledge with AI.
The question customers ask won’t simply be:
“Can AI answer this?”
They will increasingly want to know:
“Can it show me why this answer is correct? Which regulation is it based on? And what happens when that regulation changes?”
Being able to answer those questions is critical.
And in many ways, it reflects Be Informed’s 20 year journey: from rule-based automation to Digital Regulatory Twins that connect law directly to execution.
“My most memorable project at Be Informed remains the IND (Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service). I spent several years there helping build a completely new knowledge architecture in a complex domain, together with a great team. Even today, I still refer to ideas and patterns we developed during that project, and I made lasting friendships along the way.” – Ronald Heller
Looking back at 20 years of Be Informed
Technology has changed enormously over the past two decades, and so have the challenges our customers are trying to solve.
What began with automating individual rules and processes has developed into something much broader: helping organizations understand complex regulation, translate it into operational knowledge, and maintain a traceable connection between regulatory intent and execution.
Yet the purpose behind that work remains remarkably consistent.
As Ronald puts it:
“Twenty years ago, we helped customers automate decisions. Today, we help them understand, govern and execute regulation across their entire organization. The technology has evolved enormously, but our mission hasn’t changed: making complexity manageable.”
As Be Informed celebrates 20 years, we continue that mission. Digital Regulatory Twins, trusted regulatory knowledge, and a new generation of AI capabilities help us achieve it. Today, explainability and traceability matter more than ever.
