With nine years of experience in building cross-platform digital products, we’ve learned many valuable lessons. Over time, we have started working with several companies that keep relying on our expertise and skillful team. These long-term relationships have made us reconsider who we are as a company and where we are heading.
Our mission is simple and clear: we are a partner who proactively thinks along to translate our customers’ ideas into valuable digital solutions.
Beautiful words, but how do we put these into action? By means of our Product Teams.
1. we are a partner
Clients have a default point of contact and they can count on a team they are familiar with and that knows them well. It’s only logical that this kind of partnership and cooperation is faster and much more cost-effective.
The best way to become a long-term partner is to work in close, self-managing teams that really know our clients and our clients’ products. That’s why we made the shift from ‘occasional’, technology-driven teams to our current Product Teams. This way of working ensures both a strong bond within the icapps team and a strong connection with our customers.
Maintaining partnerships with clients without focusing on the relationships within a team, is impossible. “Thanks to the Product Teams, there is much less rotation between the teams, so we get the chance to become a close-knit group,” says Pieter Moeyersons, Scrum Master at icapps. “Regardless of technology, we are rowing the same boat together. As a unit we work hard, laugh a lot and we constantly learn from each other’s know-how. In this way, profound knowledge of the product can embed deeply into the team.”
The logical consequence of these strong internal partnerships, is that the collaboration with the customer is much more personal and productive. Pieter adds: “Clients have a default point of contact and they can count on a team they are familiar with and that knows them well. It’s only logical that this kind of partnership and cooperation is faster and much more cost-effective.”
2. Product teams proactively think along thanks to stabiliy
The product is now built by a stable cross-functional team that proactively thinks along with our customers, and has the right skills to service their own products from end to end.
The Product Teams working together for an extended period of time, has a very important advantage: stability. This is as important in our Product Teams as it is for our business as a whole.
Stability means that we consistently pull in the same direction. This is not only the case for our Product Teams. Working in stable teams enables us to easily think along with our clients as well.
“We know our customers’ brand and projects inside out, which makes us feel very connected to them,” Pieter states. “We are very proud of what we create and we care about the client’s products as if they were ours.”
On the business level we strive towards stable partnerships. We combine the client’s business-knowhow with our technical knowledge. This way we are constantly looking for innovative ways to improve the product. In this way we build digital solutions that actually make a difference.
3. From ideas to valuable digital solutions
In the past nine years we have learned that working with technology-focused teams can sometimes narrow you down in ideas. Unconsciously you tend to limit yourself to the possibilities of a certain technology, while the opportunities of a product might be so much broader.
Kristof Van Gemert, Partner at icapps, elaborates: “The aim of our business is to use technology to enrich daily life. In doing so, we want to offer nothing less than the whole package.”
In order to guarantee a qualitative digital solution we need a combination of skills: design, web, iOS, Android, React (Native)... and many more. We no longer gather the required skills and techniques to build a temporary team around a product, as we did in the past 9 years. “The whole idea of ‘temporary’ no longer fits our mission. It won’t help us and our customers to really enrich the user’s daily lives. Instead, the product is now built by a stable cross-functional team that proactively thinks along with our customers, and has the right skills to service their own products from end to end”, Kristof concludes.
