GuideVision’s biggest milestones

I’d say we were the first to offer ServiceNow in Central and Eastern Europe. But our competitors are global consultancy brands, and it was crucial to ensure they didn’t crush us. The main thing was to convince customers that we understand then and that we complete what we promised on paper. In general, our entire business is highly based on reputation.

Originally we were only a supplier of software. But gradually we moved from providing purely technical solutions into to the consulting sphere, at least in part. Over time, we managed in some cases to become strategic partners with joint responsibility for achieving our customers’ strategic goals. Sometimes we even helped to define those goals.

Getting to a position like this was very difficult. We were a small Czech company with a couple of technical and business consultants, and our clients were aware that betting all their cards on us could be too risky for them. It wasn’t entirely possible to become a supplier to banks, for example. We worked as a ‘body shop,’ renting ourselves out inside companies and building the trust to become a regular supplier. We started on small- and medium-sized projects and grew gradually.

In 2019, we started to look for a new strategic partner with whom GuideVision could grow faster. We immediately had several offers on the table. Luckily we didn’t have money pressures, so we were able to search for a partner who would be able to ensure a high degree of autonomy, not step on the brand we built and who wouldn’t dissolve us into their giant structure. In 2020, we managed to reach an agreement with Infosys, and in doing so became the flagship of their European ServiceNow competency.

Having a strong partner behind us has enabled us to win multi-million dollar projects that would have been hard for us to achieve as a local company. Today we have nearly 300 employees and are still extremely grateful when someone puts their trust in us. That’s why we always do everything we can to make sure our customers never regret their decision to work with us. Of course our connection with Infosys brings a number of challenges, and requires a certain change of thinking, but I can say that the last 16 months of working together have brought valuable experience and have enabled us to become more universal. We are now able to work on much larger projects than we could two years ago.

Stay tuned! In the next part, we will say more about GuideVision’s first major client.