Creating the Right Business Solution

Many IT systems often start out aiming to solve different problems from what was required when they start being built. However, the best systems are those shaped during their development to address emerging business drivers and needs that appear and those that change over time.

A good analogy to creating great systems is that the best route to get you from A to B is not always a straight line, but needs to go via C to avoid traffic and this route can only be done by using experience and local knowledge.

We believe that creating great IT systems involves blending years of experience gained from working on a variety of projects with the expert business knowledge of the customer throughout the system development.

This is why the most important aspect in all projects we undertake is to build a bridge between our development teams and your business people. Establishing this link and creating a close working partnership with you, we make sure that what you need is what we build. During the project we will continually check with on your needs and requirements throughout, so that your feedback is being used to steer the project in the correct direction and delivering the best solution for your business. We build the best possible solution with you and for you!

Listening: a Project Pre-requisite to Success

How often have we seen projects failing due to the lack of ability to listen? We, at Liemur, have too often be called in endangered projects to realize that most elements needed for success were in place but it was the lack of empathy and ability to listen to the other that was the source of the problem.

The Technical team believes that the business does not listen to their constraints when the Business stakeholders, on the other hand, complain about the lack of Business interest and understanding from the Technical team. This deadly pattern is incredibly too common.

We have realized a long time ago that it is not helping any project in any way. What is helping is the exact opposite: the construction of a true dialog. By Dialog, we do not mean “Two monologs crossing politely each other’s path” but the ability to build a better solution via the fruitful exchange of information. After all, in reality, the technical and business teams are in the same boat. The failure of one party necessarily means the failure of the other. There is no such thing as a business-succesful-technical-failure project or technical-success-business-failure. The only proper success is a technical solution at the service of the business.

Listening is therefore a capability that we have developed and nurtured. When working with us, we guaranty that you will have our ear for a constructive dialog. We do not come with the solution that fits all. We need to know what you really want in order to satisfy these needs. We need to create a proper dialog with you to produce the best possible solution within your constraints and the technical possibilities of the time! Yes, we listen! We are the technical partner who you will talk to!

Near-shore Development

We, at Liemur, have considered these experiences through the years, since the early years of 2000. What was wrong with outsourcing to other countries? We concluded that communication was definitely the main reason for the troubles. After all, we have had for long, inside Liemur, several staff working from Germany and Canada for our customers in UK. That has always worked very well. We never had a single issue with this setup. So, the problems encountered by some of our customers with their outsourcing providers must have come from a different reason.

We are experts on technology. We are process experts. These two domains, even slightly broken were not explaining all the difficulties encountered. We then have started studying these projects, the nature of the complains (on both sides), the setup, the documents exchanged, etc. We started a journey on studying Human communication –written, verbal, body language-; psychology –profiling, conflict management, change management-; Culture –cross-cultural communication, what it means to “be” British, French, Hungarian, Japanese, etc.

Although fascinating, we never lost sight of our main goal: Software Projects with a team built from various horizons. We ended up creating our own Liemur project framework. It encompasses Technology, Process and Human Dynamics. We have bridged the gap between the purely technical approach to software and purely soft human approach to projects. We believe that no competitor have made that effort, this multi-years investment. We did it because we are passionate by what we do. We are passionate about customer satisfaction and staff satisfaction.