We stepped in 2023 with amazing news: our company – SOFTECH – is celebrating 25 years since its foundation in 1998! We are proud to share this first quarter of century story, with origins in the Eastern Europe, in the so called treasure city of Cluj-Napoca, from Transylvania region, in Romania! With the typical uncertainity of the region always knocking on its doors, SOFTECH has resisted on the market and adapted to the multiple technology and economic shifts. This was possible only thanks to an amazing team, who reaches in 2023 a level expertise that really worth envying!
Writing The Local IT Community’s History
Founded in 1998, SOFTECH was one of the first software development companies on the post-communist free market from Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Mathematics and computer science were then some of the top skills of the young engineers who set up the legal entity. Around 2003, we made the first steps of a long-term cooperation with the leading companies that build software for architecture. By 2008, we stabilized the team at about 50 engineers.
After the global financial crisis that hot hard on the outsourcing providers market too, in 2011, the company began to diversify more clearly its projects and industry portfolio in order to consolidate its position as a software development team able to manage and deliver complex industrial software solutions. In parallel, the management team of the company participated in all local initiatives of building a powerful IT ecosystem: professional associations and clusters (such as: ANIS, Transilvania Tech Cluster, ARIES, Cluj IT, IT Transilvania, IT Plusz Cluster, U-Hub) the creation of the local innovation centre of excellence, the actions oriented to promote Cluj-Napoca as a high-tech and innovation community.
In 2020 the company reached the list of Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies, by the reputed Financial Times, thus joining the selected group of private successful local IT companies. In 2021, SOFTECH was awarded the Software Outsourcing Project Of The Year Award by ANIS – The Employers’ Association of Software and Services Industry. By the end of 2022, we were proud to have reached organically a number of about 170 team members, working in three offices in Transylvania.
Sticking to Software Development
Along the years, what is to note about our company is that we have remained truthful to our core service: full software development life cycle. Our skilled software developers have managed to always attract complex software development projects that put our team in the front of new technologies development.
Software development – with various programming languages, various methodologies (especially Agile methodologies) and frameworks – remained the main focus of the company. In a landscape where many local companies in Romania and Cluj-Napoca have grown as niche providers for a certain stage of the software development process or became captive to a certain industry, we consider our position as a statement for good practice.
In Search Of the New
Fuelled by the potential of innovation that is intrinsic to the IT industry, our team of software developers has always managed to challenge outdated processes and models existing in various industries. The main asset of promoting critical thinking is that it opens the way for new solutions, new perspectives and more effective processes.
On the business side, our team was among the few SMEs to display Romanian software development capabilities at the international exhibitions, summits and conferences. Setting up concentrated actions in order to position Cluj-Napoca and Romania on the global IT map, resulted in the growth of the IT industry and recognition of the city and country as thriving software development and outsourcing destinations.
The Tribe Culture
Having a high percentage of senior software developers and experts (48% at the end of 2022) and an employee retention of 91%, SOFTECH is one of the best examples of tribe model based companies. It is a literally full stack autonomous team, having all the expertise necessary to create multiple high-quality software development applications from business analysis to maintenance and support.
The major benefit is that in a tribe culture the team is far more agile, more effective and is able to deliver high velocity across processed and decisions.
Thank You Note
With many positive thoughts, we thank the entire team for their efforts and all our customers for their collaboration!
This year, we will be sharing with you more milestones from our company’s history, therefore we invite you to follow us and join the tech events where we will be present.
