Marketplace Partner Spotlight: DEISER
This month we shine the spotlight on DEISER, a 2021 Partner of the Year and the makers of Projectrak, Workload, and Exporter. Guillermo Montoya at DEISER shares his insight and perspective with us from Spain.
Atlassian: Guillermo Montoya, can you tell us how DEISER started?
GM: DEISER was born in 1998, and like any other IT company, we focus on providing value, mission, and vision among the five founding partners and seek to do the best possible job in the best possible way. While the team aligned with this value, there were so many things to do on this broad spectrum of IT that the team needed a laser focus. Around that time, Agile, Jira, and Atlassian approached us, and the team decided to utilize these platforms to provide greater productivity for the world. The modern DEISER was born amid the 2007-2012 financial crisis.
This clear and laser-focused vision for DEISER provided motivation and guidance from a technological standpoint, as our company prioritized people and their experience with the brand. Focusing on customers, employees, partners, and suppliers is a significant priority. We make sure to deliver the best possible interaction and experience. With this strategy, the company finds immense value in helping and servicing customers with the best-purchasing terms and overall guidance for Atlassian products and, of course, the best apps for Jira.
Now we still focus intensely on human interactions and experiences. We also pursue the scalability and sustainability of our team and its results through controlled growth and a balance between business areas. This strategy allows us to pivot and develop our activity quickly and flexibly. We do not seek to be the largest; we strive to be the best. Our proof is our most recent achievements: Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner Enterprise and Atlassian Marketplace Gold Partner, being named Atlassian Partner of the Year 2021 in the Cloud Migrator category for our compliance of our Projectrak app with Atlassian Cloud guidelines.
A: What's your role at your company?
GM: During the first years of DEISER, I carried out multiple activities due to the small size of our team. As we've grown, I've become the company's CEO; however, I think my fundamental role is more as an Executive Chairman or Director focused on representing the DEISER brand. Nowadays, my executive skills are not that essential. We’ve achieved a broad decentralization of responsibilities, supported by the different DEISER teams. We have a phenomenal team!
A: What's your favorite thing about working at DEISER? What’s your favorite team ritual?
GM: As co-founder, together with four other partners, DEISER is almost a philosophy of life. The best thing about being a CEO is that you can change aspects that aren’t working. At least it's easier than other scenarios; I don't have to ask permission to try carrying out changes.
I think my favorite ritual right now is this internal podcast we make named "Good Morning DEISER," or GMD (inspired by the Robin Williams movie, "Good Morning Vietnam"). When the restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 started and the lockdown began in Spain, people were scared. I decided to start a Microsoft Teams meeting twice a week, at 9:00 AM, to share the news from the different teams of DEISER. We discussed the novelties, success stories, failures, and more, and it was unifying. The communication practice is a way to keep the team together and share our day-to-day updates as an overall group. Once the strict lockdown measures were lifted, everyone requested to keep this initiative alive. Now, we make it weekly (mainly on Thursdays) at 9 AM.
A: How does your team come up with ideas for new apps?
GM: Ideas for new features come from our customers. We constantly obtain feedback from regular interviews with customers. The creation of our flagship app, Projectrak for Jira, was born from an Atlassian service project we provided for one of the most prominent Jira instances in the world in 2011-2012. Our client needed to manage projects in Jira as issues, and not the way Jira does. Recently we've deployed a bunch of new enhancements and functionalities for Exporter and Projectrak. Currently, we're working on releasing a new feature requested from Projectrak users. We're very excited to deploy it to production very soon.
A: Think back to when you developed your flagship app. Did you see yourself here now? What do you think has been the secret to your success so far?
GM: Actually, we weren't sure if we wanted to go this far, given our core business was providing Atlassian services. Everything changed since that large client I mentioned before contacted us to fulfill some gaps they had in Jira. When following the path of building a company like this [DEISER], you're not aware that building a services portfolio and products for Jira are (very) different activities.
I think, in our case, we were patient enough to build a great product team (and I am so proud of them!). The team can isolate themselves from the needs of the services team. Between 2012 and 2015 we concluding that the software development of our apps couldn't coexist with our Services activities. Separating the two teams changed everything for good!
A: Tell us about your most popular app. Why do customers love it?
GM: Projectrak is our most popular app, especially for large companies working with an extensive portfolio of projects in Jira. This app allows you to keep track of projects in the same way Jira enables issue tracking.
The app is available for Data Center and Cloud instances. It offers features such as different views, performing massive actions, creating customized project reports, creating different types of calculations based on project data, different ways to organize data and save it on various searches, and more. Projectrak is a hub of features that allows you to keep track of projects and share information with stakeholders.
A: Do you have any new apps or projects you want us to know about?
GM: We foresee the Atlassian universe growing even further; I mean, we're witnessing it. When DEISER became an Atlassian Solution Partner, Atlassian only had 200 employees, compared to the current nearly 8,000. When we started building apps ten years ago, two or three people were enough for our product team; nowadays, it has almost quadrupled. Everything has changed. DEISER wants to stay ahead, in the peak, which means investing in people and in our solutions.
Nowadays, we're building an internal transformation process to help the company grow faster. We're strengthening the organization in different areas to achieve the great quality we seek. We want to stay adaptable so we can respond quickly to the challenges Atlassian puts on the table every time. Receiving the Atlassian Partner Award of the year 2021 in the Cloud Migrator category for Projectrak is an excellent push for us to continue this growth and keep strengthening our apps, especially in the Cloud.
Visit DEISER on the Marketplace and install a new app.
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