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How Long-standing Collaborations make the Magic of Continuous Product Innovation

06 Dec, 2021
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It was an important milestone at coMakeIT. The product was just delivered and the teams were celebrating months of tough work. They were happy since the customer was overwhelmed with the final version of the product and how the dedicated team achieved the results.

The Senior Management Team members congratulated the development team and announced more challenges coming their way. Emphasising on the need to build a long-relationship with the customer, he said, “Today, our job doesn’t get over after delivering the product or implementing it on the site. We need to explore a partnership that goes beyond, it means we need to think differently about what services we can create and how we can help the customer understand the changing landscape in the software domain.” The developers listened intently and one of them had a quick question, “Does this mean we have to keep working on the same product and ensure optimum performance?” The team lead also joined the conversation by asking, “how do we build this relationship; does it mean we design more solutions for the customer?” 

The management team at coMakeIT has always believed in keeping the development teams informed about how evolving technologies present new business opportunities, and how an  innovative mindset is more important than a closure with successful innovation. This clear communication aids in reducing attrition and hence better retention of knowledge.

For our customers, collaborating with coMakeIT is an investment decision, and not a purchase one. It is a decision to invest in knowledge, the results – continuous development and growth – are harvested with the help of our dedicated team. The team and the management on both sides are all committed to continuous innovation. This is the attitude we believe in and nourish together.

coMakeIT has been developing products for its clients since its inception in 2006. We provide software product development services that help businesses, especially ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), to innovate continuously using the software products we make. The products we build are future-ready software products and modern. Though we are often confused with product owners, we are not owners but play a crucial role in creating product owners. i.e. we set up a dedicated team, and provide it with expert guidance to design, build, and release software products for our customers, the product owners. For some of our customers, we also provided a software company as a service. Unlike project development consultancy firms, our relationship with our customers does not stop at the first step – building a product. Gone are the days when product implementation ends at building a product, however perfect the product may currently seem. Innovations now carry on, even after releasing a product, and they require long-term business partnerships.

Several of our client collaborations are more than a decade long. The reasons for our long-term relationships are not always outside the company in the digital ecosystem, they also reside within the company, in the way we function, and the philosophies we believe in. This blog enumerates three crucial reasons behind our success at our primary business goal – building innovative software products for the makers.

Innovation hardly takes a break

Innovation grows in the path of an outward growing spiral, fast and continuous, but slowly expanding and spreading to more and more domains as days go by. It doesn’t stop even when we sleep, the data continuously being gathered by software products used all over the world and the diverse minds behind the products define their evolution. This culture of continuous innovation doesn’t make any product ever complete or perfect. A new product can become a base, with several applications built on it for several customizations. The product can be customization over an existing product in a platform. Newer versions are built on top of a product, or if the technologies used are obsolete a new one would replace the old product. So, naturally, as innovations extend, so do our collaborations.

Products not Projects

Companies keen on innovation are shifting from a project-oriented approach to a product-oriented one. And the product approach needs knowledge retention and demands both continuous innovation and long-term associations. In a typical software consultancy firm, it is normal for resources to move from one team to another frequently, and the delivery of a project is often celebrated with a great sense of completion and accomplishment. Projects have a start and an end date. It hardly happens in a Product implementation firm like ours. Some of our customers approached us for a project, but when we explained to them about the new revenue sources opened by creating and owning intellectual property, a software product, they started thinking about products instead of projects and collaborated with us to build them.

In today’s world, business opportunities cannot lead to progress without collaborations, and that too with un-reliable and short-term ones. Our understanding of how we innovate, and progress has hugely helped us in moulding such opportunities to long-term business relationships. New-age software products since they exist in the cloud or digital platforms, the customizations are built as apps or extensions. These small apps and extensions collectively define the path of product development/innovation in the connected digital landscape. Opportunities are brought by the continuous and incremental expansion of innovation to new areas getting digitalized. With digitalization spreading to new domains, products need several customizations for newer applications. Every new application of digital technology brings a new chance to build a new collaboration.

Cultural Alignment

The continuous nature of product innovation demands long-term collaborations. Yet, not all collaborations last as long as they need to, the reason in most cases is a rigid notion of culture and innovation. coMakeIT has had several long-standing customers all over the globe. We enjoyed their trust and friendship as much as building their innovations.

When a new customer is onboarded, we think it is a new start of a long-term relationship, irrespective of the size of the task we are responsible for completing. Some of our customers approached us for a small extension, but upon experiencing our collaboration extended it to subsequent innovations. Many times, the relationships extend beyond product development or business goals, because our customer onboarding process rests on our open culture, mutual respect and empathy, and passion for innovation.

Innovations hardly end with the products our customers want us to develop. This growth in the digital ecosystem demands fruitful collaborations. However, such collaborations are not built easily on business pacts, rather on strong foundations of trust, transparency, and acceptance of diverse cultures. coMakeIT has formed many such win-win alliances in the past and continues to grow strongly and steadily. To build innovative software products with our collaboration, please mail us your product idea at info@comakeit.com

Divya Prathima
The author was a java Developer at coMakeIT before turning into a stay-at-home-mom. She slowed down to make art, tell stories, read books on fiction, philosophy, science, art-history, write about science, parenting, and observe technology trends. She loves to write and aspires to write simple and understandable articles someday like Yuval Noah Harari. We are very happy to have her back at coMakeIT and contribute to our relevant and thought provoking content.
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