On Thursday, November 23, 2023, the first edition of the digitalks took place. The event, organized by Apptitude, was held in Lausanne at the Gotham offices.
The writer Oscar Wilde once said, “There are two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
Philosophers and writers have extensively discussed the first part, “not getting what one wants.” During this talk, we addressed the second: getting what one wants, a desire for growth in our case. This does not come solely with happiness. Indeed, it is essential to grow smartly. Let’s not be mistaken; by constantly looking at what we can call “inspiring” posts on LinkedIn or other social networks, we might imagine that the only “challenge” businesses face today is acquiring customers to increase their revenue. However, this also involves going through stages of company development, structuring processes, and building teams.
We gave the floor to three speakers who have experienced success and the problems that come with it. Here are demonstrations of the agility needed to avoid “hitting a wall,” even when the business is doing well:
- Matteo Togninalli, co-founder and former COO at Visium
- Daniel Grosso, Partner and Architect at CCHE & Jonathan Pernet, Head of Parametric Design at CCHE
- Michel Yerly, CTO at FAIRTIQ
The digitalks aims to bring together entrepreneurship, design, and engineering. Three speakers take the stage to share their experiences, successes, and challenges around a common theme. The goal is to present concrete and practical cases, avoiding any promotional approach. Discover and register for the next edition: www.digitalks.ch
Matteo Togninalli, co-founder and former COO at Visium, recounted the journey and challenges of this startup, founded in 2018 and specialized in helping companies with machine learning.
In five years, Visium has grown from a small team to a company with over 60 engineers. They have opened offices at EPFL’s Innovation Park, Zurich’s Technopark, as well as in North Macedonia, Spain, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Matteo discussed the challenges of this rapid growth, particularly the difficulty in maintaining the agility and transparency of the early days as the team expanded. They had to rethink internal communication by adopting new approaches and involving employees differently, such as integrating engineers into the sales team to enhance synergy.
Recruitment proved to be a crucial challenge. After the early stages and recruiting through their direct network, they quickly realized the importance of building a strong employer brand to attract specialized talent. They also implemented an internal referral system to ensure the quality of new hires, which helped develop new offerings and skills valued by their clients.
Personnel management also became a major challenge, as they had to ensure that no organizational gaps were created that could cause disruptions if a key team member left. Matteo also emphasized the importance of focusing on profitability rather than just revenue by using simple yet effective tracking tools. He acknowledged that despite strict risk control, mistakes are inevitable, as evidenced by signing a lease for offices that eventually turned out to be too large.
In conclusion, Matteo highlighted that the key to Visium’s success has been staying constantly active, adapting, and learning from each stage of their growth.
The profession of architecture has profoundly evolved since the founding of CCHE in 1905, observed Daniel Grosso, Partner and Architect at CCHE.
While the company operated in a similar manner for nearly 100 years, the advent of computers in 1992 marked the first turning point, transforming the way people worked. Another notable change is that the profession has become much more complex, but the time available remains the same. The complexity of the specifications, new standards and constraints, performance concerns, and labeling today far exceed the basic task of “simple drawing.”
In recent years, with the emergence of parametric design, the very nature of the work has evolved. Jonathan Pernet, Head of Parametric Design, explained that it’s no longer about drawing a project with a pencil or a mouse. Parametric design allows inputting a project’s constraints, and the architect is then presented with several solutions that all meet the imposed framework. For Daniel Grosso, this is somewhat like the modern version of an architecture competition. There’s no longer a need for multiple firms to challenge each other—one can propose dozens of different solutions. The architect now must determine which is the best among several possibilities. Through this process, they can rely on the power of dozens of algorithms, which help calculate new versions and automate new plans’ generation. The time saved is therefore precious. It’s by constantly adapting that CCHE manages to meet increasingly complex demands. The speed of change and the ability to integrate them are, for Daniel Grosso, one of the keys to growth.
Alongside these evolutions, CCHE has grown from 25 employees in 1992 to 350 in 2023, spread across seven offices. They have also incorporated about thirty different professions, other than architects, to address numerous challenges. The goal remains to better meet the needs of their clients and employees.
FAIRTIQ is a mobile application that allows users to pay for public transport tickets by automatically calculating the best fare. Michel Yerly, CTO, shared the challenges the company has faced and the solutions implemented to overcome obstacles related, in particular, to the growth in usage.
From 20,000 daily route calculations in 2019, growth seems exponential, exceeding 60,000 in 2021. What will the numbers be in 2022? With optimistic forecasts, FAIRTIQ expected to see the number of routes double to around 120,000, thanks to the adoption of the solution and the development of new clients. This rapid growth led to major operational challenges. As a result, FAIRTIQ’s technical team grew from 25 to 50 engineers. But contrary to expectations, instead of accelerating projects, the company observed a slowdown in development speed. Team morale was at an all-time low, with projects delivered late and operational costs skyrocketing. A technical debt formed and began to accumulate. Bugs became more frequent, and the quality of deliveries dropped.
In response to this situation, FAIRTIQ sought solutions to reduce operational costs while increasing efficiency. One answer was to take the necessary time to build automation for repetitive tasks. For example, updating transport schedules, which involved 23 regions and required manual intervention by an engineer, was rethought, reducing this task to a simple click.
Another example is fare management. FAIRTIQ had to develop its own format to standardize updates, which were often complex and non-standardized from one region to another. Automation allowed for a reduction in these operational costs while freeing up time for other tasks. In parallel, the company also had to make difficult decisions, such as removing unprofitable features and investing time to repay accumulated technical debt.
Michel Yerly emphasized the importance of recognizing the severity of the situation, accepting it, and taking concrete measures to avoid sinking further. Inaction was not an option. FAIRTIQ thus adopted a proactive approach, making the necessary sacrifices to correct the course.
According to Michel, this experience highlights the importance of automation in controlling operational costs and the need to remain agile in the face of rapid growth challenges. The conference shed light on the necessity of sometimes making tough but crucial decisions to ensure the sustainability and quality of services in a rapidly expanding company.
Discover the theme and speakers of our upcoming digitalks conference and register online at: www.digitalks.ch.