By Fabio Longano, Founder and CEO.
You might know us as those devs who build great software, or maybe as the guys and gals that produce clean, breezy interfaces from time to time. Others might know us as digital innovation strategists who have helped define, or refine, their brands, businesses and product models, and help launch their products.
No matter how you’ve interacted with us, we’ve made it clear – when we perform various services throughout the stack (concept through to launch), we don’t hone in on a single solution without considering the project, and business win case, as a whole. And now, we’re taking that philosophy to the next level in a more formal manner.
Traditional product success through effective collaboration
Traditionally, in taking the lead on a digital execution, we’ve needed to work with other strategic partners in order to fulfil goals on a grander business perspective. Whether put forward by our own motivation or mandated by our clients, these partnerships have been necessary in making sure that brand, marketing & content strategies, sales funnels & transactional communications, CRMs, knowledge bases and operations toolkits (to name a few) all relate back to the core product or platform that we’re building.
Fundamentally referred to as ‘strategy’, one doesn’t simply launch a product or start a business without having at least some of these boxes ticked, and up until now, there’s only been so many of these boxes we could tick on our own.
What gap are we filling?
What we’ve found in riding this rodeo time and time again is this: time and money, otherwise translating to value, is wasted, the more extensive (or in some cases exhaustive) the team is.
Critical or not, each new team onboarded is an extra set of brains to align to the vision of the project. Each new team means another contract to sign – an agreement of what does, and what doesn’t, fall within their scope of work. And that’s where the risk arises – each team has their own personnel, ways of working, ways of isolating functions and ways of collaborating on functions, which can be limiting or cumbersome to other operating procedures.
Cutting the long story short – it can be a pain in the neck if you don’t have a well oiled team that has done the yards in learning how to reduce friction collaborating with others. Don’t get me wrong, there have been plenty of times where we’ve collaborated with the right teams, at the right time, but beyond the pains of needing to over-communicate, manage additional schedules, handoffs, meetings – and so on (all at additional overheads) – it can also be a right old challenge, at times, to hold partners to the standard of excellence we set as service providers to our valued customers.
And that’s why we’re expanding
We’ve found over the years that we can guarantee optimal results through offering more value through the service chain – creating higher impact products that people love – if we are able to collaborate with the right clients through the product-business stack from concept to delivery. By expanding our service offering, we’re ensuring that the TouchFoundry standard of excellence is applied to every possible facet of a solution that has truly been understood and contextualised as a whole.
We still however remain focused on our core love which is the dynamic relationship between products, people and customers. We’ve been doing some deep thinking on this dynamic and an exciting model aimed at codifying team interaction in creating powerful products to crack open markets is gradually emerging. Watch this space…
The long game
TouchFoundry is growing, and we need to direct this growth in a way that speaks to us as individuals whilst continuing to evolve alongside our clients. It would be easy to staff up as fast as possible and take on every client we can – that’s how growth works, right?
We disagree. We want to use the prestige we’ve gained over the last five years of producing top of the line solutions to zero in on projects and clients that speak to our values. It’s not a matter of making sure every last space in the pipeline is filled, it’s a matter of producing products and solutions that stand out as the best in the industry. Creating experiences that matter.
We want to give our clients more. It’s an integral part of our manifesto – purpose over paycheck. It’s all about high value, tight-knit relationships with our clients that lead to compounding outputs over time – and we’re going to do it by plugging into our clients at every possible point throughout the stack.
So now we’re doing it all ourselves… but how?
Let me first preface that we’re very much believers of the fabled concept: the jack of all trades is a master of none. We don’t fundamentally believe one can do everything at the level of excellence required to produce nothing but the best. Excellence requires time, passion, 10,000 hours of mastery, if not more – it requires dedication and a vocation to drill so deeply into a vertical that one becomes effective, innovative and, put plainly, the best in the business.
So how do we plan on ensuring that our highest standard of excellence is maintained across the board?
A-team only: This might not make the most business sense for us, as it fundamentally works against economies of scale. The usual understanding is that a pyramidal structure is the most “effective” way to scale a business – but that’s not us. We’re ensuring that each member of the team is a finely honed specialist at what they do, rather than fill up our office space with people that can just get the job done. Each member of a team needs to be a powerhouse that stands on equal footing to their peers, not a subordinate doing the grunt work of someone standing higher on the pyramid.
We’ve made sourcing top talent a core aspect of our company values so that we can ultimately pass on their smarts (and infectious passion!) to our clients and their supporting teams. We’re hiring people who live their trade and love their work. TouchFoundry never has and never will be a ‘faceless agency’, but rather a tribe of passionate individuals working towards a common goal, and we’re dedicated to maintaining that philosophy no matter how big we get.
Specialist SWAT teams: Finding the right people is only the first step in the process – no person is an island and no project is handled by a single mastermind. By curating specific teams of complimentary members, glued together by a company culture that goes beyond the worn out adage, ‘we’re all one big family’, we’ve created problem solving SWAT teams with streamlined visions on how to get the job done.
So, what do we offer?
Development – the dev you know and love, now more integrated into your project than ever.
Design – it’s always been a part of TouchFoundry, but now it’s a focal point. We’re growing our design department so that we can take on bigger projects with better results.
Automation – post-project optimisation, automation and gearing for scale.
Marketing – continuously growing your product through harvesting data, analyzing insights, converting them into actions and creating new iterations that are more fine tuned than ever.
What more can I say?
There it is – the evolution of TouchFoundry. We’re ready to impress and unleash the potential of our engagement with you, improving your bottom line while getting more out with us in a collaboration framework that’s tried and tested – that’s really the goal. Drop us a line at hello@touchfoundry.co.za – we’re keen to explore some opportunities on how we might help accelerate your business and products to the next level.