Building confident junior SAP talent with e-learning
Cases
The organisation
Founded in 2007, iTrainee is a Netherlands-based training provider specialising in traineeships for junior SAP professionals. The organisation has trained and placed over 1,000 trainees with more than 100 clients across the Netherlands, including ASML, Rabobank, Heineken, Deloitte, KLM and NS.
Pink Elephant EMEA's Agile Scrum e-learning has supported more than 500 iTrainee trainees, broadening their IT knowledge alongside the practical skills they need to be effective in an SAP role and contribute confidently from day one.
Background information
For the past 19 years, Dutch training provider iTrainee has focused on helping graduates build successful careers as junior SAP professionals.
The organisation runs an intensive traineeship programme that combines technical and functional SAP education, soft skills development and real-world experience. In the past 19 years, iTrainee has trained and placed over 1,000 trainees with more than 100 organisations across the Netherlands, including ASML, Rabobank, KLM, Deloitte, Heineken and the Dutch national railways, Nederlandse Spoorwegen.
The iTrainee traineeship is designed to bridge the gap between education and employment. Before joining a customer organisation, trainees spend two to four months at iTrainee's training centre, building up a technical SAP expertise in combination with soft skills coaching. After that, the trainee is matched with a company that feels like the perfect fit for both parties. During this period, they apply everything they have learned in a real business environment.
The challenge
From the outset, iTrainee’s training model has been built around three core pillars. The first is SAP knowledge, the second is social skills, and the third is IT general knowledge, including AgileScrum, Lean IT, DevOps and Service Management.
For iTrainee, the challenge was that technical excellence alone is no longer enough. Graduates need both confidence and good communication skills from day one to excel.
When trainees start with a customer, they have to deal with a very complex IT landscape. Functional people need to discuss what should be built with technical people. Developers need to understand the business side. Everyone has to work togetherJos van der Haar, SAP Trainer, iTrainee
The solution
The solution was a combination of self-paced learning and hands-on Lego workshops run by Pink Elephant. Like many training providers, iTrainee accelerated its use of e-learning during the COVID era. What started as a necessity quickly became a long-term benefit, with students learning flexibly at their own pace and from any location.
Through Pink Elephant’s e-learning portal, iTrainee trainees are able to gain access to a wide range of IT professional learning programmes, including AgileScrum, Lean IT, DevOps and Service Management. Among all available courses, AgileScrum Foundation remains the most popular as 80% of iTrainee’s customers work with AgileScrum teams.
Crucially, the content supports trainees before and after customer placement. First, it gives them greater confidence during matching interviews, as they can talk knowledgeably about IT in general. Then, when they start working with a customer, they already understand the terminology and established ways of working.
Pink Elephant’s AgileScrum Lego game has also become a regular feature of iTrainee’s team days. During the workshop, trainees work in Scrum teams to build a city from Lego, taking on roles such as Scrum Master, Product Owner and team member. Working against deadlines and changing requirements, they experience agile principles first-hand and strengthen learning retention.
The feedback we get is often: I learned so much in the last two hours just by doing this workshop. The e-learning helps a lot, but actually seeing it and experiencing it makes a big difference.Jos van der Haar, SAP Trainer, iTrainee
With over 40 years of experience and a global presence, Pink Elephant has long-standing expertise in ITSM and has a highly regarded reputation for forming strong, hands-on client relationships. Five years into the partnership that started in 2021, iTrainee continues to view Pink Elephant as a natural fit. The breadth of the learning portfolio, recognised certifications, flexible delivery model and quality of content all align closely with iTrainee’s training philosophy.
No one offers a portal to this extent. The topics matched what we considered important, and the trainees could learn at their own pace. Pink Elephant delivers high-quality e-learning that matters in IT, which is up to date, easily accessible and provides excellent preparation for young IT professionals making a great start to their careers.
The results
After completing Pink Elephant’s courses, confidence is one of the biggest changes Jos sees in their trainees, long before they start their first assignment. When they are interviewed by customers, the trainees can answer questions better because they understand the concepts. Trainees arrive with a stronger grasp of agile terminology, greater awareness of modern IT practices and a clearer understanding of how multidisciplinary teams operate.
Customer feedback has also been consistently positive. Jos notes that customers report being very happy with the high level of trainees’ knowledge.
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