Peter Vervloedt & Wout Vanduffel have been working at Spikes for several months. We were curious about their first impression and their already gained work experience at Spikes.
Hey Peter & Wout, you have been working at Spikes for a while, what was it like to start here?
Wout: I started at Spikes in June when everyone was still obliged to work from home. That made the onboarding different because many introductory meetings were organized online. This allows you to get to know your colleagues more slowly. Meanwhile, there are more regular people in the office, so I meet everyone little by little.
Peter: To me the start felt the same, luckily everything is now starting to run smoothly. I am very happy that we go back to the office every now and then and get to know people left and right.
What do your jobs entail?
Peter: I have a combined role, Business developer & Sales executive.
As a business developer I build value propositions based on the knowledge & skills we have of the latest technologies within the Microsoft Cloud-Native landscape. With these value propositions we design a standardized plan with which we go to the market and further expand our managed service offer.
In my role as a sales executive I am busy approaching customers with our application innovation. Based on this, we propose interesting offerings, based on best practices and proven methodologies.
Wout:
My role also consists of 2 parts.
On the one hand, I am a solution architect. This means that I design IT solutions for customers. I am going with Peter Vervloedt to translate the pain points of customers into something that can be implemented and that works.
On the other hand, I help Peter with business development. This by determining the technical approach and focus points for the managed services. Taking into account our in-house skills and value propositions.
The goal is to reduce innovation costs for our customers by using certain standardized blocks.
Why did you choose Spikes as an employer?
Wout: I myself come from a role in IT management and wanted to be more hands-on with technology again. At Spikes I have the opportunity to go deeper into certain domains, but still keep an overview of the different solutions that we can offer within Spikes.
Peter: In my previous jobs I have always worked with partners, but never with end customers. I would like to gain experience in this at Spikes. In addition, the appearance of the Spikes approach really appealed to me.
How does Spikes stand out for you?
Wout: For me, the quality of the employees stands out above all. There is a very good dynamic and if you ask someone something, you get something qualitative in return. I also get the opportunity to do new things. During my 3 months at Spikes I have already learned and researched a lot.
Peter: There is the opportunity to provide input outside of my role. Ideas are listened to and Spikes is open to a “fail fast-learn fast” approach.
What are you looking forward to in the future at Spikes?
Peter: Further expand the standardized managed services and transform our customers by innovating their application landscape.
Wout: Challenging projects within Spikes.
What do you get from working-life satisfaction and what do you want to achieve professionally in the future?
Peter: If we, from Spikes, strive to make customers innovate faster than their competitors, based on the principle that every company becomes a software company in the future. This by using our best practices and knowledge.
Wout: I get satisfaction from looking for effective solutions for the customer. I would also like to build up more expertise around Azure. I want to have worked with all the little Azure pieces and stuck to them.
