I would like to share our experience working with CSIA and Exotek to improve RAFA Solutions as an organization and take it to another level.
It has been only four months since we have received our CSIA Certification, but we can already feel the changes and measure the impact. Let me start from the beginning. It took us more than a year to prepare, basically to understand and to apply the best practices presented by CSIA. The journey we took toward getting Certified is one of the most important ones we’ve undertaken, because that is when we learned about the major processes to use in running an organization, some of which we didn’t initially have at RAFA Solutions.
Over the past year and a half, my personal attitude and opinion about working to becoming Certified was very conflicted. When we first decided to start, we did so because we generally understood that we cannot have a sustainable and growing system integration business without a strong foundation. This opinion changed while we were in the middle of the journey, when everyone in the company started noticing that we were spending a lot of time on this. Everyone, including myself, started feeling a bit doubtful about the importance that this had to be done at that moment of time, when we have critical projects going on and limited time for thinking about the long-term. There were moments when we even stopped working on the CSIA Certification process.
Then, we got a potential customer — a several billion-dollar revenue organization — who pushed us to become more organized and required us to have the ISO9001 quality certificate. This was another point when we decided again to concentrate on all the processes and re-evaluate priorities. In parallel with work on CSIA Certification, we began to learn about the ISO9001:2015 standard and its requirements. Looking back, I can say, in short, that ISO9001 requires having some proper processes and emphasizes the importance of following them, but CSIA tells us what processes we should have to become successful as a systems integrator business.
In the end, our commitment to improve triumphed over all the challenges, and in April, 2017, we were ready to host Don Roberts, an auditor from Exotek, for the final audit. Those couple of days that Don spent with us were the most informative and educational. We were left with many pain points and an understanding of the areas we needed to concentrate on. It was very surprising for us how well he understood the challenges we face and how those can be resolved. Later, during the CSIA Executive Conference, I recognized that we were not alone — other system integrators have similar company structure and processes to those we face.
CSIA changed our thinking. This is not a year’s, or even a couple of years’ project, but this is an SI organization’s algorithm for success and we must pay attention to all the points in the Best Practices all the time to always improve and grow.
I have many friends who have system integration businesses and they often ask me why we should want to get CSIA Certified. Often, they think that the reason is to become more recognized and that potential customers may require having such Certification. My answer to them is very much different. For me, Certification should not be pursued for customers’ recognition or for the sake of recognition at all. The biggest reason is to learn how to build and maintain a profitable system integration business. Most of us, the owners of such businesses, have engineering backgrounds. It is natural for us to prioritize the products and services we deliver, concentrating on the engineering. Often, we forget that the company itself requires more attention to be soundly built and engineered.
Being a small company, we never had a leadership team. I was the only one thinking about the managerial details. Now there are four of us who share responsibilities for the company’s major processes, and to keep improving them. With the help of this team and the vision we all believe in and follow, we were able to scale up our team 50% during the last 4-5 months, and to increase revenues to almost twice what they were when compared to the same period last year. Before, we struggled to make new sales and bring in new business for ourselves and for our technology partner – National Instruments. Recently, we landed two opportunities, bringing business both to NI and to RAFA Solutions.
In May 2017, we attended the CSIA Executive Conference in Fort Lauderdale. That experience provided additional proof that what we started is very important. This is where we got acquainted with the biggest and fastest-growing SI companies from all over the world. I was impressed with their openness and willingness to share and support smaller businesses like ours.
I think the major change we experienced during this period of growth and understanding is the change in our priorities. The highest priority now probably becomes answering the questions about why we do what we are doing and if we are doing those things in the most efficient way.
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