2020 Retrospective, 2021 Outlook

What a year this has been... I guess it is safe to say that 2020 so far has proven to be one heck of ride for everyone on this planet. Personally, I can hardly believe it is already “that time of the year” in which it is time to reflect and look ahead.

Picture of the autor Rutger Buijzen

Rutger Buijzen

Chief Technology Officer

2020 has been a year of ups and (very deep) downs. Especially initially everyone's first reaction to the sudden lockdown announcements was a startle response caused by uncertainty due to the unknown. We moved from 4 to 85+ offices overnight. For the first time in our history, we unfortunately had to let go of some incredibly talented and appreciated team members, something that still feels as a personal shortcoming. It was amazing to see and I’m immensely proud how our team dealt with this situation and how we now, even more than normally, all had one common goal: making sure we ourselves and our clients would not only survive this crisis but come out being a better person/company.

Of course, our clients, and thus also we were affected. Instead of being paralyzed by a fear of the unknown, we needed to act. We decided our best option would be to help our clients overcome this. But before we could do that, we had to take a critical look at ourselves first. First help yourself, only then you can truly help others. Were we on the right track? One of the things we realized is that we had to stick to our core. By doing so we could deliver the best possible services to our clients. We also realized that what companies need in these times, was the thing we have been doing all the time: helping companies achieve sustainable growth. The only difference is that this digital transformation is now hyper accelerated across an integrated customer journey.

For the first time in history, we now have a generation that is not bound by age, but by a collective pandemic experience. This generation is called Generation-N. N stands for Novel, New. Previously unheard-of things blocking digital transformation such a video job interviews, now suddenly became the new normal out of bare necessity. Not only did it become normal overnight, things also will keep accelerating faster and faster.

In order to be able to not only say but do hyper accelerated digital transformation, you need an ecosystem where hyper acceleration can take place. First and foremost, this is about people. People with a growth mindset. Supporting people there needs to be a platform that instead of limiting, enables, democratizes and promotes innovation. We believe Low-Code is this platform. Low-Code allows our customers to develop features at blazing speed. Speed needed to move fast. And speed needed to win time that we so greatly need in creating immersive integrated customer experiences/journeys. Again, our good old friend “Brand” has proven to be the glue that binds everything together, allowing you to stand out and make a real difference for your clients.