Glitni | Summary of the Second Half of 2024

We have had an ambitious second half of 2024 - and want to achieve even more. Here is a quick summary of what we have accomplished - and not accomplished. As honest as we can manage, in retro format.

Highlights

We accomplished a lot in the second half of 2024. Here are our highlights:

• We had several new, large clients, and have plenty to do. Hourly rates are on the way up.
• We got Christine and Anton as new employees, and now we are 11. We are ready to recruit more, if the right people become available.
• The professional and social calendar has been good, but will really take off going forward.
• Our efforts in visibility and marketing continue to generate incoming enquiries.

Sales and projects - Several new, large clients

Sales and projects | Roles we have taken

At our clients, we have served as:

• data platform developers and architects
• data engineer
• team lead for data engineers
• dbt expert
• project manager for master data and data governance
• project manager for data platform renewal to the cloud

Sales and projects | What we accomplished

• We have won several large clients. Two are in banking/insurance, whilst the rest are in software, media and energy. One thing is that we have won new clients. I am most pleased that the majority of opportunities have arisen because we have been visible over time and people have contacted us. And - we have landed several of the opportunities by conducting some well-prepared workshops before the main project was put in place. Over half the company has contributed to sales over the past half-year, beyond just attending interviews themselves.
• We have earned renewed trust. This is especially important where we have the opportunity to work together as a team. There is good morale in our projects, meaning both our consultants and those we work for are satisfied. We greatly appreciate having our clients, and we will continue to work hard to deserve their loyalty!
• We are concluding some assignments. Some assignments are simply completed, and others we conclude in dialogue because our consultant(s) need new roles to continue their development. In addition, we are trying to build teams at clients (more than one consultant) and increase hourly rates - especially having fewer projects where we are subcontractors to others. The consequence is that 2025 looks even better - we have a healthy client portfolio, with hourly rates on the way up. The project situation leaves room for more recruitment.
• We are working to secure hunting licences in the public sector. We are in the process of responding to framework agreement requests from NAV, the Norwegian Tax Administration, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, and others, as well as qualifying for several dynamic purchasing schemes. It is not that we have to, but it provides more opportunities if we have availability and the assignments tendered on the agreements are exciting. We are collaborating with Knowit, Atea, Nordic Expert Alliance, Sprint Consulting, Telum and Bindestrek amongst others to win - alone we are neither broad enough nor numerous enough.

Sales and projects | Where we can improve

• Hourly rates still need to go up. Through changing projects and roles, and somewhat less emphasis on the public sector, we have increased hourly rates considerably for the next half-year. Nevertheless, we still have a way to go. We unabashedly believe that specialist expertise deserves a premium over the standard market rate. If we can contribute to smart long-term choices and good solutions, a 15%-30% premium on the hourly rate can easily be justified by 10 times the impact compared to other consultants. It will be up to us to prove this.
• The sales pipeline is relatively empty now. Fortunately, this is the result of most of our sales opportunities having converted into assignments. So now we need to work on filling it up again - we have learned the hard way that we must never rest on our laurels…
• We are slow to productise and conceptualise. We have worked on this somewhat, but have not yet produced anything concrete we can use. If we package things up, especially repeatable capabilities within data platforms, we could likely achieve both faster sales cycles and price in know-how. Specifically, we are looking at candidates within dbt best practice starting kit, historisation, resource provisioning and base setup (IaC) for Databricks and Snowflake.

Recruitment - We are now 11 employees!

We are extremely focused on getting the right people on board. And then we also need to work on how we take care of each other along the way.

Recruitment | What we accomplished

• It was actually a bit of a bull’s-eye on recruitment as well. We recruited two superb consultants: Anton Lindahl and Christine Haugland. Christine started in November, and Anton begins in January. Both are up and running in projects, but Anton needs more to do from mid-February.

• We continue to use subcontractors actively. The architects Oyvind Remme and Tobias Flood worked with us in projects during the summer and autumn. We are also subcontractors to others - and delivered together with Noria, Knowit, Norway Consulting and Atea throughout the half-year.

Recruitment | Where we can improve

• We have too few candidates in the pipeline at any one time. Especially in data platform roles, there are few profiles out there, and we would benefit from mapping and getting to know more people. We have been too restrained relative to the sales capacity we have. The process needs to become more like how we work with sales.
• We still need to work more on the pyramid and balance of roles and backgrounds. Some simple ratios show that our workforce consists of:
  • 9 men, 2 women
  • 10 highly experienced, 1 with growing experience
  • 5 can take data platform developer roles, 9 can take data engineer roles and 3 prefer project manager/advisor roles (the same person can fill multiple roles)
• We shall work even more on promoting our collaboration partners. We can now deliver end-to-end assignments, including in advanced analytics (machine learning and such). We have begun some sales opportunities together with Telum, but could have done even more.

Internal life - Glitni is a social professional community

Internal life | What we accomplished

• We are a specialised professional community, with truly engaged people, who have managed to work together extensively on assignments. We invest in the professional environment, and 3 of us travelled to Las Vegas in October - for Coalesce organised by dbt Labs. We have got more momentum on our internal days, and among other things had a Hackathon with parallel testing of various orchestration tools. We have also introduced professional lunches inspired by Oda, where we run low-threshold demos at lunch every other week, for those who are present.
• We enjoy our office at Spaces Tullinlokka, but are unsure how long we can stay there. We work to create a pleasant environment, and among other things have Knut Arne’s barista skills to offer on Fridays.
• We had a good social calendar, with a cycling trip in Nordmarka as the autumn highlight, and the Christmas party at Magne’s as a worthy close to the year. We enjoy each other’s company!

Internal life | Where we can improve

• We need to think about a larger office. We have some people at the office on many days of the week, but it is difficult to dimension the number of desks. We are 11 employees, but only 6 desks. We can remain at Spaces Tullinlokka (which works well in terms of location and facilities) or get our own Glitni office elsewhere. Ideally, we would like another year with some flexibility, as 40-50% growth is challenging to plan for.
• The social calendar is going from good to superb. 2024 delivered well socially, but the calendar for 2025 looks even more promising. A cabin trip in the mountains in January, the Glitni Games (an intricate points system across a range of sports), a cycling trip on the Rallarvegen and a lot of other fun activities are on the agenda.
• We can systematise professional development even more as a company. We are good, but have so far planned internal days and professional discussions based on what each individual suggests as a topic. Going forward, we want a clearer connection from market trends/what we need as a company, to development plans for each consultant, to how this is reflected in our professional programme.

Visibility - We have consistently high activity, and are reaping the rewards

Visibility | What we accomplished

• We have co-organised Oslo dbt Meetup numbers 7 and 8 together with Anders Elton in September and December. At both Meetups, nearly 100 engaged participants attended. We are ready for more, and are starting to get the routine in place.
• We have continued producing episodes of the podcast “Datautforskerne” (The Data Explorers). We have launched 10 episodes so far, of which 6 in the past half-year. We can still work MUCH more systematically on content and guests - and consistently good sound. It seems like quite a few people have listened to them, so we are not giving up on this!
• Our marketing strategy is working well for us. Alongside the Meetup and Datautforskerne, we regularly post professional opinions on LinkedIn. The results are not always immediate, but we notice that we regularly receive enquiries from potential clients and new employees who wanted to talk with us.

Visibility | Where we can improve

• Working on visibility takes time, and we can become even better! We can get even better at publishing regularly and frequently enough on LinkedIn, the podcast and Glitni.no, but need to acknowledge that everything in life (privately and at work) is about balance.
• We can get more people active on LinkedIn, Medium and other social media. But it needs to be driven by intrinsic motivation. There has been some activity, but we shall see if this is something one of our new people hired in 2025 fancies in due course.

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