What happened in Predica world? 2021 summary

But before I jump into a recap, I’d like to express my gratitude to all Predica employees, clients, partners, and friends who create this ecosystem that now consists of well over 1,000 people.

People who are fueled by the insatiable desire to transform industries with the power of the Microsoft cloud.

What I love most in this community is how we come together to challenge and change the status quo.

Delivering meaningful results

The thing that is most satisfying for us is the results we deliver to our clients. Let me give you a couple of examples.

We work with GN Group, the company behind the Jabra brand. What we’re building with them is an entire identity infrastructure, critical to how they connect with their customers and give additional software value to their hardware products.

It is doubly satisfying, knowing that their products help people with hearing disabilities, as well as connect all of us together in the remote, “no office” world we live in today.

We support Euromaster, a leading tire service company in Nordics, in digitizing communication with their clients through web, mobile, and e-mail.

Our support allowed them to increase the safety of their clients’ vehicles through timely maintenance based on intelligent data-driven algorithms.

With SIG, the leading construction materials supplier in Europe, we work daily on multiple fronts. But we are especially proud of the fact that they trusted us with their IT security.

We have been working with SIG for some time and are now running a fully managed Security Operations Center based on Azure Sentinel with multiple integrations.

No matter the industry, securing digital assets and monitoring potential threats is what every business must do to ensure continuity and minimize the risk of ever-increasing number of cyber threats.

Working in Qatar, we developed Machine Learning models to analyze coastal satellite imagery and predict shoreline erosion. The outcome of this project will be used to make decisions related to climate protection and changes impact (more details on this project coming soon).

There are a lot more companies we are delivering meaningful business results for. And the regular client surveys we do extensively seem to prove that – we have an average client NPS score of 84 for the last 12 months. We make sure to understand their business needs. No matter how good the technology is, the outcome is what matters. That is why understanding and hearing our customers is our main focus.

P. stands for People

Obviously, all the work we do for our clients would not be possible with the people who are part of Predica. It is their work ethic and commitment that is making this happen. #Pstandsforpeople and this year was no different:

• Our employee NPS is 50, and more than 70% of our people actively recommend Predica as a workplace, which allows us to get almost 40% of new hires from those referrals!
• This year we had to scale up in terms of headcount and right now there are 120 more of us than at the beginning of 2021, bringing our FTE count to 366 (and still growing).
• Predica Team is diverse: Predicans come from 17(!) different nationalities, across 4 continents.
• This year, our employees spent over 1.3 mln PLN for training and certifications, using their education budgets, available to all FTEs.

We are a truly distributed company with clients and people in many places of the world! It brings its own challenges of time zones, distance, diverse cultures – but all this is exciting and widens our perspectives a lot.

It was also a great achievement to meet over the summer for an all-company event (naturally, with the proper health precautions).

Strengthening our partnerships

Technology is what we do, and it is deep in our DNA. Obviously, Microsoft comes first and foremost as our technology and go-to market partner. To further develop this relationship, we ensure that we meet the highest bar for Microsoft partners.

This year alone, we earned 8 Advanced Specializations:

It was not easy. Microsoft takes due care to validate the partner specialization. They look at customer evidence, certificates, and actual intellectual property and process behind delivering projects in a given area.

We also kept our Cloud Solution Provider Tier-1 status with even more stringent criteria, allowing us to sell Microsoft cloud directly to our clients.

This is a great achievement, especially from our team in the US (Pete, Voytek), where this program bundled with our Azure Optimizer offering is widely popular.

In addition, we work with technology firms that allow us to complement our and Microsoft portfolio with additional value to our clients. Some of them include:

• Cybersecurity and identity space: Omada, Saviynt, CyberArk
• Cloud infrastructure: cloudcheckr, Quest
• Apps & DevOps: GitHub, SonarQube, Selenium
• Data Analytics: Databricks, Riversand

Challenges ahead! And behind

But it is not all rosy, we have made our fair share of mistakes. After all, the road to success is paved with failure. It is impossible to get everything right the first time. If we don’t try, we will never push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Just to give you a few examples. We tried twice to do more typical outbound sales. We failed. Now, we are certain that sales is something different in our case. We don’t sell, we advise. We want to give value to the client from the first meeting they have with us.

We won’t throw company pitch decks at you and talk about ourselves. We will talk with you about your industry, your challenges, and then share the experience we gained in other projects with different clients, that faced similar challenges.

We will talk about trends, and how you can capitalize on them. But most of all, we will focus on a meaningful business outcome for you.

Secondly, when Covid hit in March 2020, we froze our recruitments and made some tough decisions. Back then it seemed reasonable, as our pipeline dried up within 1 month.

However, when business picked up in September, we were not ready to be the ‘first out of the gate’ and we faced some tough discussions with clients about our capacity to deliver services for them.

Granted, “hindsight is 20/20”, but we learned that leading an organization this big, we need to look at 2nd and 3rd order effects of our decisions.

Moving forward

And so, I am looking with optimism toward 2022. We have a solid foundation – loyal client base, committed and integrated team, a strategy for navigating the dynamic reality we are in.

Leading a growing organization in a fast-paced industry like ours requires me to continuously learn, adapt and innovate.

There is a huge thrill of my job, but I am looking forward to a few days of downtime, peace, and calm to recuperate for next year – which I wish to all of you!