Written by: Mr.sc. Dražen Galić, Civil Engineer
I think that everybody agrees with the statement above.
For a long time, StudioARS has been developing an application for designing of underground pipe infrastructure (sewage, water distribution, gas…). We have quite a number of users (2000+) in Central and Eastern Europe. Some very important and large network systems were designed with our software.
We feel that it is our duty to serve our customers, so that they can successfully design real projects. Through all those years, we built a very good relationship with our customers and earned their trust. We want to show to the users that we really care about them and that we can react very quickly in case something goes wrong.
We have an indirect business model, which means that we have partners who directly implement our software in specific countries. Partners are well educated and can solve first level of support, but they can also count on full support from StudioARS. With new technologies of communication, it is very easy to connect to customer’s computer, quickly identify the problem and solve it immediately.
In the development team, we have several employees with quite wide definition of their tasks. But, it is the rule in StudioARS that everything should be temporarily postponed in case of support necessity. All support engineers have to expose patience and persistence in problem solving.
Do our customers appreciate that approach? I think they do, very much. Very often when I participate in different kind of business events, I have the opportunity to meet the end users, our customers. I really enjoy discussing various aspects of the software with them, their problems and wishes. Sometimes the users open certain topics and clear some doubts that we were struggling with. They are usually very positive, appreciate our visions and pursuance to make the software better and more efficient. We usually finish the conversation with their greetings and compliments to our support team.
I really believe that professional application development is a serious job – sometimes it is exhausting and stressing. But I also believe that good and relaxing atmosphere can help a lot. It is very important to me to have fun throughout a day.
Also, it is very important how we feel about our software – we simply love it. We are proud of it. We feel really satisfied when we implement some new function or when some functionality is getting improved.
Just imagine the picture in kindergarten, when somebody gives a new toy to the children and they become so happy. That picture is sometimes very similar to our reaction when we have some new functionality and start to work on it.
I insist that personal communication between team members must be full of respect, and I encourage every member to show energy, motivation and full willingness in his or her development contribution.
Professional application development is a very serious job. It is true. But we like it.
P.S. All the caricatures are drawn by Karla, member of our development and support team and the good spirit of our company. The gentleman with the beard is myself, Dražen Galić.
