13-09-2022
As Dutch HR consultancy Quintop celebrates its 25th year in business, partners Erik Geerts and Ilse Heurkens sat down with Consultancy.eu to discuss the firm’s growth journey – and what makes Quintop unique in the rapidly evolving human capital consulting landscape.
This article is written bij Consultancy.eu
Headquartered in Utrecht, Quintop has accrued quite a list of blue-chip clients over the years. A small selection includes oil-giant Shell, dairy firm Campina, Paint and performance coatings company AkzoNobel, banks ING and ABN Amro, and world-renowned beer brand Heineken, along with campaign group Amnesty International, and technology brand Siemens.
Those clients, and the many others not listed, count on Quintop for its specialism: all areas of HR transformation.
However, Quintop’s services portfolio was initially far more diverse. “When we founded in 1997 our positioning was reasonably opportunistic,” admitted founder Erik Geerts, as the firm was eager to pick up any kind of work that was consulting-minded.
The finessing of Quintop’s offering came about soon after, though. “We entered the HR environment for a major client,” Geerts recalls. “From there we rolled from one HR project to another. After about five years it became clear: if around 95% of our business is HR-related, maybe we should dedicate our focus to this specialisation.”
The re-focusing of the business happened pretty rapidly from then. Today, Quintop’s portfolio focuses on everything from operating model (re)design and reorganisations to process improvement, regulations, and systems implementation.
“Actually anything that falls under the scope of HR transformation,” adds Ilse Heurkens – an 11-year veteran with Quintop, who became a partner in 2020.
