Now Forte Group has eight office locations and more than 650 employees. So was it a difficult journey?
In the first year, the company employed eight people. Since then, the company has gone through at least three or four formation iterations.
In 2001, after 9/11 happened, the entire business collapsed. We realized that QA services were insufficient and started looking into software development. At that time, things like BB programming and Microsoft Visual Basic were as popular as .Net and JavaScript. During this period, we were looking for talented people from the former Soviet Union to join our projects, and Forte Chicago turned into a full-fledged consulting company.
The next iteration was associated with the sales department creation. It soon became apparent that developers are not enough, and we began to look for people to promote Forte Group services. After that, the company entered the stage of organic growth, and since then, it has increased by at least 30 percent every year.
We operated only in the U.S. before, and in 2009 we simultaneously opened offices in Ukraine and Belarus. During this period, Forte Group was formed as an outsourcing company.
And the latest (the fourth) iteration occurred two and a half years ago, in early 2017, when we acquired Agile Unicorn and met our partner C.J. Montano. At this point, Forte Group set a course for digital transformation.
However, the company’s mentality is, first of all, helping the client achieve the desired result and business unity. Therefore, the core of all Forte Group services is based on extensive consulting. In Chicago, people of partner, head, and product-owner levels are always close to the client and provide high-value insights. In addition, the teams that deal with architecture and implementation are located in Minsk and often work simultaneously with the Chicago ones.