Case Studies

De bedrijfsleider en marketing director van twee succesvolle Nederlandse ICT consultancy bedrijven aan het woord: Peak-IT en Ultimum.

Peak IT is an Amsterdam based IT consultancy with 500 IT Specialists. Peak IT is a Microsoft Gold Partner. We have offices in The Netherlands, Sweden and Finland. For more information, please visit http://www.peak-it.nl.

As a company policy, we require all our new staff to get Microsoft certified before they start doing projects for customers.

A Microsoft certification provides us following benefits :

1. Our IT specialists acquire holistic knowledge of Microsoft technology and also the ability and confidence to apply the knowledge.
2. It gives us confidence about the competence of our IT specialists before we deploy them at a customer site.
3. The certification proves to our customers that our personnel are competent to work on Microsoft technologies.

Recruiting skilled and certified IT specialists in Netherlands is a challenge and is also the reason why we are in business. We solve this problem by developing an effective recruitment process combined with a training mechanism to upskill new recruits to technologies demanded by our client.

We prefer Microsoft Official Training and searched in Holland and beyond for a suitable partner. Cost was important and it was also important that there is flexibility to start training as soon as a new recruit joins.

Then we discovered Koenig. Koenig offered a combination of convenience, flexibility and cost effectiveness which was very attractive. Koenig offered boot camps in Himalayas for all the certifications that we want our people to acquire – MCTS and MCPD primarily. Also the boot camps were longer than those available in Europe, thus enabling our people to learn more in depth.

The training started every month so we could send our new recruits immediately after they joined. Koenig offered one-on-one training which is very useful when a recruit needs to fill just a few gaps in his knowledge and wants the training to fit his schedule (and not vice versa).

Even after paying for the flight to India, we saved a full 50% over alternate solutions available in Europe.

At Koenig, we have been able to get our IT specialists trained using Microsoft Official Curriculum which teaches the technology in a holistic manner and provides clear and concise examples. After acquiring the training and certification we saw a 66% reduction in bench time of the new recruits before their first assignment. We also saw a 8% increase in our billing rate and a 20% increase in contract extensions for certified recruits versus the non certified ones.

The training solution from Koenig is a significant reason for our 100% growth year-on-year.

Mr Guido Vervelde
Founder and Director
PEAK-IT
De Entree 236A
1101 EE Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel.: 020 452 5210
Fax: 035 694 4363

In the Netherlands, Ultimum is a reputed company for employment of high qualified senior IT - professionals at multinational companies and governmental institutes. There are more than 80 professionals working for Ultimum, in the areas of Microsoft, Cisco and Unix/Linux. Within these specializations is a hard focus on security. Ultimum is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and ISO9001:2000 certified. Ultimum is also known as the biggest RedHat Business Partner in the Benelux area ( Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg ). Next to temporary employment, Ultimum can take complete projects out of hands and offers recruitment services. Ultimum distinguishes from other employment companies with reliable services of high quality in a personal way. To our clients as well as to our personnel. For more information please visit http://www.ultimum.nl.

All IT specialists who work at Ultimum at least have certifications of a high advanced level in the operating platform they are working with. Therefore people who start working at Ultimum are send to a training first, before set to work, to get certified on the high level of quality Ultimum stands for.

We prefer training at a Microsoft CPLS which ensures high quality Microsoft Official Curriculum and very competent Microsoft Certified Trainers. Success rate of class room is above 90% as compared to other methods to learn such as online training (only 20%).

Since a couple of years Ultimum sends its professionals for training and exams to Koenig. Koenig is a valuable help to Ultimum for getting certifications. Professionals do a special knowledge test before they go on a boot camp in India. With the knowledge test, Koenig decides which education program suits best for the professional. There is also a high variety of certifications. Most certification boot camps our professionals went to, are MCSE 2003, CCNP, CCIE written, RHCE, Citrix and Checkpoint. Multiple certifications can be done in one personalized education program and that's one of the biggest benefits Koenig offers.

For our professionals it is a nice abroad experience to go on a education boot camp from Holland to India. Ultimum is happy to do business with Koenig for its clear agreements, well prized personalized boot camps and high rate of accomplished exams. For temporary employment at our clients we can't rely on only experienced professionals. The right certifications do matter.

Over-all employee satisfaction rating has increased by 4% ever since we started providing class room training using the solution provided by Koenig. Our customers also report a higher level of competence (an increase of 11% in the feedback) as compared online training which we employed earlier.

Mr Diederik Rademaker
Marketing Director
Ultimum B.V.
Binderij 2
1321 EH Almere, Netherlands
Tel : 036-54 62 590
Fax: 036-53 64 930