Once upon a time two blokes, co-workers, good friends were spending way too much time in the office behind the computer screens typing, developing and trying to help people do their job as quick and as efficient as possible. One was a genius programmer and an architect of several digitalization platforms. The second with an exceptional ability for hearing people, could come up with a solution for every problem they had. Even so, both were really tired of not being able to completely scratch the itch, always making compromises and never being able to deliver optimal solutions.
So, they raised some funds, quit their jobs and all that was left was 40 years of experience between them, enthusiasm and enormous determination to create something new and to give everyone access to digitalization and digital transformation. The truth is, 15 to 20 years ago, only big companies could afford what we now know as digitalization. They had to have a couple 100.000 €, have their own IT experts and go through 2 or more years of nerve-racking project implementation. Most of the micro, small and medium businesses could plainly not afford that.
Steve and Bill had a vision of a computer being present in every household. Tom PIT’s vision is much the same, for digitalization.
Unlike implementing accounting solutions, which is basically required these days to run a company, digitalization of operative processes is much different. In more than 20 years of experience we learned that these processes cannot be digitalized and thus optimized with finished products, but instead with custom solutions. If you choose Tom PIT, or whatever other solution, and it doesn’t support your manufacturing process fitted for your production line, will you change your production line? Absolutely not! The solutions and the providers have to adjust to your process! The same process you are known for, as a result of which you are successful on the market and bring money to the table.
Therefore, to ensure our success, one crucial thing had to be done. We had to develop our own technology that would tackle the BIGGEST challenge:
• being able to fully cover all known and unknown user requirements – today, tomorrow, in five years’ time.
Sounds like science fiction? Not for us.
After the first two years of developing day and night, performing proof of concepts, mostly for free, selling only our vision and implementing our technology piece by piece, we were ready to launch. At this point I would like to say “thank you” to all of our initial partners for believing in us. At the beginning, ironically, our first clients were the biggest companies in the region. Why? Because our solutions were under open-source policy. After we finished with the project, they wanted to control it. Upgrade it by themselves, with us or with a third-party vendor. As long as they had the option to do whatever they like afterwards, we were the no. 1. option for them.
Still, these were not our preferred clients. What did we do wrong? What were we missing? Where did we fail? Many days have gone by before we realised the universal truth of digitalization: “Everyone has to be involved in digitalization!”. Every individual in the process: old, young, manager, line operator, maintenance crew, part time student, hired help, visitors, everyone with their name and surname. But we knew this was not possible while having a licensing model. I never liked licences but from that day on I hated them. Even if it’s 1 € per person, it’s too much. This money should be spent on something new; new feature, new option, new KPI, new dashboard, new digital channel. Anything but licenses. Each spent EURO should provide added value.
Now, you think we had it all? You would think so, but there was still a piece of the puzzle missing. Imagine an owner or a manager of a company that manufactures metal and plastic products. It might come as common sense to us that they should know everything about their IT processes. But the truth is – they don’t know what it takes to make digitalization work. And they don't even want to know. “Robert, you have the best solution, great service, we can afford it but now I need to buy servers, OS and DB licences. Set it up, run it, maintain it, archive data, worry about it. No, no and no. I have my laptop, my big TV screen and my phone. That’s it. I don’t want anything else.”
Now is not the time for rest, Tom PIT. Let’s build a data centre. Easier said than done, but we did it. Now the puzzle is complete.
From that day forward we were able to reach kind people from all branches, business sizes, geographical locations and digital requirements. We have the technology that adapts entirely to their processes. It does not cost them thousands of euros just to use it. And they need nothing but their phones to use it.
The launch of an all-in-one service was ready. We are now a company of more than 30 experts, with open positions for 45 more. Expanding to new markets. Enabling access to digitalization to companies and individuals, helping them to become even more successful and building the ecosystem that may one day be a standard in the field of digital transformation.
