The challenge
In late 2006 a Swiss IT consultancy — part of a larger German group — approached us with a problem. Their end client, a Fortune 500 energy-services company with operations in more than forty countries, needed an enterprise resource management system. Materials, procurement, suppliers, project resources — all of it had to be visible, auditable, and accessible across the globe. The consultancy had the domain expertise; what they needed was a dedicated engineering team they could rely on for the long term.
How we worked together
We assembled a ten-person team: project manager, systems architect, developers, QA. The technology stack was .NET and SQL Server. The working rhythm was daily — email, video, and instant messaging across the time difference — combined with Agile delivery so that shifting priorities never waited for a quarterly planning cycle.
The first year was about trust. The consultancy's engineers flew to our offices; ours flew to theirs. Engagements that start as "you build what we specify" rarely stay that way if they work — and by year two, our team was not just implementing requirements but helping to shape the solution architecture alongside the client.
The core team composition has not meaningfully changed since. The project manager, Richard Yang, and the systems architect, Paul Wang, have both been on the account since 2006. That kind of continuity is rare in outsourced engineering, and it is the single thing the client values most.
Outcome
The system is now used by more than 4,000 people across the client's global operations. Our team has received repeated performance bonuses and the kind of reference that is hard to manufacture: the Swiss consultancy eventually disbanded its own internal development organization and handed all engineering work to us. Eighteen years in, they describe the relationship not as vendor and client but as colleagues who happen to work at different companies.
Our team members and the client's people now rotate through each other's offices. They are good partners — and, genuinely, friends.
The most expensive mistake in software services is the one the client cannot see: turnover. Keeping the same ten people on a mission-critical system for eighteen years is not a cost-saving strategy. It is the entire strategy.