Jonas Trindler, CEO, Zuhlke
In today’s modern era, innovation is no longer an option for businesses. Every business regardless of its size and industry needs to be innovative to stay competitive. However, the path to innovation is not easy. Developing and validating innovative ideas in the real world of consumers while catching the pulse of technology change is challenging. Thus, to help enterprises in turning their visions and innovative ideas into successful real-life results, Zuhlke, a global leading solution partner for digital business innovation, came to the forefront in 1968.
Incepted in Switzerland, the company has more than 50 years of innovation experience and strong expertise in quality software engineering from idea inception to product delivery. Over the years, it has expanded its footprint to 14 locations worldwide including Singapore and Hong Kong. “Since our inception, Zuhlke has successfully delivered over 10,000 client projects for businesses across various industries globally,” says Jonas Trindler, the CEO at Zuhlke Asia.
Focusing On Three Key Aspects of Service Propositions in Asia
In supporting clients on their digital transformation journey, Zuhlke broadly focuses on three fundamental aspects of service propositions: digital product delivery, digital transformation at scale, and digital innovation. The process is accomplished through integrating continuous, iterative feedback loops into the product design and agile development process and thereby continuously addressing customer behaviors and market needs. Zuhlke also works closely with organizations in building and scaling their digital platforms and infrastructure to enable them to keep up with the rapidly changing demands of their customers. In supporting the digital innovation process of clients, Zuhlke’s expert team works closely with them to first understand their business needs and problems. Depending on the challenge presented, its team of specialists then works on developing solutions built on a variety of innovative technologies like AR/VR, blockchain, and big data. Finally, through light-weighted prototypes and early customer involvement, it provides clarity, transparency, and advice clients need to realize their next idea. Combining three essential perspectives with their in-house know-how and expertise – business, technology, and the human experience in a unique way, Zuhlke creates winning strategies, sustainable competitive advantage, and breakout innovation for its clients. Illustrating Zuhlke’s winning approach to delivering value, Jonas shares an instance of how Zuhlke supported a leading private bank in navigating the waters of the digital future.
“A common challenge faced by many traditional corporations is how to become more innovative while also moving faster. Businesses strive to develop, evaluate, and launch more ideas in less time. This often requires a strong culture of innovation, expert know-how, and skilled engineering expertise. Many of our clients look to us for support on bringing in these development practices like DevOps and Continuous Delivery, and a start-up like culture to their teams. In an on-going collaboration with a leading private bank, we are proud to support them in developing an award-winning FinTech risk management solution aimed at transforming the customer’s banking advisory experience,” explains Jonas.
In another recent instance, Zuhlke helped a start-up company to develop an automated process for producing customized artificial skin for burn victims. These instances certainly testify Zuhlke’s engineering excellence and unwavering commitment to deliver outstanding value.
Creating a Difference through Customer-Centric Solutions
Keeping clients’ success at the forefront, Zuhlke always provides optimal solutions to its clients to support them in achieving their business goals. Rather than adopting standardized frameworks or a fixed model of working, Zuhlke focuses greatly on understanding its clients’ business and market needs as well as their challenges to tailor approaches and solutions fitting for each business. For instance, as startups focus on user-centric product delivery and speed to market with limited resources, Zuhlke incorporates lean methodologies enabling them to provide maximum value to their customers with minimum resources, effort, and time through Proof of Concept solutions and working prototypes.
Likewise, with increased demand, reduced headcount, and constrained resources, many mid-sized organizations find it challenging to improve their software delivery speed and quality for their digital products and services. Hence, Zuhlke brings in agile development and lean methodologies to allow mid-sized organizations to quickly and flexibly scale their tech teams and system capabilities to optimize their speed of delivery and respond adaptively to the fast-growing market. Moreover, as a solution partner, the company also helps global corporates in transforming and modernizing their legacy system without compromising on existing delivery.
“Many clients come to us for leadership advice and support on assessing their current systems and team setup for agile maturity. Our team of specialists works closely together with in-house stakeholders and teams to build and execute a roadmap of improvements to transform silo teams and legacy systems into sustainable agile delivery by multi-disciplinary, cross-functional teams for the digital future,” asserts Jonas.
Beyond adaptation of a legacy system to a modern platform through agile development, Zuhlke also put great emphasis on solution sustainability and culture of coaching to build high-performing teams. This ensures that the relevant technical and software delivery know-hows are passed on to a client’s teams along with the collaboration.
Building a Culture of Learning and Growth
According to Jonas, Zuhlke’s core business and success are founded on the quality and talent of its people. As a leading solution partner for digital innovation in Europe and Asia, Zuhlke is supported by a diverse local talent pool of over 1,000 engineers, consultants, and specialists with extensive experience in building bespoke software solutions for business success. In sustaining its workplace culture, the company not only focuses on hiring the best talents in terms of technical skills and cultural fit, but also makes sure its employees stay on top of emerging technologies, relevant methodologies, and trends. It further supports its employees’ growth by providing paid training leave for employee training, and an annual training budget to support growth and development activities such as conference attendance and annual overseas learning camp.
“Our strong focus on engineering quality, life-long learning, and development of our people all form part of our unique culture. From monthly Zuhlke Days to regular tech talks, our engineers are supported by a community that truly believes in inclusion and knowledge sharing,” Jonas highlights.
Envisions a Strong Growth Potential in Asia
Looking into the future, Zuhlke believes that there is a great untapped potential in the Asian markets. Therefore, it intends to have continued growth in the region with heavy investment in local and regional talent.
“In supporting our growth in this region, we put great emphasis on fostering a unique Zuhlke culture to be an employer of choice for our talents and strengthening our structures for key profiles. We also see further growth to be based upon market fluctuations and growing demand of our client portfolios,” adds Jonas.
Moving ahead, Zuhlke also aims to continue its expansion and leadership in local APAC markets while staying true to its commitment to delivering excellence in all its engagements. Meanwhile, it plans to expand and diversify its client portfolio to include other relevant industries with a rising need for digitalization and transformation.