Finding talent is difficult for almost every company these days. At UPEO, we are not escaping the famous “war on talent”. One additional challenge we face, moreover, is that we are a small and young company in a sector of large and established partners.
A common misconception we hear from candidates is that they have the idea that if you want challenging and complex projects, you need to work for one of the bigger firms who focus on big corporate customers. And if you look for those big projects, with large implementation teams and long through-put times, that is true.
However, it is not true that challenging and complex projects equal large projects only. The complexity of the large projects often comes from the amount of people involved, the complexity of aligning processes and scope, the multitude of clouds or integration work. But smaller doesn’t necessarily mean simpler.
Moreover, when working as part of a large implementation team, one tends to be assigned to a clearly defined role and responsibility, reducing considerably the complexity for the individual consultant, leaving little room to engage with the challenging stuff outside of your role. The model of those engagements often involves off-shore configuration and development, with a focus for the onshore teams on the functional stuff and “management” of the project.
For those who love to get their hands dirty, there is more opportunity on smaller projects! At UPEO we love to feel the impact we have when working with mid-size companies, scale-ups and even start-ups. The managers and owners are extremely involved, eager to learn and also very innovative. Resulting in fast-paced projects, where innovation and co-creation with our customers are legion.
To illustrate what UPEO has to offer, let us look at some of the industries in which we have worked this year. For the past 13 months, we have worked with 28 customers in a number of spaces ranging from the performing arts, the automotive industry, service industry, tech companies, finance, manufacturing, through to entertainment and even non-profit organizations.
If we look at the scope of the projects we have delivered, there is just as much variation. We have done assessments, advised on architecture in the light of a spin-off, built a solution to manage HR processes, delivered a blueprint for a B2B Commerce site, brought live a number of Sales Cloud instances, enhanced Pardot (yes, we still call it like that) implementations, handled some extremely complex document generation scenarios, created Lightning Web Components, written integrations with Business Central, Heroku and Sharepoint, … and that list isn’t exhaustive neither.
Not to forget that we actually launched one of the 5 products we created on the AppExchange! Because when someone has a good idea, we make it happen. Our consultants have time allocated to Innovation and can participate in internal projects. Creating products is on our wishlist, and these smaller accomplishments are excellent ways to learn how to go about that. Watch out for our new idea!
You might think: “that’s not bad for a small team such as UPEO”, and you would be right, if you did not know that being such a small and close team is kind of our secret sauce. Being small means that we need to be flexible and we cannot bring in an expert as easily as we could at a larger firm. That means we need to continually adapt and grow, and that we cannot get too comfortable. Everyone learns new things every day, even in larger firms, but the pace at UPEO is very high. It takes a bold, proactive attitude to thrive with us, but for those who do, the sky really is the limit.
Having flexible and eager people alone is not enough to do what we did last year. All those qualities are for naught, unless you can collaborate closely and quickly with the rest of your team. Our culture, tools and structure enable us to stay aware of all projects. If one of us gets stuck, a shout in the office or a message on Slack will have the squad pull together and solve the issue. There is no sales team or delivery team or support team, there is just Team UPEO and everybody pitches in from every side. There is no way to hide and we may push each other’s boundaries, but the squad has your back.
And do not be fooled, all of our seniors have worked for big consulting partners. We actually have a frame of reference when we state the above. We feel like we have more opportunity and more impact. How often does it happen at a big firm that you are involved in a project from the pre-sales phase right up to the go-live party? At UPEO? Almost every single time.
So do not underestimate what UPEO has to offer. If you are in doubt, come in for a coffee, and let us discuss what you need to be happy in your job. We will be -as always- brutally honest.