Client in Focus: ROC Zadkine

Text: Joop Bindels

 

 

The Rotterdam-based learning institute, Zadkine, offers a range of vocational training, including IT courses to train students to become application developers, IT managers and online investigators. The institute offers these courses through the School of Excellence, which is intended for students who want to further their education or who choose for a career in the business world.

 

Zadkine has been using TOPdesk for educational purposes for a number of years now. More recently, the organization has been using the application for external purposes in collaboration with HumanIC, a Rotterdam-based foundation, which devotes itself to supporting and training tenants’ leagues, residents’ associations and small and medium-sized companies in the area of IT.

 

The aim of their collaboration is to use their knowledge and skills to encourage smaller organizations and companies in the less fortunate areas of Rotterdam to start using IT, as Chris van Rooij from HumanIC explains. "With HumanIC’s help, Zadkine intends to set up a shared service centre for companies and organizations that cannot afford to finance their own IT support." TOPdesk turned out to be the ideal means. "I kept coming across it at shows and it seems that even some of the interns were using TOPdesk to familiarize themselves with the service management sector. We didn’t choose TOPdesk for this reason alone, but also because it guarantees quality at a reasonable price – it’s exactly what we were looking for."

 

Quickdesk

The project is currently in the implementation phase. As part of their graduation project, several IT students have set up TOPdesk to support local organizations as well as small and medium-sized companies. At a later stage, the IT students will also look after the support.

 

"TOPdesk has been renamend ‘quickdesk’ to suit the occasion"


Zadkine is already using the software to manage various classrooms and support the digital learning environment, which has been renamed ‘Quickdesk’ to suit the occasion. In the meantime, Zadkine and HumanIC have been looking for clients that do not yet use IT facilities and that Quickdesk could help support in the future. A number of non-commercial organizations have already shown interest, including schools, residents’ associations, cultural organizations and senior citizens’ associations. From time to time, the students also drop by the various senior citizens centres, as part of the so-called ‘Gold for old’ project, to demonstrate the possibilities of IT and help them become ‘digitally wiser’ as Peter Criellaard, from Zadkine explains.

 

  

"By offering IT support to people in these neighbourhoods, we’re essentially helping them out of isolation; at the same time, we’re offering students an authentic environment in which to learn." When we go live with Quickdesk, we expect to have around 20 premium clients. This will mark the completion of the implementation and the students themselves will begin offering support to the various organizations and companies. By doing this in the SaaS environment at Zadkine, they will not be dependent on one classroom in particular. Clients will also be able to use the Self Service Desk to log their problems and requests themselves.

  

Generating enthusiasm

 

Zadkine’s emphasis on the practical side of learning certainly hasn’t done any harm, as Peter explains. "Learning institutes need to stimulate personal development. Giving students the room to experiment will teach them the reality of the shop floor a lot better and the learning environment will become a lot richer as a result. We are also seeing that all of the students involved are becoming very enthusiastic, arousing the curiosity of their fellow students and other teachers."

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