Redactie Xafax
Landstede Group is one of the largest educational institutions in the Netherlands and is mainly represented in the east of the country with 49 locations. At these locations, Landstede Group provides valuable and personal education for vocational and secondary education students. In total there are more than twenty-five thousand.
Jacco Heikoop heads the IT department of Landstede Group. Since his arrival five years ago, Jacco has been assisted by Bert Vink and Michiel Brederode from Xafax. Below we will discuss this collaboration with Jacco.
“I wasn't there at the very beginning, but I think I was there for a long time. I think we go back more than 25 years, back then with magnetic cards. At the time, the entire printing process was still handled through the facilities department via two colleagues.”
Bert Vink still remembers what Xafax's services at Landstede Groep looked like at the time:
“Landstede Group had magnetic cards for copying at all locations and they had the P-station for printing. That was just a computer that anyone could print to. That was as unsafe as it gets, because anyone could print out and read any print job sent there. But at the time it met the demand that was there. Those were different times.”
After that period, there was a time when Landstede Group did business with another organization in the field of printing and payment systems. From 2013 onwards, the business relationship between Xafax and Landstede Group was revived: “This was mainly because the
“The relationship is just very good. Michiel Brederode, our contact person from Xafax, is simply a great guy. We always have good contact with each other and we understand what we want from each other.”
“The last course we did together was Vechtdal College. That was a migration and transition process, because they were new to Landstede Group and had a different IT environment. We converted this to the Xafax environment. These are important processes that are going very well.”
Bert Vink adds: “We discussed Vechtdal College together and quickly decided to move the system to the Cloud. We would first do a pilot phase of forty days, so that the council could see if we liked it. If not, we would put everything back for free. The latter was never an issue, because the system immediately ran like a charm. This transition to the Cloud provides peace of mind and means that organizations spend much less time on their own management.”
"Of course. The system runs stable and the Cloud solution ensures that our administrator has much less IT work at that location. Our team is quite small. The goal is not to deprive people of their tasks, but their work does change. We started with an IT team of 38 people and are now at 23. This is because we are increasingly being relieved of our regular management by professionals such as Xafax. We have around thirty thousand active users on the network every day.”
“As an organization we have a vision in the field of professionalization of the department and services. Xafax contributes to this by achieving the stability that we ask and expect from them. I sometimes say that success comes on foot and goes on horseback and that is true.”
“Xafax is a very accessible organization. You never have to ask the same question twice. Our regular management is well organised, but there are of course always exceptions that you encounter. Then you want to be able to present this to a partner with expertise, who can look at it. Then you don't want to get the idea that your own level of knowledge is higher than that of your partner or supplier. That is not the case with Xafax. People understand what you are talking about, are involved and look for solutions . That's just really nice. I am very satisfied with the service. ”
“In the future, we want to standardize the printing environment in terms of management. We want to have even fewer management costs. Our printing environment is currently set up with Equitrack and fitting systems. That is quite complex and we still do it all on self-hosted machines. We now want all of that managed via the Cloud by Xafax.”
“We now also do payment terminals with Xafax. We also want to further standardize this. In addition to printing, we are also moving more towards payment transactions.”
“I don't easily give a very high score, but based on my experience with Xafax in the field of accessibility, reachability and knowledge, I would seriously go for an 8.5. There is almost never anything and if there is, we can always contact Xafax.”
