In today's rapidly changing IT landscape, choosing the right IT partner can be critical to your company's success. But what distinguishes a real IT partner from an ordinary supplier? It's about more than just technology and delivery – a reliable IT partner invests in your success, acts proactively and ensures that both company and supplier share the goal of long-term growth and sustainable solutions. Let's explore what really makes a difference when choosing your next IT partner.
There are a large number of IT consulting companies. On the surface – websites, LinkedIn posts and the like – most people look the best. Many are probably also really good. But what makes the difference for a customer in the end? What does the perfect IT partner look like?
- The importance of size and proximity in an IT partner
Firstly, it should not be too large. Too big an actor unfortunately means - regardless of what is said, desired or believed - that there is often a distance between the company and the employees, which makes it difficult to achieve genuine responsibility and to go that "extra mile" when it is really needed. You become one in the crowd, and your own contribution does not feel decisive. - Scalability – A defining characteristic
It must also not be too small or lack the ability to scale up quickly. If the company is too small and does not have the capacity to find the right skills at short notice - without recruitment - for new projects or challenges that arise when staff leave, this obviously means a risk for the customer. - The importance of profitability for a long-term collaboration
It should also be profitable. Profitability creates security and the ability to prioritize the customer's best interests in critical situations. This does not mean that you should work for free, but that you should be able to be responsible for parallel resources when needed, replace staff when necessary or offer guarantees to the customer if something does not work. Customer satisfaction is the best long-term strategy. But to be able to be long-term, you also need to have financial stability. - Business models based on collaboration
The business model should be such that customer and supplier end up in the same boat. We have previously written about how traditional business models, where the results of the projects are in focus, are often doomed to fail. Differences in expectations and views on the budget inevitably lead to problems when these expectations meet reality. These problems exist from the beginning as an invisible elephant in the room and create suspicion and surveillance, which is not a good breeding ground for solving the problems and challenges that arise during the course of the project. Therefore, a model is needed that is based on agile and joint delivery of the best possible value every week, based on what is known at the time. This requires trust right from the start. - Committed individuals are the key to a strong IT partnership
Another important aspect is the view of partnership. An IT partner must consist of individuals who really feel for and take on the customer's business as if it were their own, where the customer's successes are experienced as their own. An IT partner, unlike an IT supplier, is proactive and also emotionally invested. This leads back to the issue of size; an IT partnership must be run by individuals who have this feeling. An organization, process or structure cannot feel - it is people who make up (!) the partnership, and therefore must be given the freedom to make decisions and act when necessary, even if that means solving problems after office hours or showing extra care in practical solutions.
Emvico - An IT partner that invests in your goals
There are more aspects, and unsurprisingly we at Emvico believe we fit this description of an IT partner. It is not a coincidence, but a conscious design we have chosen, because we want to feel what we do. We used to be at a large company, but now we choose the clients we work with, and we want to feel for them and contribute to their success. It is a worthy challenge that gives our professional life meaning. We are therefore:
- Fairly large, with around 25 employees at the moment.
- But we can scale quickly and with high quality, thanks to our hubs in Poland, Ukraine and Hungary.
- We focus on profitability over frenetic growth, as it gives us the peace of mind to make good decisions for both our employees and customers.
- Our leadership and corporate culture give our employees a lot of responsibility for their customers, so they can feel committed and thus maximize their value to the customer.
- We carefully select our customers, where we can be close to the management and the business. Before starting a partnership, we discuss agile processes and cost control in the form of rapid scaling, up or down, but where the result is what our joint governance and added skills deliver - not an Excel sheet of functions or a project scope that was determined from the beginning .
Emvico is an IT partner, not an IT supplier. We always say no where we see risks in the relationship between supplier and customer, and we go all-in where we find customers whose journey we get the chance to influence, support and empathize with.