Part 3 of a 10 part series of 10 Lessons on becoming a business that will survive the Internet age.
Huge fan counts, perfect executions and a rapid turn-over of projects are no longer the only measures of success. Connecting with the right people, building high engagement, creating a following of super fans and developing creative that has an “independent” feeling about it are just as important – if not more so.
We have found these 10 lessons emanating from Future World a means to test whether we are doing the right things in today’s Hunger Games.
We begin by addressing the age-old question: who are the “right” people with whom to connect?
From our point of view this should be viewed in multiple ‘streams’ being clients, employees and industry.
On the client side:
Connecting with the right people amongst our clients is not about over reaching ourselves, being able to say I know Ms CEO/CIO. Whilst it’s tempting to mix with the C-suite, in reality it is really little more than a courtesy. We know that proving ourselves with the client we work with every day is what secures tenure. These are the people (team leads, project managers, business analysts, architects, designers, fellow developers, testers, end users). We highlight end users as we can easily underestimate their importance. They are the people who can directly gauge our value as opposed to an executive that may only pick up the threads.
There is nothing more rewarding than a thumbs up from a happy end user which supports our objective of building engagements that last.
On the employee side:
We have written a fair amount on this topic as we strongly believe in investing time and money in finding the right employees to fit in with our company culture. We look for people who share our passion as well as our core values which, we believe are paramount to our success.
On the industry side:
We’d be remiss as a software development company not to utilize the digital world to connect with our peers. To this end we have a presence on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. We also value the opportunities that blogging presents for us to share our competencies both from a technical and business perspective.
Our digital approach is complemented by interaction with learning institutions from the likes of Girls&Boystown, which we fund and are about to assist in vocational advice, as well as to the universities where we have successfully groomed the raw talent produced.
And lastly, the 10 lessons refer to a following of Superfans. We find this a little idealistic, currently beyond our scope and at odds with our technical humility. Having said that, we are motivated when our current clients give a “without doubt” answer to the question “would you do business with this company again?”
In addition to our digital initiatives, participation in relevant developer groups is work in progress. Technical superfans will help spread our brand and create a candidate pipeline but the real superfan is the client that seeks us out to assist with a business initiative that requires our custom software development skills or mobile app development expertise.
You may ask why we place such emphasis on our custom development? Quite simply, it allows us to stretch our wings and use our creativity unencumbered and independantly. Our creativity has been solicited in several grass roots engagements, producing market-ready deliverables exemplified by 247Displays, eeziFone and SuperGrid.
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10 Lessons on becoming a business that will survive the Internet Age:
Published courtesy of Future World and because these lessons resonate with us!
