During lockdown, when I’ve not been working for clients, homeschooling my children and working through the box set of Breaking Bad on Netflix, I’ve been speculating on what the ‘new normal’ (already worn out with that phrase!) for business will be post Covid-19 and how Purple Crane fits into this new reality.

Purple Crane is a small company, by which we mean fewer than 10 employees. Is that small these days? It might be ‘little’ after Covid-19. Anyway, we’re a tight knit group with a keen interest in technology, learning and discovering. For ‘keen interest’ read, child-like excitement, although my children don’t (yet) share the same excitement levels in bespoke software.

Due to our size and how we work, we’ve found it easier than most to adapt to lockdown conditions; working remotely for our clients with pretty much zero interruption (apart from the kids’ complaints as I say “now for maths” again). Post-pandemic, we see our size being an asset – as we’ve always done, incidentally – as companies look to slowly piece together their operations over the coming months and scan the market for small, agile teams with years of expertise, who can help them rebuild their businesses.

Our technology is always Internet / Cloud based and this makes us the perfect company for working remotely or as an extension of a company’s team, thus mitigating any risk when considering the working environment as we come out of this present crisis.

So, if you’re looking for a software development partner and are considering your options, we think our size is the main reason for using us – and here’s why:

  • We’re a dedicated team of motivated professionals who work well together and can produce great things.
  • We have a 14 year track record of producing quality bespoke business software, with a number of organisations – great and small – having trusted us to work for them and continue to do so.
  • We’re easily contactable and accessible.  You have direct access to the development team working on your project.  We’re not a faceless team of techies working in a dark room protected from customers by a gatekeeper.  It’s very likely that when working with us you will get know everyone one on our team.
  • Our staff are motivated, skilled, trained and continually learning.  Small teams mean everybody has responsibility for the work they do and are listened to for their ideas.  We all discuss and agree on the best approaches to take on projects and nobody is forced to do things a certain way because it’s ‘the company way’.
  • We’re a small team but a very productive team.  Software we have created is used in critical, operational functions in large organisations such as Transport for London, Inchcape, and many of the country’s train operating companies.
  • Of course, they’re just the big names.  We also work with many smaller companies, who you probably won’t have heard of but are big players in their niche and whose staff, customers and suppliers rely on their software to run their business. We’ve also built public facing web sites used by thousands of people per day.
  • A smaller company has lower costs.  Whilst our internal costs shouldn’t be your concern and our focus is on the value that the software we create brings you.  It is true that our lower costs can be passed on to you.
  • We’re flexible and not set in our ways.  Smaller means less admin and bureaucracy. We use appropriate tools and have procedures and processes in place to help us to be efficient and to ensure the quality of our work.  But ultimately though we listen to what you want.  We use our expertise and experience to guide and advise you but we will adapt to your needs and won’t force our ways on you.
  • In fact our size is not unusual at all.  90% of all private organisations which employee 2 or more people have fewer than 20 employees (Source ONS https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2019).  Companies of our size are the lifeblood of the UK economy, ensuring innovation and competition especially in fast moving areas such as technology.
  • As a small company with a smaller number of customers, all our customers are important to us.  Nobody is ‘just another customer’.  We build long term relationships with our customers and your success is our success.

Ultimately though, we’re not small because we’re just starting out.  We’re not small because we’re struggling to find new customers. We’re not small because we have grand ambitions to be the next Microsoft and haven’t made it yet. We’re small because we choose to be. We’re a company of committed, highly skilled individuals who are motivated to work on interesting projects for interesting customers. Now we think ‘small’ will be the new normal.

Do you have an interesting project and want to be one of our interesting customers?