Real partnership, that's what we were looking for

When it was time for a new, future-proof IT infrastructure, De Baak wasn't just looking for any IT developer. "Real partnership, that's what we were looking for," emphasizes Alet Jentink, commercial manager at the training institute. "Because if you really want to achieve something, you need to be able to work together," adds IT director Maurice Ummels. "That a party is accessible and that you build on a good foundation together is very important to us."

Intensive search

"De Baak is a training institute that helps people grow in the area of personal leadership. We want to contribute to a better world. And we've been doing that for over 75 years. We are very people-oriented, very relationship-oriented, which is why we also place great value on a sustainable relationship with suppliers," Alet explains. "A few years ago, we started looking for a party that could support us in implementing new applications. Previously, our financial accounting and project administration were in one system, which we wanted to separate. We wanted to move towards a course management system that tracks every step participants go through. The registration, the agreements with trainers, the overnight stays at De Baak, information that needs to be provided, and so on. It all had to fit into one system. It was quite an intensive search, but it can be done with Microsoft Dynamics."

IT expertise in the education sector

Ultimately, De Baak chose the Groningen branch of Axelio, which was still called Bend at the time. "A party that thinks along with you and has expertise in the education sector," Alet explains the choice. "Moreover, they are service-oriented. They do what they say and are very realistic, very down-to-earth. We can count on their full attention and we speak the same language. That makes working together very pleasant."

Towards minimal customization

What stands out is that De Baak needed less customization in IT than in the past. Maurice explains why: "The application we had was based on custom development. At one point, we could no longer automate further on it." "When we wanted to upgrade, we immediately had an issue because the application did not communicate well with other systems. We wanted to get away from that," says Alet. Maurice adds: "Axelio provided a practical and future-proof IT infrastructure with Microsoft Dynamics that we can build on in the coming years. The customization we have now is minimal. This makes us much more flexible in all integrations and connections."

At home in Microsoft Dynamics

That Axelio specializes in Microsoft Dynamics is a great advantage for De Baak. "In recent years, we could heavily rely on the knowledge that Axelio has of Dynamics and configuration. Whenever we encountered an issue, they always knew a solution. Besides that, Microsoft Dynamics is a great platform that integrates well with the cloud computing platform Azure and various other Microsoft products."

Developing iteratively together

Due to evolving insights, the migration of De Baak to Microsoft Dynamics grew into a significant project. However, this was never a problem for Axelio. Maurice: "If they say they will deliver something within three weeks, they do it. The Groningen branch is a close-knit, yet qualitative, consistent party that can handle such processes because they have enough capacity available. We work weekly with them on our sprint boards to iteratively develop our software, and that runs very smoothly."

Immediate response to problems

As with any migration to new applications, there were certainly hurdles to overcome.

"No matter how well we had thought everything through together, it turned out that some things were missing at one point," Maurice admitted. "But then Axelio immediately responds to that." Alet adds: "At crucial moments, there were always physical people from Axelio present. Even when we decided to start testing the new systems during the summer period. This allowed us to make a lot of progress in a short time and tackle the last teething problems directly."

Getting started with Power BI

That the then Bend has been under the wings of Axelio since 2023 has proven to be only beneficial for De Baak. "This allows us to easily make use of other IT expertise from Axelio," says Alet. And that came in handy. "In addition to the migration to Microsoft Dynamics, we also wanted to better utilize our data. For that, we started working with Power BI, together with iqbs, now also part of Axelio." Maurice: "They know the systems, they know the backend, and they are used to communicating with people from Axelio, which made the collaboration smooth from day one."