{"id":1080,"date":"2019-04-12T19:23:30","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T19:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/konsulttifirman-kasvutarina-ketteraksi-testaustaloksi\/"},"modified":"2020-04-27T11:59:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T11:59:04","slug":"growth-story-how-we-became-an-agile-testing-powerhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/growth-story-how-we-became-an-agile-testing-powerhouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Growth Story: how we became an agile testing powerhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How does the work of a few IT consultants turn into a growth company employing two dozen people? This is the story of Testimate as replayed by two of the founders, Juha Karvonen<\/strong> and Klaus Lakkala<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surviving the first Death Valley<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Testimate Ltd was founded in October 2011. At the time, Finnish \neconomy was struggling: the Nokia mobile phone business was facing a \ndownward spiral and the gloomy trend was spreading across the IT field. \nThe omens for withdrawing from paid employment and starting a new \nbusiness were less than ideal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Juha Karvonen<\/strong>: Well, when you start off at the \nbottom, there\u2019s no other way than up really. Among us founders, we had \nworked in testing consultancy for a good while, and we had a good vision\n of how things could be done even better. Running our own business \nseemed like an interesting prospect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Klaus Lakkala<\/strong>: In consultancy, people sell their own\n competence, and that\u2019s something we already knew. With laptops and \nphones as pretty much the only initial investments, the risk seemed \nbearable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The founding team got off to a good start, in fact, as projects \ncontinued through our own company. Our first year passed hard at work, \nbut then, several protects came to an end, and our workload suddenly \ndropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JK<\/strong>: It didn\u2019t take us long to realise that we should get started with selling. We humbly grabbed our phones and started calling any and all of our contacts, warm and cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Founding consultants busy in new business acquisition<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After a few months of active selling and a bunch of customer meetings, we luckily came across a customer project which in the end turned out to last for whole three years. This order was crucial in helping our small consultancy firm rise from its humble beginnings and turn into a bigger business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Single employee quickly multiplied into twenty<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

After the dry period, the company started gaining customers and \norders at an increasing pace. The tiny founding team started to gather a\n financial buffer for the company. In 2014, a point was reached at which\n the company hired its first employee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JK<\/strong>: Right from the get-go, we had entertained the \nthought of steady growth. Since we seemed to attract great customers and\n continuous demand, we decided to take on new talent. We figured that \nvolume will give us security and that doing a good job always pulls more\n demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KL<\/strong>: I have to admit that we also had our share of \ngood luck in the process, as we hired our first employee before we had \neven landed a customer project. Fortunately, we quickly closed a \nsuitable project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our second employee was hired at the turn of 2014\u20132015, and by the \nend of 2015, we already had six employees and also subcontracted some of\n the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KL<\/strong>: In those days, it was relatively easy to keep doubling our turnover and employee number. We aimed at steady, controlled growth. For new employees, we always tried to secure order book visibility six months ahead \u2013 this gave us the confidence to sign new employment contracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Team getting together<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, only two new employees joined our expanding consultancy firm, whereas in 2017, the number of employees again doubled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beginning of 2019, Testimate employs 20 testing experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secret of success: fabulous staff and first-class customers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The steady growth has been founded on successful recruitment decisions and high customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JK<\/strong>: We\u2019ve been able to find great employees. In our \nrecruitment process, we have stressed not only testing expertise but \nalso the importance of customer work. By this we mean really \nunderstanding customer needs and adjusting one\u2019s own work to those exact\n needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KL<\/strong>: Our employees are the company\u2019s face to our \ncustomers. They must have quite liked the face, as most of our \ncustomerships have been long-standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have also had a very low staff turnover. Throughout Testimate\u2019s \nhistory, we have only had two employees leave the company for new \nchallenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KL<\/strong>: Meaningful work is key: if there\u2019s nothing to \ndo, you don\u2019t have to sit on your hands. We always try to find sensible \nwork for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JK<\/strong>: On top of that, frankly speaking, our compensation is very competitive. If you do a good job and secure work for yourself, you have monthly bonuses coming your way. We have no zero-hour contracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Testimate team at Levi, 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Testimate doesn\u2019t have its own premises, as we work side by side with our customers. We have weekly meetings online, and the company chat serves as our hotline. A few times a year the team gathers together for training and having fun together. The latest get-together was a traditional weekend trip to snowy Ruka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeking new growth<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Testimate keeps pursuing new growth, but with no pressure or hurry. The founders themselves are still hard at work with customer projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JK<\/strong>: Customer work keeps you alert and your tools \nsharp. The fact of the matter is that in a growing company, \nadministrative tasks eat up an increasing amount of time. Recruitment, \nsales and customership management all take quite a bit of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Testimate\u2019s consultants have also been seen roaming outside the \nHelsinki metropolitan area, such as Pori, Turku and Lahti. Projects have\n also been completed in other Nordic countries and the Baltic countries.\n One highly interesting new location for growth is up north, in Oulu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KL<\/strong>: The IT field is blooming in Oulu, so we find it \nonly natural to boost our presence in the area. We\u2019re confident that the\n same growth strategy, based on good, long-term customerships, also \nworks there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V<\/strong><\/em>Would you like to join the Testimate crew? Or do you want these guys to test your product or service? Get in touch with Klasu and Juha today!<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a few IT consultants become a major testing house – here’s Testimate’s story from the beginning to today, as told by the company founders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,29,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-testimate-spirit-en","category-testing-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1559,"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions\/1559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testimate.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}