Marc Gelissen: We want to be the greatest company to work for now and in 10 years’ time

Where will we be in ten years’ time with Bizzomate? Which customers will we serve? Are we still leveraging the power of low code? And are we still working without hierarchy? Although no one can predict the future, Marc looks ahead to the next ten years in this final blog…

Marc: “When I look at the growth in customers we want to achieve in the next ten years, we’re not focusing on a specific industry. We prefer a much more horizontal approach. Our main concern is the business impact we can deliver for customers: how can we help them survive in an increasingly digital world?”

“What I observe in practice is we’re well equipped to service SMEs with up to 2500 employees. In many cases, these organizations own legacy systems that they want to modernize as business and user needs change. However, they’re unable to execute their legacy migration as efficient and streamlined as they would like. For these businesses, we can act as business brains and trusted advisors. These businesses can completely outsource their digital transformation to us from strategy to execution. For us, that means we can create a real impact. So in 10 years, I hope we’ll have many of these clients in our portfolio.”

“Whether market conditions will be as favourable as they’ve been in recent years remains to be seen. The future of productivity and economic growth in Europe is uncertain and the world is contending with a number of challenges: economic uncertainty and rising inflation. To be honest, though, I’m not too concerned about these developments. We’re built on a solid foundation. Not all businesses may survive during these hard times, but that doesn’t have to be a problem. A crisis allows the best companies to surface and there is nothing wrong with that.”

“When we started Bizzomate in 2012, the economic climate was not very favourable. Our economy was in the aftermath of the banking crisis (2008-2011). That meant that we had to watch our steps carefully during the startup phase, forcing us to set up our processes properly and prevent overspending. As a result, we have now established a solid, completely independent business and that will help us in hard times.”

Bizzomate toolkit
“When I look at our solutions for the next decade, I expect that low-code will remain part of our solution portfolio. Despite what is said about them, low-code solutions require quite a lot of expertise. You really need to understand what you are building. Our colleagues will certainly keep on being deployed for their low-code expertise in the coming years. I do expect that an increasing number of Artificial Intelligence (AI) components will be added to low-code solutions. I envision no code solutions mainly as tools for citizen developers, but not as solutions that we will be involved with in the future.”

“I hope we can add even more smart intelligence to Avola. Hopefully, maximizing AI components will ultimately enable decision mining. With decision mining, we can analyze which rules are actually used in decisions and which aren’t, enabling us to make decisions easier and even generate them automatically in the future.”

Growing together
“What I am sure of is that we will maintain our extraordinary corporate culture. Growing together with employees, customers and society will continue to form the basis of our corporate culture in the next decade. It is crucial that these three pillars remain in balance with each other. If one of those three pillars weakens, problems will occur. So we must be vigilant for imbalance as we believe it is indispensable for a future-proof organization. Especially growing together with society now really distinguishes us from other businesses. Young people are looking for a purpose much more than previous generations. Because we can offer them purpose in their jobs, we attract young people to Bizzomate and I am very proud of that.”

Autonomy, no hierarchy
“An organizational structure without hierarchy will also remain an important part of our corporate culture in 10 years’ time. Because we now work in an organizational structure with expert teams and no hierarchy, we can offer colleagues the best of both worlds. They can work for large customers and can get the learning and development opportunities offered by big enterprises, but with the personal attention and fun that comes with a small business. The younger generation does not want to work for a boss who tells them exactly what to do. They need autonomy to flourish. I am convinced that if you don’t adapt your organization to these generational differences, nobody will want to work for your business in five to ten years. We are already adapting our organizational structure and I see our colleagues are benefiting hugely from that decision.”

“One final statement about the upcoming ten years; above all, let’s have fun toghether! If you enjoy your job, you can achieve so much with great colleagues. We just want to be the greatest company to work with and for, now and in the future.”