Velde and identity management.

Recruitment and selection is human work. The ambitions of a client and a professional are central to everything Velde does. The better they complement each other, the more successful the working relationship is and the more results it produces for both: Start with the end in mind. Velde has thirty workspaces spread out over different locations across Europe. With an office in The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France and United Kingdom.

Switching to Mac.

Using Mac within an organisation has several benefits. For example, you save money thanks to a high resale value and low support costs, higher employee satisfaction because they can work with the device of their choice, and there is better security thanks to great options for device management. Those were enough reasons for Velde to switch to Mac.

To make the switch to Mac possible, we first took a close look at Velde's IT landscape. Of course, switching systems involves more than just purchasing new hardware. You also want to know whether certain software will continue to work and which follow-up steps should be taken.

Safe, organised and always available.

Because Velde has locations in different countries, we have advised to use cloud services. Cloud services make collaborating easy. Files, programs and passwords are immediately available to all team members, wherever in the world they may be. We advised Velde to use the following cloud services: Dropbox Business, Okta and Microsoft Office 365.

An organised work environment.

Dropbox enables you to save all files to one location. They are easy to find and are securely synchronised to all devices. Dropbox was designed for collaboration. All team members in all locations have access to the same database and in combination with Microsoft Office 365, you can work on Excel- or Word files with your colleagues at the same time. Changes are saved automatically and you can see your colleague’s changes in real-time. Because Velde uses Dropbox, their database gained structure. Unlike before, everyone has access to the most recent version without having to request it from a colleague first.

Log in once to access several cloud services.

We advised Velde to use Okta Identity Management to access the different cloud applications. With Okta, users can easily log in to the various websites and applications that are used via one platform. New users are created in the Okta Universal Directory and rights are assigned per application. For example, Velde users can log in to the applications that are used every day in a controlled and secure manner. Okta Single Sign-On (SSO) enables users to use one single username and password to access several cloud services. If required, additional security can be added with the use of multi-factor authentication. This authentication for different applications is realised using the SAML 2.0 protocol.

Safe device management.

Besides protecting software and access to files, it’s also necessary to protect hardware by using Mobile Device Management. This gives you control over the devices, from the enrollment to when they are returned. You can enroll several new devices at the same time, without having to physically touch them. All the team members have to do is take it out of the box and turn it on, and the installation will begin automatically. If a MacBook or iPhone is stolen, Mobile Device Management enables you to reset its password and lock or wipe the device. This ensures that the data is safe. We manage the devices for Velde using Jamf Pro and ensure they always have the most recent software and latest security updates.

Help when needed.

We provide patch management for Velde, which consists of weekly updates for application software. In this way we can fix possible bugs in the software. In addition, we have developed notifications that inform the user that there are updates for macOS.

System engineer Thijs helps Velde employees with support as soon as necessary or when there are other challenges.“Fortunately that's not often, although I like to help them. They are fun, enthusiastic people and easy going. Everyone is extremely flexible and everything is possible in consultation. For example, if the internet connection has to be switched off during a project, that's no problem.”

Saving costs, no more searching and always the most recent version.

We modernised and updated Velde’s IT environment. Thanks to the use of Mac, Velde’s employees are more positive about their employer and they require less support. Together with a high resale value, this cuts considerable costs. The switch to cloud services has made the team members more productive and they lose less time searching the database for documents or login details. These are always available immediately, wherever a person may be.

“When we approached Pro Warehouse to switch to Mac, we also decided start using cloud services and to do everything online. It saves us money and there are no more issues with sharing files or figuring out who has the most recent version. No matter who I get on the phone at Pro Warehouse, you come across as relaxed and that makes working with you easy.” – Trudy, financial administrator and office manager.