Year in review, 2022

Annual reviews are becoming a custom that we all look forward to. 2022 has been a tough year defined by historical events and challenges in the global economy; it has also been a year of learning and compassion for all of us, either as a team or as individuals.  

In spite of market stagnation in certain sectors, we continue to expand since our partners recognize the advantages of working with us, including the optimization of IT budgets for businesses that use our services.

The last year has been truly a whirlwind. We’ve established various significant partnerships, reorganized our company from the inside out, and organically focused on data management solutions. 

Now is a good opportunity to reflect on everything that we accomplished and collect our thoughts into a concise summary. 

Activities undertaken in 2022:

• creation and implementation of the business continuity plan
• Implementation of candidate journey path and data-driven recruitment procedures
• expanding company expertise and services toward data management services
• focus on community building and improving internal procedures in accordance with the human-centric value

Vstorm in numbers:

• 23 new team members joined us
• A variety of new business relationships established
• 221% revenue growth year-over-year
• 5375 meters above sea level, peak Gokyo Ri in the Himalayas was reached by Vstorm

Want to know more? Continue reading to learn more about our 2022 developments!

Financial stability 

We are constantly expanding, with a 221% increase in revenue year-over-year. Vstorm develops its culture around freedom and stability, from the very beginning, we are a debt-free company, with no investors, no bank credits, and even no leasings. 

Vstorm is capital- and decision-independent, with healthy cash flow and profitability. The secret sauce to highly independent work is to give our clients value while focusing on solving complex problems.

Expertise and projects

Custom data management solutions were the core of this year’s finished and ongoing projects.  We learned more, and our route toward data specialization became more distinct. based on our past work, our experience as a team, and the projects we’ve been working on for close to three years. Why the data? Because of our expertise and strong belief that is where the real potential is. In some industries, there is a high volume of untapped data. The underutilization of this data prevents the improvement of product quality, sales and customer service efficiency, reliability, and better profit margins. We can help most effectively there.

We strengthened our services in data management: data strategy design, data mining, data structuring, data warehousing, data visualization, and algorithmization. 

Our technical team is mainly focusing on JavaScript and Python in data management software development and Machine Learning, as a part of full-cycle project development. We also specialize in QA, Cloud, and DevOps to build data-specific solutions from the ground up.

We have singled out some projects we are especially proud of:

Data Management in Healthcare:

Glucoactive is a Research and Development start-up, with an estimated worth of over 6 million euros that is working on a revolutionary medical care product that will change the way we treat diabetes.

The objective of this project is to better manage data, facilitate the R&D process (both for the current device and those in the future), including support for data analysis, and maximize the quality of the resulting data.  Read more here.

Data management for e-commerce:

WoodWatch has been named to the FT1000, the Financial Times ranking of Europe’s fastest-growing companies, and listed by Forbes.

Business intelligence software gave Customer’s teams a bird’s-eye perspective of the data that mattered to them and helped them distill the information into actionable insights. Read more here.

Extended team for heater manufacturer

Viessmann’s main goal was to hire remote testers to augment their in-house R&D quality assurance team. They needed to add experienced testers who could do full-cycle testing and turn test cases into a complete support solution to make the team stronger.

Vstorm provided Viessmann with a good-fit pool of quality assurance specialists to fill the position. We provide data-driven recruitment, a rigorous vetting process, and an author’s methodology supported by a set of digital semi-automated tools. Read more here.

Extended team for world-known Enterprise

The primary objective was to augment Atos’s international IT teams with highly qualified, experienced IT specialists.

Vstorm’s post-hiring efforts and community-first approach lead to a retention rate of 93%, a good rate in the European IT environment. Read more here.

Global Outreach

In 2022, we continued to collaborate with corporate enterprises, SMBs, and startups and we broadened our outreach. We have been working with world-known brands s from more than 7+ countries such as Germany, Austria, the USA, Holland, France, Poland, and the UK. We have been performing cross-industries and worked for fintech, manufacturing, e-commerce, the energy sector, automotive and Telecomm/ICT, and others.     

Partnerships and Business

We’ve partnered with leading organizations across a range of industries to help them unlock their digital potential and source the best IT specialists on the market. We have formed a strategic alliance with our US-based partner Magic Mondayz. We’ve established various multi-year partnerships, a fact, that makes us especially proud. It shows that we can build long-term relationships with our clients.

To ensure continuous workflow and service for our clients and employees, we designed and constantly maintain programs – 360 Employee Risk Management, Business Continuity Plan, Operating Backup Plan; and Business Insurance. We aim to be crisis resistant.

Thanks to the customization of our offerings for each of the foreign markets, we were able to achieve an unexpected result in a relatively short period of time. We have already completed projects worth more than PLN 150,000 to date. But the greatest potential has been generated for 2023 when revenue within our business should exceed PLN 1 million.

We took part in the “Going Global 2.0” program, whose goal was to promote Lower Silesia companies both in Poland and around the world. We participated in 10 economic missions, visiting the biggest trade shows in the world (FIME in Miami, GITEX Global in Dubai, GamesCom in Cologne, Tokyo Games Show,  Electronica in Munich, Silicon Saxony Day in Dresden, DMEA in Berlin, and Oslo Innovation Week, to name just a few),  Thanks to that, we further strengthened our internationalization strategy in markets such as the United States, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, and Germany.

People

There was a certain increase in the team size, and new procedures were implemented.

Our main approach is based on two values: human-centric and community-first; all our People programs and procedures implemented this year were natural continuations. In the end, it’s not all about the figures. When a company expands, it faces new obstacles in managing its internal operations. Because of this, we are committed to keeping our methods up-to-date and modern to get the most work done and keep our employees happy.

• Small Talk – new shape of regular community meetings – thank you so much for all your effort in building a place where we can share the knowledge between us
• Motivo challenges – series of team competitions such as “ Taka sytuacja”, “ Halloween challenge”, and “ Winter Challenge” with rewards
• The anniversary program will be announced still in December and the first celebration will take place in January 2023 
• Referral Program – created to promote Vstrom among your colleagues and trusted Consultants – don’t forget to recommend us a profile and get a nice fee for that which can be spent for the realization of your passions 
• Financial well-being – a well-defined program: a series of education meetings about finances, saving, and investing because we care about any stress-related aspect of our community members, including this financial one. 
• Optimization/automation of processes with constant contact with community members 
• The onboarding process was one of the areas we kept an eye on from the perspective of internal People processes and systems 

Rebranding 

At the beginning of 2022, we rebranded, With time, our fast-paced growth has pushed us into a new era. We wanted our branding to reflect our evolution as a global digital community. We made sure that our digital presence was strong and that our branding matched the new ideas. We also kept working on our outreach. Read here, what was said in press and media about Vstorm in 2022!

Impact 

In order to give back this year, we calculated that we saved at least 30 trees per year as we are a paperless and zero-waste community. We know it’s time for us to act and go green. We promote and support paperless approaches among our community members. As a company, we advise reducing our carbon footprint while working remotely and promoting a sustainable culture, avoiding unnecessary offline promotional materials and gadgets (paper, plastic).

Laptops are one of the main tools used by youth and children for schooling purposes. We wanted to help with the development aspect and support Ukrainian children who strongly require laptops for remote education. We organized the action inside the company and with other firms to gather them and the first batch of laptops and tablets went to Fundacja Słonko and Nefretytowa 55 and to the victim of the war, who undergoes further operations in one of the hospitals of Wrocław. Also, we gathered some digital devices and donated them to the League of Extraordinary Minds – with the goal of encouraging Ukrainian children in Wroclaw to learn how to code by means of an online platform. Read more here

Summary and plan for 2023

During the last twelve months, new business opportunities emerged, and our focus on data management solutions became clear.  We’ve experienced a lot of growth and new policy changes throughout this period at Vstorm. In spite of worldwide economic stagnation, we’ve continued to expand, added new people to the team, and improved the internal flow of the organization, making sure it continues smoothly. And we trekked in the Himalayas.

2023 is set to be another exciting year for us. We can look forward to working further on initiatives to grow our expertise in the data management sphere and help companies drive their digital potential and transform their decision-making processes into data-driven ones. We plan revenue growth of around 113% next year. We will continue our sustainability strategy and next year will integrate seasons to our community members – you will be able to learn more in Q2 next year about it. 

Antoni Kozelski, CEO and Co-founder.