The year 2019 was a time of major changes, intensive development and hard work at Unity Group. We are also preparing for more new and exciting things – a change of location of both our Cracow and Wroclaw offices, as well as expansion into the new markets. We’re opening additional branches while planning 10% growth in hiring and 20% revenue growth. The sky is not the limit anymore!
We’ve closed the previous year with turnover in excess of 10 million euro, of which over 25% came from cooperation with foreign clients based in 10 different countries. We have partnered with 24 new clients and 20 of our current clients were responsible for about 80% of Unity Group revenue last year. In order to deliver all projects on time and maintain flexibility we’ve hired more than 80 new employees. We strongly believe that the experience gained in the implementation of over 100 projects in 2019 will pay off in the coming years.
International projects
In a continuation of our long-term cooperation with two automotive industry leaders, Hyundai and Toyota, we’ve completed the first stages of large-scale projects. We’ve operated in this industry since 1999, when we delivered our first project for Skoda. We specialize in this area as a provider of dedicated systems for car dealerships to manage the sale and turnover of cars and parts.
In addition to the automotive industry, we also focus our activities on the logistics, transport, e-commerce, telecommunications, construction and financial sectors. This year we aim to further develop our competence in these areas, and we plan to significantly increase the number of Unity specialists dedicated to them.
In 2019, we also became involved in a project for GATX Rail Europe consisting of the implementation of guidelines from the European Union directive addressing the railway industry. This is one of the numerous solutions in the area of digital transformation and legacy system transformation that we implement as specialists in these fields. The unique experience gained in projects for GATX allowed us to develop our consulting and implementation skills for subsequent clients we established cooperation with at the end of last year.
Another digital transformation project we lead on is all solutions and consulting provided for Onnibus. We began our cooperation with an audit and design of systematically implemented changes. Unity is one of the few Polish IT companies mature and experienced enough to be able to offer a full range of services in the field of digital transformation and optimization of business processes. We have consulted, developed and implemented such solutions since 1997, which gives us an advantage over other suppliers.
We are also continuing our cooperation and developing systems for Volkswagen Group Poland, LPP (Reserved, House, Cropp, Mohito, Sinsay), IKEA and SwissRe. This means that 2020 will be a very intense time for us, hence the decision to significantly expand the Unity Group team by as much as 10%. This way we will ensure flexibility and readiness for new business challenges facing our current and future clients.
People and development
As part of our team’s expansion, in the fourth quarter of 2019 we hired 200 people at our Wroclaw branch. In addition, we opened an office in Zurich, at Bleicherweg 10 – the Swiss equivalent of Wall Street. Thus, our global Unity Group team has over 250 programmers, administrators & architects, QA specialists, project managers, analysts, salespeople, marketing and promotion specialists, HR, accounting, human resources and finance. In 2020, we plan to increase this number to over 290 experts – we are currently intensively looking for Java and Magento programmers, as well as IT systems integration specialists.
At Unity, we focus on personal development. We support our associates in achieving their professional goals both inside and outside the company. In addition to English classes with native speakers available to all, we also run cyclical Unity Tech Talks and the Manager’s Academy. However, our latest project is the Commerce Academy. As part of this initiative, we will develop awareness and knowledge about the development of sales systems in companies. The Project Managers Section is another interesting project brought to us by one of our brightest PMs. These are cyclical meetings of all PMs in the company, devoted to the exchange of knowledge, experience and workshops on honing their skills.
Exchanging experience within the organization is very important to us, so mentoring is an active part of our everyday life. We also go outside with knowledge, for example as part of regular meetups organized by a local cluster of technology companies – ITCorner Wroclaw. As part of this series, in 2019 Łukasz Sutula, one of the system architects at Unity Group, gave a motivational lecture on modeling the professional development of programmers.
As specialists with 20 years of experience in e-commerce, we decided to take part in an initiative led by the University of Lower Silesia and ITCorner. As part of this project, in 2020 a new field of study is being launched – e-commerce programmer. We will serve as mentor. Our experts will provide students with substantive support, and the company offers the possibility of an internship or employment for the most outstanding graduates.
Commerce Transformation Days and international events
In October 2019, we co-organized our sixth conference addressed to the e-commerce industry. After five successful editions of the Congress of Directors of E-commerce, we changed the formula of the event and joined forces with the ICAN Institute (publisher of MIT Sloan Review Poland). Commerce Transformation Days is a continuation of the mission to spread awareness and knowledge of digital transformation. We are happy to share the experience that we have acquired in this field since 1997.
We also get young people involved in programming – this is reflected in our programming classes for kids. Two such seminars have already taken place in Zurich, and we are planning more.
In addition to organizing events, we are involved in numerous conferences in Poland and abroad. Last year we took part in ITCorner meetups as well as WSO2, Magento and AWS events, where we develop our technological competences.
Plans for 2020
We’re starting the New Year with a bang, in New York, where we soon plan to open another office. This is one of the steps we are taking to implement the Unity Group international expansion plan.
In 2020, the Sales Innovation Expo in London awaits us, soon after NYC delegation. More is yet to come and a number of exciting projects are underway. To meet the needs of our clients this year, we are continuing to develop our offer in the field of Machine Learnig and Business Intelligence.
After 20 years of intensive development on the Polish market, in 2020 we are focusing on promoting our brand abroad. We want our employees to acquire experience in global projects and to expand the current team. I am convinced that as specialists in commerce transformation we offer unique expertise, competence and experience valuable for every organization, regardless of where the company is located.
– says Grzegorz Kuczyński, CEO of Unity Group
