The Core of Corevist

I was cleaning out my file folders this week and came across a document entitled “B2B2dot0’s Core Beliefs”.  It’s something that I penned back in 2011 when we were 3 years old and before we changed our name to Corevist.  A lot has changed in the ensuing 5 years but I’m really happy to see that our core hasn’t.  I guess it’s safe to make them public now. :-)

1. We truly believe that we have a great eCommerce solution and that it is the perfect fit for many…but not all…SAP based organizations.
2. We value the life balance opportunities that Corevist provides us and accept the individual responsibilities that we have to ensure that we, and everyone else that works for Corevist, can continue to enjoy them.
3. We are totally driven to make our clients successful. It is our highest priority for we know that if they aren’t successful, we won’t be either.
4. With that said, helping our clients succeed does not mean doing everything that they ask verbatim, or believing everything that they tell us. They have elected to do business with us not just because they like our technology or business model but for our experience, knowledge and drive to help them achieve their business goals.  We take that fiduciary responsibility seriously.
5. We will never be the bottleneck to our client’s success. A corollary of that is that our clients should never ask us for a status check on a task/deliverable that we own.
6. Our future success is determined by how referenceable our clients are, even those that someday will chose to no longer be our clients. (see #3)
7. Building a company is a team sport. We respect and trust our colleagues and always consider the impact that anything we do (or don’t do) will have on them. We don’t promise to deliver something if we don’t intend to, and if we’re going to be late with a deliverable, no one will be surprised by it…we’ll give them plenty of warning.
8. We all own our own schedules and commitments. It is our individual responsibility to reach out for help in prioritizing our workload, or to become more efficient, if we’re starting to get overloaded.  There are no penalties in the asking for help.  “Penalties” only arise when we let down our colleagues and/or clients by surprising them with missed commitments.
9. There is no perfect project plan. Only one that has a clear and measurable goal, predefined intermediate milestones used to review real progress, and a series of adjustments and compromises designed to steer the project back towards (or redefine) the goal.
10. We love to “threaten to put software into production” as a means to flush out the ducks. Real software, with real data, used by real people to solve real problems.
11. Fail early. The earlier the better. We embrace failure as a learning opportunity. Not learning from failure is the only real failure.
12. We don’t “tilt at windmills”. We’re at our best when we solve real problems for real clients that deliver real value… for the both of us.
13. We believe in transparency. Information is power and we see no value in hoarding it. We have a myriad of tools that we use to keep everyone abreast of projects, sales opportunities and other matters that are critical to the well-being of our company.  We take our responsibilities to keep them up to date seriously.  (see #7)
14. We like to work smart…not hard. Where we can automate processes we will.  Where we see problems reoccurring or sources of waste, we look for root causes and invest to eliminate them.
15. We believe in win-win negotiations – We believe that there are very few black and white answers in life and in business. We strive to understand everyone’s interests and design solutions that address, and benefit, them all. Once a decision has been made, we all support it 100%.

Sam