Ayi, you offer notebooks together with your courses. That seems to be quite an expensive give-away.


Ayi Nedjimi: We are indeed providing each participant with a Hewlett Packard, including all course supports preinstalled. The IT market today is developing very fast, which means that the use of electronic courseware can be more economical than printed courseware. Furthermore, it seems to us more economical and flexible to draft an adapted curriculum for each participant corresponding to his needs. The fact that we have developed our own curriculum independent from the leading editors and constructors made it possible to realize a flexible, economical, and interactive learning program.

But if the participants can keep the notebooks, you have to buy thousands of them.


Ayi Nedjimi: Indeed we have around 7000 learners per year, which means we have to buy 7000 notebooks. But they are not very powerful and only account for a small part of our fees. For example, the Microsoft Certificate MCSE takes 34 days and costs 6000 euros. The printed material would cost 200 to 300 euros. You get basic notebooks for this price, too.

But participants could go online and study web-based content.


Ayi Nedjimi: Technically they could, but we do not want that for two reasons: First, we avoid unauthorized people getting access to our content and stealing it. You can only connect to our platform with our notebooks. Second we can simulate all kinds of working environments by virtualization - for example Windows 2003, 2008, or Linux, etc. It would be too complicated, sometimes impossible, for the individual to create these environments himself.

How do you guarantee that your participants always have up-to-date content on their notebook?


Ayi Nedjimi: The content on the notebook can be upgraded at any moment in our SMARTlibrary, a platform developed by our training experts.

Where did you get the idea to work with pre-installed notebooks?


Ayi Nedjimi: We work a lot with Africa, and there the participants have less access to hardware than we do here in Europe.

Which target groups do you address?


Ayi Nedjimi: We offer courses for three target groups: Individuals can choose standard courses from our catalogue. For training and HR staff we provide tailored courses that correspond to the specific needs of a company. People who undergo an important change in their work life - for example employees who will, for the first time, be responsible for an important project, individuals who want to change their job or who are unemployed, or people who want to reach the next step in their career - all those individuals need adapted training, close mentoring, and consulting.

Which content is becoming more important - technology or management?


Ayi Nedjimi: I would say it is a combination of the two. There are some courses with purely technical content - like the Cisco Certificate CCIE. But most of the participants need project management as well; we notice an important and strongly growing demand. The need for methods that range between technology and management has literally exploded within the past two or three years, for example ITIL, CMI, Prince II or Cobit.