photo credit: James JordanEgeniq is green. We personally care about our environment. But a healthy green approach also improves our company bottom line. Both goals go hand in hand. Working more efficiently means shorter delivery times and improves the wellbeing of our staff.
We think it’s about time companies would adopt modern principles such as telecommuting and working from home, which helps us solve a number of issues society struggles with. Child care often doesn’t mix well with traditional ways of doing business. As a result a lot of highly skilled staff is not able to pursue the careers they would love to, simply because taking care of the family cannot easily be combined with a company that sticks to traditional beliefs.
We think everybody should have the freedom to determine their own working times, but we are still quite demanding when it comes to passion, involvement, knowledge and productivity. Working at Egeniq means that people never stop learning, no matter what their job description is. But every body works at those times and in those places that are the most productive and efficient for them and our clients. This greatly increases happiness while working. Our belief: motivated and happy development teams make better software in less time.
Mobility
We are based in the Netherlands where mobility is an increasing concern. Often the morning rush hour only makes way for the evening rush hour. Our roads do not have a capacity problem but a timing problem: everybody travels, works and plays at exactly the same moments. We think that it doesn’t have to be that way, and it’s time for a cultural change. We love fancy cars, but we don’t like to park them in a traffic jam. 
photo credit: 1000zenWhen it makes sense we use public transport and we make travel time productive. Our office in Utrecht can be reached by tram in 10 minutes from Utrecht Central Station.
Mobile technology is used not nearly often enough in business environments. Egeniq is completely designed as a virtual organisation. Our development environment, project management system, knowledge base, CRM system, accounting system, e-mail and calendars are all available online. This means everybody can work from anywhere, as long as they are connected. Our meetings are usually online. We don’t have to use a car if we need to meet. Of course we recognize that sometimes it’s fruitful to work on something together in the same location and to share knowledge. We do this in our office or a suitable central location, or at our client’s offices. The key is that we do it when it makes sense, instead of making it the default. We strive to create the ideal mix of working remotely and working on site. This way we get more productive hours in a week, and we save significantly on mobility and housing costs. Wasted travel time turns into more quality time with your significant other or family. And more time for recreational activities. It also helps us attract employees in a modern and positive way.
Business apps
Everybody employing mobile devices in a business context (iPhone, iPad, Android) will have noticed that the amount of working hours behind a traditional desktop PC or notebook decreases. Mobile devices are serious business tools. And they consume less energy, so using mobile devices with intelligent business apps can reduce our environmental footprint, which again fits nicely into our green philosophy.
Clients
Are clients affected by this approach? One simple example: you’ll receive email from us at unusual times. We discuss things with the client’s team using Skype. We want to have a good working relationship with our partners and clients, but we’ll only meet in person when it has added value, or when it’s time for a party. Naturally we’ll make sure to get to know each other first. But once we know each other, we often communicate in the virtual world, and save a lot of time for everybody involved. And we don’t contribute to the traffic problem. When we complete a project, we don’t send a paper bill, but a PDF.
We are convinced that we are more productive and communicate more effectively by being green, and we belief it ultimately leads to more creative and higher quality products, and shorter delivery times.