OUTSYSTEMS

In 2001, Paulo Rosado established OutSystems in Lisbon, Portugal.The enterprise software company provides tools for business organizations to develop, deploy and manage omnichannel enterprise applications. OutSystems is now headquartered in Boston, USA with Rosado as CEO.

In 2013, it established a regional headquarter in Singapore to serve the Southeast Asia region, as well as Australia and Japan. With the opening of the Singapore headquarter, OutSystems expects to improve its distribution and customer support worldwide, especially in the APAC region. Today, OutSystems has approximately 1,150 employees globally; it serves over 1,200 customers across 60 countries.

Although the company’ s primary markets are Singapore, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. It is also seeing rapid growth in other emerging SEA countries, such as Brunei, Vietnam, and Malaysia, according to Leonard Tan, Country Manager, Singapore.Tan is responsible for driving business growth in Singapore, while ensuring OutSystems as a skill set and adoption is embedded in all walks of life in the city state.

As a “modern application platform designed to dramatically accelerate the development of the most critical applications, while delivering unprecedented levels of flexibility and efficiency”, Out Systems equips its customers to tackle application backlogs, deliver cloudbased modern apps, and keep up with the changing needs of the business – capabilities envisioned to to help client companies drive future innovation through a combination of fast, visual, model-driven development, AI, cloud, and DevOps.

A QUICK TURNAROUND

OutSystems has seen a slowdown in how companies invest in the adoption of technologies in the initial period of the lockdown due to the uncertainty of the market shift and pandemic impact, Tan admits .“However”, he adds, “this has quickly turned to (customers) revisiting their current technology portfolios and seeing how they can better automate and remove any redundancy in the current systems.”

“AS RECOVERY STARTS TO PICKUP, COMPANIES HAVE COME TO REALIZE THAT RIGID SOFTWARE DESIGNS AND COMMERCIAL OFF-THE- SHELF SOFTWARE( CO TS) ARE HINDRANCES TO TRUE INNOVATION.”

—LEONARD TAN

Recently, OutSystems announced a $150 million capital raise.The round co-led by Abdiel Capital and Tiger Global values OutSystems at $9.5 billion.The funding will be used to expand investments in its R&D and GTM strategy, T an says. Recognizing the challenges of building scalable, adaptable software, OutSystems was founded to give every organization the power to innovate through software.“The latest funding is a recognition of the success of that singular focus and the transformative impact on its rapidly expanding global customer base,” Tan explains.

Despite the recent challenges OutSystems is scaling up its operations in anticipation for market pick up.“We are seeing an increased interest in how OutSystems can help digitize businesses as they start to focus on process automation, customer engagement and application modernization ,” Tan reveals.

“We are focusing our efforts to ensure we work with the government and industry partners to advocate the use of OutSystems as an enterprise app dev platform to transform the way they are delivering their applications. This is of significant importance as we are ensuring that all organizations in Singapore can adopt the technology to enhance their capabilities,” he elaborates.

STRENGTHENING THE TEAM

The requirement to be ‘customer first’ has always been in the DNA of OutSystem hires and staff ,Tan says.“The ability to empathize with clients and to tailor a solution that is relevant is always something (that) I am looking for to ensure we keep the culture alive,” he adds.

“The mentality to learn, relearn and unlearn is something I advocate to ensure my team remains agile, and on their feet while we adapt ourselves to ever changing requirements and landscape in our daily lives. From engagement techniques to customer profiling, down to individual wellness are things we do to ensure all is gainfully employed and engaged.”

Despite the grim situation ,Tan claims there has been no redeployments within the team. In fact, he adds, they even expanded the team to better serve their customers and community.

MARKET ENGAGEMENT

In some ways, OutSystem is engaging with a new market.“Amid the pandemic, we were serving people who were reacting to business disruptions. Gradually, we began serving customers looking to future-proof their businesses, ”Tan explains.At the onset, COVID-19 demanded business continuity and many businesses had to react to shore up their IT capacity and capabilities .“Now, businesses will be proactive and take the measures they need to safely re-open and build business resiliency.

“As recovery starts to pick up, companies have come to realize that rigid software designs and commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) are hindrances to true innovation. More IT organizations and development teams are likely to adopt modern development.”

The dynamic landscape requires applications to be developed efficiently and embrace quicker cycles of experimentation, testing, and iteration – modern development platforms can help with that, Tan surmises .“Businesses need that kind of flexibility and speed as we adapt to this new normal (e.g., remote working, teleconferencing, etc.) and need to invest in solutions that will help them on their journey.”

OutSystems clients use the company’s modern development platform to manage their teams with web/mobile apps for full visibility and control over their business and execute work processes.