It’s been well-documented that the Australian IT industry is experiencing a skills and talent shortage across the board over the past few years, which is why offshoring specialist Etica Digital debuted as the second fastest growing company in the 2022 CRN Fast50.
Founded in May 2020 by Simon Hammond in Melbourne, Etica Digital is a technology, digital and professional services firm specialising in digital people solutions from both onshore and offshore talent.
The company’s biggest vendor partner is Salesforce, while other partners include MuleSoft, DocuSign, Adobe, Atlassian and more.
Speaking to CRN Australia in late 2022, Hammond said he drew from his decades of professional experience across recruitment, professional services, managed services and offshoring.
Some of his recent stops include Randstad, CSG Services (now part of Fujitsu), NEC Australia and Bexton IT Services (now part of PS+C Group).
“I've kind of seen it all - I've seen the good and the bad,” he said.
“What I’ve tried to bring from a values perspective into the business is a real client-first approach and being able to find where we can find the work.”
“But make no mistake, we had to adapt quickly and pivot into figuring out what companies are not doing that they should be doing, and we were probably one of the first to identify that working from home is going to be the new normal work moving forward.”
Etica has a number of offshore hubs globally, including the Philippines, Sri Lanka and India, as well as some contacts in Northern Europe.
“We help a number of Australian companies build and deliver their business in a technical world or a digital world in a sustainable and cost-effective way,” Hammond said.
“Competition for talent is pretty fierce, and the era has changed from the 9 to 5, five days a week and the office is becoming a relic, so the flexible working option is where you need to be and we think we our vision is really to transform the way our clients manage and scale their digital and tech solutions.”
For the 2021 to 2022 financial year, Etica’s growth was credited to its expansion of clients and for providing a clear value proposition, Hammond said.
“That value proposition] has taken time to define the way the world’s changing, as well as providing a more sustainable and effective alternative for our clients,” he added.
“We asked, ‘how do we help them continue to grow when there's the biggest war on talent you've ever seen?’, and our ability to provide our services to help them do that is really clear and we offer alternatives that can assist with that.”
Etica also deepened its Salesforce capability in the 2021 to 2022 financial year, identifying some key areas within the vendor’s offerings that can provide good value that isn’t saturated around Marketing Cloud.
Hammond said the biggest challenge of running a company as new as Etica is the credibility factor, and the company being able to do what it said it would.
“Once you get across that hurdle, that's when you're able to then build the case studies and then be able to develop your clientele, because they have trust in you,” he said.
Among Etica’s offshore hubs, its biggest in terms of personnel is the Philippines, which houses a large majority of the company’s employees.
“The Philippines made sense because we had a lot of clients potentially looking at offshore providers, but a lot of them were out of India or Europe, so we wanted to give them an alternative,” Hammond said.
“Servicing Australian clients that look at the time zone difference of two or three hours - depending on the daylight-saving time - is very beneficial."
"The language skills are excellent as well and it was a very underutilised market at the time, but now through supply and demand, everyone's kind of moving there.”
Etica has a talent team based out of the country to guide the company through the market, the people, the culture and the government-mandated benefits.
Looking ahead, the company is doubling down on its Philippines hub, but is considering expansions into other countries to meet client demands.
Etica will also invest further into the Salesforce capability off the back of its strengthening consulting team.
“The key focus ultimately moving forward is stronger vendor relations, building more vendor relationships and growing organically,” Hammond said.
“We always have grown organically as a business - we’ve never asked for a handout and we’ve done it the hard way and we think we’ve done it the right way.”
Applications are now open for the 2023 CRN Fast50!
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