We care about technology-enhanced human systems. So we thought we would share regular thoughts and opinions about why we think they matter so much.
Through this 'ere blog I know I've / we've been notoriously poor at keeping people updated with what we've been up to. Heck - even reporting New Biz wins isn't as loud and proud as it should be. Well we're aware and we're going to endeavour to do much much better going forward. I mean we have great clients and do some pretty cool stuff, so why wouldn't we??!!
Anyway - one of the things we don't really touch on is the underpinning HARBOUR platform. That thing (codebase) upon which all of our excellent functionality and user and candidate centric solutions can be built. Now don't worry, before the glaze starts decending on your eyes, I'm not about to get lost in deep tech talk. Goodness me no sir-eee. You see in our world I very much sit in a camp of what we like to refer to as "muggles" - maybe on a good day showing "mudblood" potential. But equally I think it's important to sometimes give even a cursory glance under the bonnet and report back on what's going on there-in (although like my car - the wizards in our tech team are getting all the better at removing the working parts from even my view and showing me only what I really need to see :-] ).
Well when we first started, now some 11 years ago (which with this being an internet based solution is equivalent to about 77 human years), we had a platform called HARBOUR Instant from which we mostly spun off "pop-up" sites and then built out anything more complex from that. As more people joined our merry band, we took early learnings and created a branch we called Skeleton - which was largely based on the same principles, just the initial setup profile was more controllable by us client facing "muggles".
With more and more sophistication being built into even day-to-day HARBOUR executions it was soon apparent Skeleton couldn't keep up, and, TBH, as the experience of the team grew with plenty of learns along the way and the internet "maturing" around us, we knew there were other directions we needed to take the codebase. So then came CORE and, for pretty much the same reasons, today we're launching new systems build on QUANTUM.
If I can just go back to the car analogy - fundamentally a car is still a car. It gets you from A-B and the principles are pretty much as they were several years ago. It may be a bit more aerodynamic or look "sleaker" or handle differently, but the scale of change in terms of what's under the hood and even what's offered in front of you is, when you look back, pretty mind blowing. So it is with QUANTUM.
Built to help us be all the more agile, responsive to ever evolving client needs and generate better MI for clients and offer deeper integrations with 3rd parties - this really does feel like we're finding another gear.
And fear not our loyal band of existing clients. This doesn't mean you're being left behind, nor does it mean you'll log into your HARBOUR system and all the "things" you're used to have been moved around and you're forced to work in a different way (which we know to be a real approach with other operators in the market). TBH you wouldn't know if you came from a Skeleton or CORE system, and our commitment to continue working with you to evolve your system, to ensure it's always your system serving your specific needs, is not changed one bit. All the time we're building and still evolving QUANTUM and QUANTUM based solutions we're also mindful of portability of functionality - so you keep telling us what you want of your system, and we'll keep building awesome for you. Simples :)