This year has been such a challenge for all of us!
Due to the overall uncertainty, each decision had to be made with special care and adapted to the situation.
Deciding what steps to take has not been easy. Still, priorities that guided us have always been our employees’ safety, maintaining the company’s stability, and preventing the more severe consequences of this unenviable situation.
The Best B2B Company in the Region and World’s Best 1000 Service provider!
Our success was recognized by Clutch – a renowned provider of ratings and reviews of B2B firms and one of the few authorities whose opinion is valued in this area. We were named the best B2B Company in Serbia and one of the world’s best 1000 service providers!
World’s Best 1000 Service provider
We are remarkably proud of this achievement since only the top 1% of companies listed on Clutch’s website manage to be selected. These awards serve as proof that our clients recognize the efforts we put in to provide them with the best possible service, but also that we’re heading in the right direction.
The growth in 2020
Despite all of the challenges, 2020 was the year of growth!
As a company, we’ve almost doubled in size. Our headcount is 61, and we’re looking to scale up even more during 2021. While hiring and growing, we always kept an eye on our future colleagues’ expertise and their experience. That’s why I’m personally convinced, we still have the most experienced team around on our hands, with 7+ years of experience on average, and more than half of my colleagues being Senior Engineers (54% to be precise), and almost 40% classified as Medior Engineers.
In 2020, we opened five new positions – Office Manager, Chief Legal Officer, Visual Designer, Marketing Assistant, and Finance Specialist. Those positions have been a great help to our team and the growth of our company.
We are also proud to announce that our team’s growth has led to the fact that in February of 2020, we moved our office to a new location on the main boulevard in Novi Sad – Bulevar oslobođenja 62. Sadly, however, due to the pandemic restrictions, our homes became offices shortly after – starting March 2020.
Focus on clients and projects remained paramount with over 30 new projects started during the year, and besides that, we managed to establish beautiful new partnerships. We are proud of the successes of our clients, which have developed together with us. Our partner, Litebit, a crypto trading platform, was named the best crypto broker.
Litebit – Best Crypto broker
We must also congratulate our clients – Cellink, which became the first Swedish unicorn this year; the Bandit, with which we have developed a technology that will continue to grow within one of the largest startups in the world – goPuff, which acquired Bandit. We also congratulate ArKaos, which was acquired by one of the largest media companies.
Our Accomplishments
We were invited by Sandoz to their Big Data Hackathon where we devised a digital strategy for the global leader in generic and biosimilar medicines. Our engineers were on the winning team for the 2nd year in a row!
This year, Hackathon was held online, and participants had three full days to propose a solution for one of the four challenges presented to them. The members of our team were: Bojan Malinović, Darko Kovač, Jovan Tukić, Dragan Torbica, Dejan Stojanović, Teo Becker, and Boris Obradović.
Our QA team continued to grow, and several of our QAs have become certified SCRUM masters – Miloš Milić, Radmila Biga, Dunja Ibročić, and Milica Baturan.
We are incredibly proud of them, as we remain committed to the view that delivery quality is the most important thing. It has always been crucial for us to invest not just in code quality, but in the project’s quality control overall – communication on the project, relationships between people on the project, and project team health check.
Socialization in Corona-time
Even though we started the year strongly, with one gathering for New Year’s dinner and later one bowling event, unfortunately, we were interrupted by the pandemic.
2020 has taught us to socialize differently and adopt new ways of practicing transparency. Therefore, we introduced online Company-Wide meetings. In that way, we managed to inform our employees about all the news and make it easier for new employees to get to know the rest of the team and introduce them to our processes.
Challenges in 2020
After only seven months, we managed to resume the salary growth system, which we put on hold due to the uncertainty that the pandemic got us and the desire to preserve the company’s stability.
Because we almost doubled our employees’ number, we had to start with the company’s reorganization and the development of new processes. It also included starting the process of obtaining ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 standards.
What to expect in 2021?
I can say that 2021 will be even more exciting and prosperous for all of us with full certainty!
Special thanks to my team for all the hard work, every bright idea, commitment, and support you provided! I am proud of the outstanding group of people who make up BrightMarbles.
Stay healthy, and I wish you much happiness and progress in 2021!