2019 summed up in a few words was challenging, transformative, enlightening and thrilling!
Yes, the challenges of 2019 are now over and 2020 is looking very bright!
About 15 months ago after speaking with some partners, I had a great idea - lets build a fully customisable Salesforce connected e-commerce platform that is affordable and able to be deployed within weeks, not months.
It seemed like a great idea, the interest was there, all it seemed we had to do was integrate some existing open source projects, and join the dots (which Rails is always great at) and voila! We figured it would only take 2-4 months to launch and we’d have an awesome product to market!
Life seems to like proving you wrong, and this was no exception.
It was 7 months into the project when we realised there was a reason this had not been done before. Due to complexities we faced, we decided to bite the bullet and start again. Still built on Rails, but this time as a greenfields project.
Thankfully we didn’t have to throw everything away! We got to keep a major component (the Salesforce package half of the application) and so we took this and our combined experience over the previous 7 months, while utilising the years of experience integrating Rails with Salesforce so it worked exactly as we intended. It’s a tribute to the team and our resilience that we could shift gears, get our MVP delivered and our first customer live and accepting orders all before the end of 2019!
Being the product owner of a project my own company is developing has shown me once again just how amazing our team is at software integrations and solving the complex problems our clients face.
In the last 18 months we’ve also taken a focus on helping clients visualise and map out their their software project by launching our 2-4 day App Discovery Workshops. These intensive 1-1 workshops have helped both our clients and our developers fully identify and isolate the needs and requirements of the project, how the software will fill those requirements and maps out the steps needed to ensure a successful and productive outcome for everyone. After all, we’re happiest when our clients are also succeeding!
The year culminated in me travelling to San Francisco in November to present at Salesforce’s annual customer event - Dreamforce. Here we were requested from Salesforce to demonstrate the technical skills we’ve honed over the years in Rails development, and how we translated these skills to modernise and develop packages using Salesforce second generation packaging.
Now that the year is over, and we’ve rested up, refreshed and ready for all that’s coming in the New Year, I wish to extend my gratitude to all of our wonderful team, our clients and our partners, and look forward to joining you for another great year of accomplishment in 2020!
