10 years of building brands Tergos

"Tergos was founded to meet the demand in IT infrastructure and cybersecurity. Our founders, Bernd & Daniel, saw the market demand as an opportunity to start a new brand that specialises purely in IT Infrastructure & Cybersecurity.

IT infrastructure includes all IT facilities needed to support organisations in business processes. Think finance, logistics, planning, reporting and communication. A high-quality IT infrastructure is essential, as it forms the basis for digital capabilities. A solid infrastructure significantly reduces the risk of major errors in business processes.

Since our inception, Tergos has built a strong reputation as a reliable IT staffing partner, and I would like to keep it that way."

Starting and building a new brand is a challenge. How did that come your way?

"Well, I didn't actually apply for the job myself. Mennold Leijerzapf approached me for this position. To be honest, at first I didn't think I was the right person for this because of my lack of experience. I had worked as a technical recruiter in the oil and gas industry for four years, so I knew nothing about the fast-changing world of IT recruitment, let alone how to position a brand or manage a team.

But Bernd and Daniel [Founders Vibe Group] dared to take the risk and offered me the job just as well. Together with Mennold and later Boudewijn, they provided me with everything I needed to make this challenge a success. My journey is actually a continuation of their vision to build a multinational company from a small office in Amsterdam, without external investors."

Building Tergos from scratch, how did you succeed?

"I started at Tergos in 2017 as a team manager, but still without consultants in my team. In the following months, the team slowly started to expand. Naturally, we were eager to achieve our first successes. For that, we first had to determine which IT expertise we were going to focus on with Tergos. I knew nothing about IT infrastructure myself, so I had to research that market. 

After much reading, I concluded that the market could be divided into Networks, Security and Cloud. Our team then approached specialists within those different disciplines and asked them how they would structure the market in different fields. Everything we heard in one conversation we verified in the next. Based on those frameworks, we defined three different subteams, each with its own focus area: Team Cybersecurity, Team Cloud & DevOps and Team Hosting & Connectivity.

A fourth subteam has since been added: Team Modern Workplace. Flexible and remote working is here to stay, creating security challenges for our customers. But most of them do not have the necessary expertise in-house. We help by providing temporary or permanent specialists."

What was your biggest challenge in the start-up phase?

"I had to decide which expertise I was going to specialise in and chose Cybersecurity. That appealed to me the most and it was a hot topic in every newspaper, which made me feel I would be most successful in it. I had cheered a little too early, as I encountered unexpected challenges.

The biggest challenge was dealing with the character of IT Security specialists, who are naturally quite suspicious because of their work. All day long, they are concerned with security and whether you are who you say you are. Then you probably understand that it takes much longer to build a relationship of trust with these specialists. To work as efficiently as possible, the goal became finding ways to connect directly with CISOs for a top-down approach, rather than working myself up the network.

So we created 'About Security', a blog site on Cyber Security that shines a positive light on the cybersecurity industry. Many stories about this industry were and are about the dangers in that field. We chose a different approach and decided to interview CISOs and specialists about what it is like to work in this field."

How has 'About Security' influenced Tergos' growth?

"The blog put Tergos on the map at an accelerated pace, as we published blogs we made with - for example - Schiphol's CIO. These interviews were shared on LinkedIn, with such a wide reach that when I called candidates, they usually already knew me. 

Initially, the situation arose where these CIOs knew me from the blogs, not as a recruiter. But when I then started asking a lot of technical questions, these professionals would wonder how it was that I myself had so much in-depth knowledge on the subject. This gave me the opportunity to tell them that I also did mediations for Cyber Security Specialists. You understand that everything starts rolling when Schiphol's CIO says, "Get in touch with our Lead Security Specialist, maybe you can do something for us."

Unfortunately, over time, the blog kind of bled to death. Maintaining it is very labour-intensive, and so far no one has taken up the baton. It would be nice if someone breathed new life into this knowledge platform, but it's just no longer top priority."

Can you tell us more about Tergos' top priority?

"Two words: Tergos Monopoly! We want Tergos to become such a household name in the market that any company, with any IT infrastructure application, will knock on our door first. There are practically no other parties with the same IT niche focus and specialist approach as us.

In recent years, we have built up a lot of knowledge about the various areas of expertise within IT infrastructure. This allows us to advise our relations well and to quickly familiarise new Tergos team members with their IT niche markets. Actually, we are getting better and better at everything we do, which only makes it more fun."

"We are an organisation that invests in its people. That's why we are selective in the people we hire. We have a very ambitious growth target, but hiring new sales consultants should not come at the expense of the quality we deliver to our customers.

In addition, every sales consultant who joins us is trained to be the best possible consultant within his or her IT niche. Together with TA, L&D, Marketing and the Team Managers, we have the resources to get new people up to speed quickly. We provide a lot of training and support so that someone new to Vibe knows what we stand for and what it takes to be a successful sales consultant."

What do you think the future of Tergos looks like?

"We have only just started! Most projects often arise from infrastructure changes, so our areas of expertise are hot. As organisations seek to accelerate innovation through IT, companies' IT infrastructure is becoming increasingly complex. Connectivity is becoming increasingly important, as more and more people want to be able to work remotely. 

Moreover, everything surrounding the IoT (Internet of Things) requires the presence of many strong network connections, as data must be available within milliseconds. Take self-driving cars, for example: strong connectivity is a requirement to share all data continuously and keep everyone safe. So 5G is added. And all these kinds of aspects ensure that IT infrastructure will remain constantly important."

The meteoric growth of technological innovations that add value to everyday life seems unstoppable. How does this affect something like data security?

"The past few years of digitalisation have made the importance of data security clear to everyone. Every week there is something in the news about a security breach, data leak, hacking, phishing emails ... you name it. For many, this was 'a distant memory' 5 years ago, now it is 100% reality for everyone. Especially for businesses: if customers or employees do not trust you with their data, it can seriously damage your brand or image.

In addition, managing and securing information flows is becoming increasingly difficult due to the explosion in the number of devices and IoT applications connected to the network. More than ever, we depend on the availability of systems and information. And because the IT landscape should preferably also be scalable, cloud solutions are becoming increasingly popular. The specialists in our network can help with the above problems and we - Tergos - are happy to mediate."