25+ Years Delivering High-Value Solutions: Brazilian Software Company

Leadership and innovation are crucial factors for the success of companies in general. SoftDesign is a Brazilian software company that turned 25 years old in 2022 and continues to develop these two skills to stay relevant and competitive in an ever-changing society.

But what kind of leadership is there at SoftDesign? How does the company foster a culture of innovation for employees and customers? And how do these characteristics impact the projects undertaken and the creation of new digital businesses?

We spoke with our CEO and founder, Osmar A. M. Pedrozo, to ponder these questions. After all, no one is better suited than him to explore topics that are so relevant to the world of startups and enterprises.

Where it All Started

SoftDesign – This November (2022), SoftDesign turned 25 years. Along this journey, a lot has happened, but how did it all start?

Osmar A. M. Pedrozo – It all started with a personal need. 25 years ago, I didn’t imagine myself as an entrepreneur, nor did I imagine where SoftDesign could reach. I worked as a contractor for a large technology company, which was developing a project for the Government at the Center for Information and Communication Technology of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (PROCERGS).

That contract ended, and so I was challenged to provide services to the Company, but I would need to compete with other companies through bidding processes. But at that time, I still didn’t have a company. Therefore, this was a period of learning, which resulted in the foundation of SoftDesign, in 1997. The first contracts arrived in 1999 when we won our first bid.

At that stage, we worked mainly for the government. Over the years, I decided to invite others to join the company. The first guest was Eduardo Farah, who is still our investing partner. In 2001, we were still working individually for several technology companies, acting in consulting – projects that we kept in parallel for some time.

In the fourth year, I realized that I had people skills. At that time, I was working as a programmer and I didn’t know I had this soft skill. That’s when they started looking for me to ask for professional referrals for specific jobs and projects. With this happening more and more frequently, I had the idea of offering this service through SoftDesign, which was also hired to supply a demand for IT professionals.

Expanding the Business

SD – How was this initial process of growth and expansion for SoftDesign?

OP – In 2002, with the evolution of the company, we started hiring employees. I concluded that our business had a lot of potential and that I could manage it along with other consulting activities. In 2003, SoftDesign grew even more, and I invited Rafael Paludo to join the team of partners.

This expansion led us to better structure the services provided. However, I make a point of remembering that when it all started, our first headquarters was my apartment. Farah and I lived in the same building, in Porto Alegre. This was the initial address of SoftDesign, which was born in the same way as many startups.

In 2004, we had more employees and many of these people became partners over time. Over these years, we have created many projects and delivered software to important clients such as Fundação Carlos Chagas, from Sao Paulo. At that time, web systems were rare and I remember that we developed an online test for the Foundation, our first “software factory” client.

Shortly thereafter, we bought SoftDesign’s first headquarters in 2005. The office was located at Rua Siqueira Campos, on the 11th floor. I can say that the beginning of our Brazilian software company was marked by problem-solving, entrepreneurship, team building, and a lot of collaborative work. We were a group of good professionals, all very technical, who got together on Saturdays to manage a software company.

The Beginning of the Climb

SD – How were the first 15 years of SoftDesign? What happened in this story that contributed to the evolution of the company?

OP – The history of SoftDesign is a history of learning. We were a group of excellent technicians, mostly programmers, but with little knowledge of management. We had to learn everything: how to run a Brazilian software company, hiring and firing people, and how to pay taxes. I can say that we made a lot of mistakes in this process, but we learned from our mistakes and evolved.

It is precisely for this reason that I talk a lot about transformation, because I believe that we were transformed at the same time that we were creating the company. Chronologically speaking, six years after the foundation we bought our first headquarters and I believe this is a great milestone in our history.

In 2009, we carried out the first evaluation of the MPS.BR Program (Improvement of the Brazilian Software Process) – a kind of ISO in the technology area – and we reached the G level. This was our first quality seal. In 2013, we reached level E, and we became the first technology company in Rio Grande do Sul to achieve this classification.

At that time, we also bought SoftDesign’s new headquarters, located in the same building, but now in a much larger space, which was completely renovated in 2014. In other words, the first 15 years were marked by great achievements: purchase of the new headquarters, formation of the new corporate structure, increase in share capital, and technical evolution of our employees.

Lifelong Learning

SD – After more than a decade of learning and evolution, SoftDesign went through many transformations that shaped the company. What were they?

OP – There are many important and decisive facts in the history of SoftDesign. As time went by, we learned. I, for example, in addition to acting as a technician, also had to become a good manager. Therefore, in 2011 I graduated in Accounting from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).

This was an important step and, soon after, in 2011, I started taking a Postgraduate Studies Program in Controllership, at UFRGS. The search for knowledge is something that has always been in SoftDesign’s DNA. We didn’t stop in time simply because we opened a company and we were doing well. We continue to invest in training and this continues to this day. 

With that in mind, in 2016 I started a Master’s in Business Administration (UFRGS). At the same time, I also lived for a month in the United States, in California. My goal was to study and learn a little more about how things worked or should work in the world of a technology company. This exchange and the Master’s innovation courses changed my way of thinking and helped shape the new SoftDesign.

The year of 2016 was also remarkable, as it was when I took over the company’s strategic management in a more incisive way. I asked SoftDesign’s partners for a vote of confidence to start a major transformation. After all, we had been with the company for almost twenty years and things could be bigger and better, as there was room for growth.

It’s Time to Innovate

SD – After changing the company’s management model, what were the main changes that occurred?

OP – From the master’s degree, also attended by the Head of Product and Innovation at SoftDesign, Karina Hartmann, we began to debate a lot about how the company was and how it could be. I remember a time when we did a project on SoftDesign, and one of our professors said that because it was a Brazilian software company, we needed to have a bigger and better result. I confess that I was bothered by this, but I realized that he was right.

So, in the last five years, we started to innovate and improve processes. We had an agile revolution and left the traditional world of Project Management. Anyone who has experienced this knows that this movement represents a huge change in the organization and, in our specific case, it affected the way we think, sell, attract customers and deliver software.

In addition, with the arrival of Digital Marketing, we began to develop new short and long-term strategies. The fruits of these actions were harvested in 2019. At this stage, several areas of the company changed. Also, I really became a CEO, making decisions that were not so collegiate and more individual.

Another important change was training in innovation. We went through a process with PUCRS, which helped us to understand that SoftDesign was indeed an innovative technology company.

Welcome to the Startup World

SD – Another significant change was the beginning of partnerships with startups, right?

OP – Yes! In 2016, we started working with startups, and we experienced a strong wave of innovation in our projects. With that, we had to remodel ourselves to serve companies that didn’t even exist yet. This resulted in a more open working model. Our head office has become an even more collaborative space, bringing employees and clients together.

I felt that SoftDesign and I became more innovative as a result of these changes and transformations. These last five years represent that. We changed everything: processes, development, tools, and platforms. We also made room for a Culture of Experimentation.

With this new SoftDesign, new Marketing, Pre-Sales and Sales structures also arrived. In the areas of HR and ADM, we have adopted platforms to assist in the process of selecting people and managing them. One consequence of these improvements was the growth of the team. Anyway, I believe that nothing is by chance. Everything was thought and built to get us where we are today.

This period was more than a turning point. In a way, it prepared us for future challenges. When the Covid-19 pandemic began, we had already undergone many transformations in processes, that is, we were prepared to grow. And we grew a lot in 2020, 2021 and 2022 – which will be our best year in terms of revenue, new clients and internationalization. This was only possible due to investment in training decision-makers. Through knowledge, we change the reality of technology companies.

Technology and Humanity

SD – Those were years of many changes that took us away from the former SoftDesign. Therefore, in 2021 we started a rebranding process: we felt that our old brand no longer represented us. What was it like to participate in this project?

OP – For me, there were many different feelings involved. Looking back, I can say that it was a moment that helped to end this cycle of the last five years. The old brand, created in 2009, brought us here. However, we had already achieved our strategic vision, which was to be a Brazilian software company recognized for its technical capacity and commitment.

We discovered this during the research process carried out on the rebranding. Even so, it is difficult to go through the step of removing a brand from the wall and replacing it with a new one. At first, I was quite worried, but with the result we achieved in the repositioning, I realized that we managed to revisit the feeling we always had.

We were able to reproduce the purpose that permeates the entire history of the organization over these 25 years: transforming people and businesses. That’s what we’ve done all this time, and that’s what we like to do. We are very happy with the new brand, but it is clear that the process was conflicted due to everything that the old brand delivered.

Far Beyond the Code

SD – In August 2022, we launched our new brand, along with new positioning. What has changed? What are the new values and essence of SoftDesign?

OP – The new brand has a lot of what we’ve always been. We remain committed and in search of a position of recognition. In the past, our vision was more developmental, but we have matured. This maturing process made us realize that we want to participate in the entire innovation journey of our clients’ digital solutions.

We don’t want to be just a Brazilian software company that takes an order and delivers a product. We want to question and help our partners to see what we see during our innovation processes. This means that we want to help other companies be as trailblazing and authentic as we are.

These are values that we consider essential. After all, if we want to work with innovation, we need to be transformative, innovative and strategic. Technology plays a fundamental role in companies and should not be used only as a support for the operation, as it has the potential to leverage business.

That’s why we want to do it together, and this is a statement that was missing from our previous positioning. We want to be co-creators in light and human processes, as this is a fundamental condition for the new worlds that came after the pandemic. With that in mind, we promote adaptation to transform the client’s reality, while remaining responsible, experienced and specialist.

In addition, the relationship of trust and transparency remains the same and we want to further strengthen it to deliver transformative digital solutions. SoftDesign is a reference in the innovation journey, from idea to result. We understand that by putting these values into practice we will be able to achieve goals and create digital solutions that people love to use.

Follow The Leader of a Brazilian Software Company

SD – The innovation journey is a collective construction, but it is only possible with leadership. How do you deal with the challenge of playing the role of leader in a software company with more than 160 people spread across the world?

OP – I don’t do this alone. I have a very close relationship with several people who manage SoftDesign and that makes all the difference. What I seek is to have an alignment between how I would do things and how I would like them to be done. First, we need to believe in people and have good replicators, that is, managers who help make the company work.

When we work with transparency, without command and control, people tend to deliver their best. I see how these 25 years have transformed me into a leader of a Brazilian software company who doesn’t panic, who thinks calmly and reflects before making a decision. Also, I was able to reduce my impulsiveness by gaining more experience.

I believe there are excellent people working with me. I trust them and I hope they trust me. Through this relationship, I understand that I can help transform lives, finding a path for the professional development of each SoftDesign employee.

I think all the time about how to develop people, and that’s what positions me as a leader. I always liked professors who instigated me with challenges and, therefore, I try to replicate this behavior in the company. This is not a difficult task for me.

Inheritance, Authenticity, and Transformation

SD – Our culture of collaboration is only possible because of this trust. What leadership style do you exercise? What leadership style does SoftDesign, as a Brazilian software company have? How does it affect the development of the clients’ projects?

OP – I follow the democratic and situational style, which values an empathetic and questioning leadership, and which often causes a certain astonishment among clients and new employees. In Brazil, we have a very strong culture of direction. We came from a dictatorship that said what we could or couldn’t do, and for a long time we were trained to follow orders.

I don’t know how to give orders and my way of thinking can lead to conflicts with people who belong to a culture of hierarchy, and professionals who need someone to say what should be done. At SoftDesign we don’t do that, because we are horizontal. We believe that this way we boost high performance, as we share a more open, transparent perspective, of trust and courage, so that everyone can ask and express opinions.

In a conversation with one of our international clients, I was told that our differentiator in relation to other partners, from other countries, is precisely the questioning. This critical sense is very important in the process of creating digital solutions. After all, we believe that it is necessary to participate in the innovation process and not just execute it.

This behavior is a consequence of democratic leadership. I don’t feel better than anyone and I’m not. At SoftDesign, we give everyone a voice. I also use situational leadership a lot, that is, I am several people depending on each person and situation since I need to understand and connect with each one, respecting their moment and their career goals.

Knowledge Is The Secret To Innovate

SD – In addition to leadership and culture, innovation has also become a matter of survival in the business world. How do you see innovation at SoftDesign?

OP – I go back to that fateful year of 2016, when a master’s professor told me that “innovation is at the limit of knowledge”. I’ve searched my whole life for the discovery of new things to share my learnings. At SoftDesign, we have always contributed by paying for certifications, courses, undergraduate, graduate, master’s, programs etc. We always had in mind that we needed to know a lot to evolve. To survive, not only a Brazilian software company but all companies need to innovate, study and learn. I’ve seen this happening at SoftDesign since the beginning.

A culture of knowledge supports a culture of innovation. One does not occur without the other. Therefore, we continue to learn, experiment, create services and reflect on innovation. We work in search of continuous improvement; the Product Conception service, for example, is our creation. When we started offering it in Brazil, nobody did that, nobody called it this, and as a result, our method was copied several times.

We recently launched other services: Product Experimentation and Product Marketing Consulting. We understand that to achieve results we need to launch the product, not just find the market fit and develop it. I want SoftDesign to be even more innovative. We are working and developing an exclusive area of innovation, which will allow us to continue studying, learning, experimenting and adding new services.

Today, I still consider this process slow. Cycles are long, so I want to reduce the time to launch new services and process improvements. The main objective is to help our customers in their innovation journey. While we are learning, we will be innovating. That’s how a Brazilian software company stays alive.

Demystifying Innovation

SD – We often have the idea that in order to innovate we need to create something disruptive, capable of changing an industry, service or behavior in society. But innovation can be more subtle. How does SoftDesign propose to innovate in digital products for clients?

OP – I understand that in order to innovate in customer products we cannot only think about development, and here I am referring specifically to programming, for example. I believe that we need to unite a series of other types of knowledge to achieve the objective of innovating in digital solutions.

It is necessary to go through an exceptional product conception, composed of research with users, benchmarking analysis of existing products and creation of a business model. That is, to innovate we have to go deeper, and this requires knowledge about the business, customer, product or service we are creating.

It is important to understand that to innovate, we also need to test. That’s why we launched the Product Experimentation service, which proposes testing and simulations of low-investment strategies, such as low-code and no-code, before Software Development. In this way, we try to validate hypotheses that arise in the creation of the product to reduce the investment risk.

However, risk is part of innovation, as I mentioned in the lecture I gave at the Gramado Summit 2022. At SoftDesign, when we talk about innovation in digital products for clients, we are looking at the entire journey of creating a product or service and not just development. We participate from idea to result, sharing the know-how we have in the areas of design, technology, marketing, research, among others.

Many companies, depending on their size, do not have all this knowledge. Therefore, through our methods and specialties, we drive the innovation process in startups, scale-ups and corporates, creating solutions that generate impact.

The Future is Now

SD – And what can we expect in the coming years? How do you think technology and IT will impact future businesses?

OP – All technologies play a fundamental role in businesses. Especially IT, since today technology is the core business of many companies. I understand that more and more businesses will be impacted by this, and those who do not understand this relation, who do not learn to deal with current and future technologies – whether to support their daily operation or to build new services or products – will be obsolete soon.

It’s a matter of time: if you haven’t developed the ability to adapt, you won’t digitally transform. Digital transformation is about knowing how to deal with technology and knowledge. This is a complex path and we will increasingly have this strong dependence on Information Technology, which will represent much of the current operations of companies, whether in terms of what they sell or what they will sell.

There is no escaping this reality. Either we learn to deal with the concept of software development, or companies will find it difficult to evolve their own businesses, especially a Brazilian software company like SoftDesign. We saw a simulation of this in the pandemic, when many businesses ceased to exist, as they were unable to sell online and transform themselves digitally. This is not a fast process. It takes time, a culture of innovation and maturity.

In addition, there are many trends emerging in the technology market: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Science are good examples. Most companies are using this in a very incipient way, but those who put these ideas into practice will have a competitive advantage. In Brazil, we are still working a lot in the process of computerization and creation of systems. There are many opportunities to grow and innovate.  

Start your Innovation Journey!

Investing in innovation is not an exclusive need for a software company. To keep business relevant and competitive in a changing society, having an IT partner is crucial.

With experience in the national and international markets, we are a company specializing in the innovation journey in digital solutions, from idea to result. Our Product Conception, Product Experimentation, Software Development, Consulting, and Outsourcing services drive the creation of digital products and services that transform businesses and simplify users’ lives.

If you are looking for an experienced, responsible, and innovative Brazilian software company, fill out the form below and talk to one of our specialists. Together, let’s start your innovation journey!