Partner in the spotlight: Xpirit
For our first chat after the summer with one of our partner, we had the pleasure to meet Annemie Vandenberghe of Xpirit.
Can you introduce yourself and what's your role at Xpirit?
I started working @Xpirit Belgium this year, the 1st of April (no joke) and I did so for several good reasons.
1st of all, as the growth of Xpirit BE was accelerating, they felt the need to onboard their 1st non-billable FTE to support this growth. For me this was an interesting opportunity, because the role I can fulfil is a combination of what I most like to do: service our external clients (business development - account management) and service our internal clients (Human Resources Coordination).
I didn't hesitate because I go way back with the founders of Xpirit BE, Pieter Gheysens and Gill Cleeren. When I started my career at Compuware in 2000 (HR role), I got to know Pieter who started his career as a .NET consultant. I gradually became involved in the Microsoft community (getting to know Gill) and got carried away by their enthousiasm, resulting actually in the foundation of the Visug in 2005. The rest is history;p
Secondly, what hits me the most in my first 6 months at Xpirit, is the fact that they feel strongly about their people 1st strategy. Those are not just words. It's not only about making profit, it's about us, growing our expertise together, building Xpirit whilst embracing our values.
Can you tell us a bit more about Xpirit?
Xpirit (as part of Xebia ) offers high-level consultancy to its clients. Our consultants share the same passion: helping clients to innovate and to stay ahead of competition using Microsoft Technology: DevOps, Azure Cloud and cloud native software development.
In everything we do as a company towards our people and towards our clients, we don't go for the 2nd best option.
We constantly seek to onboard new talent being the authority in their field or having the potential to become an authority. We invest a lot in our people, not only focussed on their technical skills, but also in terms of their personal growth. This leads to the fact that we can service our clients in what they need and not only in what they ask from us, which is highly valued.
Xpirit is a new sponsor since the beginning of this year. Why do you sponsor?
Actually I think it's a no-brainer for Xpirit to sponsor Visug. As one of our core values is "knowledge sharing" and "quality without compromise", we are constantly seeking for the most appropriate platforms and formulas to become the best in our field. By doing so we keep on driving innovation and deliver more value to our clients.
This is crucial in this rapid changing world because we see that companies embrace the digital transformation to innovate at speed and to stay ahead of the competition. Therefor we must continue to support initiatives like Visug.
What other values do you think that Visug (or the community in general) has?
Visug is all about people: it's about connecting in a respectful way.
Peers are given a platform to share their passion and their knowledge: we learn from each other, we support and inspire one another, we discover what we are good at.
And it's beautiful to see what wonderful things can come out of this: we can embrace what we are good at, we are helped to shine which leads to new initiatives but also to lasting friendships.
What is for you an ideal Visug event?
That's an easy one given the long period of online events. We all look forward to meet again in person and have interactive sessions where we can challenge each other and ourselves. And not only from a technical point of view to stay ahead, but most of all because as humans social interaction is important for our mental health and essential to every aspect of our health. So hopefully we'll meet again soon:)
Thank you for your time, Annemie!