Monday, July 1, 2019
It’s a special week for us here at 1ClickFactory. We are celebrating a huge milestone as we approach our 10-year anniversary! It has been a fantastic journey over the last 10 years. We are extremely proud to have grown our company close to 100 highly-skilled and motivated people in our Vilnius office, and continually growing…
To kick off the celebrations, we talked to a few of our longest-standing employees to get some insights into why they think 1ClickFactory is a great place to work after all these years. We also asked what some of the most significant changes they’ve experienced over the last 10 years are, what they think is the reason people stay at 1ClickFactory so long, and of course, what their favorite memory is.
Before we dive into the questions, let’s introduce our longest standing employees:
- Agnė Balkevičiūtė-Lajienė, Director of Strategic Initiatives
- Tomas Stankevičius, Cloud Business Line Manager
- Agnė Pelanienė, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management Business Line Manager
- Sandra Matulevičiūtė – Bagdonavičienė, Partner Experience Manager
When did you start working with the company? And where role were you in?
Agnė Balkevičiūtė-Lajienė.: Back in 2007 to 2008, I worked with Tomas Milaknis in Alna, aiming to establish an upgrade service center. Shortly after, Soren Fink Jensen, Tomas Milaknis, Paul Kjaer, and Henning Lund got together to establish 1ClickFactory. I then started in the role of Business Development Manager. My first main initiatives were to upgrade the return of investment tool for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, which easily provided a detailed financial outlook and impacts of any upgrade to help justify the upgrade value. After that, I was responsible for attracting EU structural funds to co-finance our investment in research and development of automated upgrade tools. Fast forward to today, I now run strategic initiatives where I help teams launch new services into the market, or fix internal processes to improve efficiencies.
Tomas Stankevičius: I started working at 1ClickFactory on March 31, 2010 as a Senior NAV developer. Now, I’m the Cloud Business Line Manager.
Agnė Pelanienė: I started at 1ClickFactory as an AX Consultant on September 1, 2011. Today, I am the Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management Business Line Manager.
Sandra Matulevičiūtė-Bagdonavičienė: I began my journey at 1ClickFactory in October 2009 as Marketing Manager. At that time, the company consisted of 3 people only. After around 9 years of leading marketing initiatives (with some breaks in between for another project called kids), I moved to Partner Experience Manager role.
What are the main reasons you’ve stuck around 1ClickFactory for nearly a decade?
Agnė Balkevičiūtė-Lajienė: First, it’s a great company to work for! We’re located in Vilnius, but have international customers and partners so we get to live in a cozy city, but still get the opportunity to work with professional people worldwide. I also think we have a unique atmosphere and climate within the organization and all of us are open and respect each other. It’s quite rare to find this type of culture in other Lithuanian companies.
Tomas Stankevičius: I would definitely say the company vision and incredible people!
Agnė Pelanienė: The freedom to share ideas and make our own decisions to drive change. Also, the culture and the amazing people. I am extremely proud of being a part of 1ClickFactory for a decade.
Sandra Matulevičiūtė-Bagdonavičienė: It’s probably because I’ve always found new challenges to pursue here that made me happy with what I was doing. Over the years, I’ve always felt that I am part of an organization that stays ahead of trends by establishing new ones. In a marketing field, I also felt one step ahead of my marketing peers in the Baltics with things that I was experimenting and successfully introducing to the market. A big credit to this success is due to 1ClickFactory always reinforcing a culture of freedom and initiative. I really appreciate that.
What was the most significant change you’ve seen during your tenure?
Agnė Balkevičiūtė-Lajienė: There were a number of changes, but one of the most significant ones was how we enhanced offerings that helped and continue to help partners offer better business value to their customers. We started as a professional services company that offered development hours. Later down the road, we packaged upgrade services, delivered free assessments and fixed-price projects that reduced risk to partners (this wasn’t a common practice back in 2010).
Tomas Stankevičius: The growth and shift in culture from being a very small organization with roughly ten employees, to a medium company of over 80 employees with various levels of management. We also changed from a project business to a subscription/cloud-based business.
Sandra Matulevičiūtė-Bagdonavičienė: The company experienced a tremendous evolution over the past decade. And in my opinion, this change happened evolutionally rather than revolutionary; slowly and with lots of patience building trust and gaining momentum in the market.
What do you think keeps all the talented people around?
Agnė Balkevičiūtė-Lajienė: The other talented people in the organization help keep the rest of the talented people because of the friendly, supportive culture we have. It also helps that we have the ability to grow and learn on both a professional and personal level.
Tomas Stankevičius: The opportunity to learn from other people and to grow, as well as the opportunity to innovate and work with the newest tech instead of being “stuck in the past”.
Agnė Pelanienė: The feeling that we, as employees, are the ones who help drive innovative change for the partners worldwide. We also have a very grounded, respectful culture with good leaders.
Sandra Matulevičiūtė-Bagdonavičienė: It’s a combination of reasons that depends on each individual. For example, a good culture fit and alignment of company and personal values. I also think that people see a purpose and meaning in what they’re doing in their roles.
Tell us your favorite 1ClickFactory memory.
Agnė Balkevičiūtė-Lajienė: There is so many to choose from because we’ve had so many years together! But, I would say one of the highlights was when 1ClickFactory was contracted by Microsoft to deliver Business transformation training for the CEE Partners back in 2011. We had an audience of 100+ partner executives and Microsoft representatives for the week in a beautiful location in Greece.
Tomas Stankevičius: I can’t think of one specific memory, all of them are so fond. Professionally, I’d have to say my team moving to the NAV department, my management position, and starting a self-provisioning service. However, most of my favorite memories don’t involve day-to-day work activities, but more so after work. For example, our trip to the Zakopane mountains, basketball games, volleyball, a number of other epic trips and much more.
Agnė Pelanienė: I spent half of my career at 1ClickFactory. Here I became the professional leader I wanted to be, I formed my first team starting from just 1 person after my first year, and after 5 years I took responsibility for all of the AX team members. Working with my colleagues and leaders has been an absolute pleasure. I will be telling the following stories for years, like:
- How I ran my first “What’s new in AX2012” workshop in Finland without an internet connection since we lost service! But it became the first instance in a long journey of successful workshops.
- How Paulius Brezgys (Senior AX Developer) asked me to be his manager.
- After I was promoted to AX Department Manager, my colleagues decorated my desk with balloons and flowers.
- How Paulius, Edvinas (Senior AX Developer) and I had a small, 3-table room and were working long, very effective hours.
- How we, a 5-person team, performed 75% of AX2012 re-implementation projects in Finland for the customer by having only 3 meetings onsite.
- How Zydra Tubelyte (PMO Lead) and I were creating project management standards
- Our first trip to a US conference.
- How the AX team came together to create our own service descriptions, service SSDA templates, quality standards and values.
- How we celebrated Paulius’ wedding without Paulius at Palanga beach.
- AX team mornings and “round table” breakfasts in Barcelona and much, much more…
- … and how every time I am happy to be back in the office after every trip. It’s like coming HOME.
Sandra Matulevičiūtė-Bagdonavičienė: There are tons of them! The best ones are probably protected by the GDPR (ha ha ). What I can disclose is from Christmas in 2010? We were still quite small then, but a very creative team. One of my colleagues from the NAV crew was a guru in producing homemade kvass, a traditional sweet, sparkling non-alcoholic drink. We came up with this idea to produce a limited-edition version of this drink and give it to our partners in Lithuania as a Christmas gift. We bottled it in vintage bottles with personalized labels. The first impression from partners was, WOW! Unfortunately, this didn’t last long as when partners started opening the bottles, they were met with an unwelcome surprise. Due to the natural fermentation process of the kvass, the bottles started to explode with a 3-meter high fountain, drenching ceilings and floors. When we realized this, we spent Christmas Eve phoning partners begging them not to open our “gift”. Partners then gave our gift a code name… 1ClickBomb.
We Want You!
We are looking to grow our team. If you want to join our dynamic and innovative team, and you are passionate about the IT industry, we want you! Browse the available positions in our Vilnius office. We welcome candidates from other countries too.
Don’t take it from us on why we’re a great place to work, take it from our loyal employees!