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SILiCON-VALLEY SAVVY: Company-X co-founders and directors Jeremy Hughes, left, and David Hallett, say the software specialist is doing a lot of insourcing work in Silicon Valley.

“We do a lot of work in Silicon Valley,” Company-X co-founder and director David Hallett said. “What’s the difference between New Zealand and Silicon Valley? It’s just the scale. You add extra zeros to numbers.”

One client asked Company-X to build a system that enabled billion-dollar decisions.

“One of our Silicon Valley clients initiated a process where they evaluated all of the teams that do work within that organisation,” said Company-X co-founder and director Jeremy Hughes.

“We had a couple of teams in there, and our team came out on top. We were kind of blown away that we were in that position, but we have got a lot of skill available and a pretty fantastic attitude.

"This particular client has a metric around the best developers across their whole organisation and our guys have been up on that leader board a number of times."

Hallett said New Zealand consistently punched above its weight in software development capability.

This capability was recognised by a Silicon Valley-based consultant in the USA who joined a Company-X team for nearly two years.

“She said she didn’t want to leave our team,” Hallett said. “She wanted to stick around because we were the highest performing team she had ever encountered globally, and that’s from us here in New Zealand working remotely.”

“When she left,” Hughes added, “she said that our team was the most capable team she had ever worked with. So I really enjoy that quote. Rather than us claiming, someone else is telling us.”

Such feedback is the result of Company-X culture and team capability.

“Our client’s regularly praise us for the professionalism of our team, in terms of the interaction of our teams across all responsibilities and skills, in terms of the way we do the work, but quantitatively they are also praising us on the quality of the work,” Hallett said.

“It’s great to hear our work being acknowledged as really good quality. The user experience is fantastic, the level of maintenance required is very low because it’s generating such high quality. It’s around methodologies as well, the way in which you do the work. We’re being praised for the Agile way we engage, they really love the communication and camaraderie and the professionalism that comes with those kinds of engagements.

“It’s about both being professional and delivering a really good service and they praise us on those two aspects. It's neat. You feel like we do what we say we’re doing.”