Choosing a Small AI Consultancy: What a CIO Puts in Writing

The Dutch market for IT consultancy is large, growing and made of very small firms. Our analysis of Eurostat data in our EU IT consultancy league study counts 36,402 Dutch computer consultancy enterprises in 2024, with 2.53 persons employed each on average against 8.19 in Germany. For a CIO that is good news. The specialist depth an AI project needs is there, and your contract, not the supplier's headcount, can carry the continuity.

This post is for the IT manager, CIO or informatiemanager at a Dutch or Flemish organisation of 250 to 5,000 people who wants to bring a specialist AI supplier into an existing supplier landscape. Crux Digits is one of those small specialists: an AI partner that works next to your ICT partner, not in place of it.

Is the Dutch IT consultancy market too fragmented to buy AI from?

No: fragmentation means a deep pool of specialists, and Dutch IT consultancy earns more per person than most of the EU.

In 2024 Dutch computer consultancy turned over €227.7 thousand per person employed, sixth of 27 member states and up from eighth in 2021, according to Eurostat table sbs_ovw_act as ranked in our study. Turnover in the sector grew 53.0% from 2021 to 2024, almost twice as fast as in Germany (27.7%) and Belgium (25.8%). Deflated with Dutch consumer prices, turnover per person still rose about 7.5% in real terms.

The growth came from new firms, not bigger ones. The number of Dutch computer consultancy enterprises rose 39.0% over those three years and the number of persons employed 18.6%, so the average firm shrank from 2.96 to 2.53 persons. The CBS register counted 36,680 IT consultancy businesses (SBI 6202) on 1 October 2026; 89.9% were one-person businesses and 205 had 50 or more persons employed. Belgium is less extreme at 3.08 persons per firm, but the shape is the same.

So the realistic shortlist for an AI build is mostly firms of one to nine people, with a short list of large firms beside it. One limit of the data: Eurostat has no AI split inside computer consultancy, so these figures describe the whole supplier market, of which AI specialists are a part.

Why can a small AI consultancy be the right partner for a large organisation?

Because in a firm of a few people the person who scopes the work also builds it, and AI work rewards that short line.

An AI system succeeds or fails on decisions made close to the data: which SharePoint libraries or document sets it may read, how its answers are tested against a fixed evaluation set, what it logs for the auditor, and where a human signs off. When the engineer who agreed those points in the scoping session is the one who writes the code, nothing is lost in a hand-off between a sales team, an architect and a delivery centre.

The market is moving in the same direction. Dutch turnover per person in computer consultancy rose 28.9% between 2021 and 2024, faster than in Germany (19.3%) or the EU as a whole (20.8%). Clients are paying more for specialist hours, and specialist hours are increasingly sold by small firms. For a 250 to 5,000 FTE organisation the opportunity is to buy that depth on terms that suit an IT department with an audit to pass.

How do you keep continuity when the supplier has three people?

Make continuity a deliverable: code, documentation and a runbook at the end of every phase, so another competent engineer can take over.

With 2.53 persons per Dutch computer consultancy on average, the named people are the firm. Put them in the contract. A key-person clause names the engineers who do the work and gives you approval over any substitution. That is a stronger guarantee than a large firm's bench, because you know exactly who holds the knowledge.

Then make the knowledge leave the supplier at every phase gate, not at the end. Four things belong in each acceptance: the source code in your repository, an architecture note that a new engineer can read in an hour, a runbook your ICT partner can follow to deploy and roll back, and the evaluation set with its latest results. A useful acceptance test is simple: can your own team or ICT partner redeploy the system from the runbook without calling the supplier? If yes, a small supplier is no more of a continuity risk than a large one.

Who owns the code a small AI consultancy writes for you?

Under the Dutch Auteurswet the maker owns it, so an external supplier keeps the copyright unless your contract transfers it in writing.

Article 7 of the Auteurswet makes the employer the maker of work done by its employees. That rule covers your own staff, not a contracted consultancy. For a supplier, article 2 applies: a transfer of copyright needs a deed drawn up for that purpose, and a transfer by the maker covers only the rights named in the agreement or that necessarily follow from its nature and purpose. A vague clause about "deliverables" leaves room for argument.

So list what transfers: source code, infrastructure-as-code, prompts and system instructions, evaluation sets, test scripts and documentation. Let the supplier keep its pre-existing tools under a perpetual, transferable licence for your use, which is fair and keeps the price honest. Then make ownership physical: the repository lives in your own GitHub or Azure DevOps organisation from the first commit, and the supplier works in it as a guest. For a contract under Belgian law, have your counsel set the equivalent clause; the principle of writing it down is the same.

How does a small AI partner work next to your ICT partner?

Through a written RACI: hosting, identity, network and patching stay with your ICT partner, and the AI supplier designs, builds and evidences.

The seam sits in a handful of concrete tasks. Who creates the Entra ID app registration and approves its permissions? Who opens the firewall rule or private endpoint? Who stores the API keys in Key Vault and rotates them? Who receives the alert when the system fails at night? Agree each one in a RACI before the first sprint, and give the ICT partner a seat at the design review. A specialist AI supplier that respects this seam makes your ICT partner's job easier, not harder.

For organisations in scope of the Cyberbeveiligingswet, which has applied since 15 August 2026 to more than 8,000 Dutch organisations, article 21 asks you to secure your supply chain, including your direct suppliers. The NCSC states that the supervisor will not supervise suppliers. The assessment of your AI supplier is therefore your task, proportionate to what that supplier touches. Our post on the Cyberbeveiligingswet and AI suppliers sets out how.

What should a CIO do in the next twelve months?

Five moves, each tied to a finding in our analysis of Eurostat and CBS data.

1. Shortlist on named people. Finding: the average Dutch computer consultancy has 2.53 persons employed. Ask in the first meeting who will write the code and who reviews it.

2. Buy in scoped, fixed-price phases. Finding: in 2024 the Netherlands had 105 IT services firms with 250 or more persons employed. A framework only those firms can bid on shuts out most of the specialist pool. Short phases with a defined outcome reach the rest and let you stop or switch at each gate.

3. Make ownership a deliverable. Finding: most suppliers are small, so their exit is a real scenario. A transfer deed, your own repository and a runbook turn that exit into a handover.

4. Write the seam into the RACI. Finding: the market splits into a few large firms and many small ones, so most supplier landscapes will mix both. Agree identity, hosting and alerting with your ICT partner before work starts.

5. Revisit the shortlist every year. Finding: the number of Dutch IT consultancy businesses in the CBS register grew 60.9% from January 2021 to October 2026. New specialists appear every quarter.

If the 2021 to 2024 pattern holds, 2027 brings more and smaller specialist firms rather than fewer and larger ones. That is our reading of the trend, not a forecast in the data. For an IT department that has its contract terms, repository rules and RACI in order, it means more choice and better access to the people who actually build AI systems.

Where does Crux Digits fit?

Crux Digits is a small specialist by these numbers too. We design and build AI systems and the software around them, next to your ICT partner or internal IT team, and we hand over code you own, in your repository, with the documentation and runbook to run it without us. We do not run infrastructure, hosting or a helpdesk.

What AI consultancy costs in the Netherlands, and how the fixed-price phases are built, is set out on AI consultancy pricing in the Netherlands.

Last updated: 28 October 2026.

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