About Us
What makes us
Citywest has been in business since 1994 and has been an Arrow partner since day one. We're known for our ability to align strategic IT with a measurable set of business objectives and time-lines blah, blah, blah, blah... And here we have the dreaded "About Us" section. This is where we're supposed to say something spectacular about ourselves. You know, how we're "better" than all the other IT companies you've ever met and/or will meet. Or perhaps something about how our "razor sharp" problem solving abilities and "brain exploding" solutions will yield untold riches to your bottom line. Maybe we'll even wrap it up in a distinctive sounding marketing jargon and tell you we've developed a unique way to come up with the "big thing" that you've been looking for your entire life. Well, that's just not our style. Consistently doing good work is the only real aim and yes we think we're good at it and so do our clients. But our true uniqueness is how we run our business.
Lets start with our staff
You'll never hear us use the word "employees." We may say staff, team, crew, consultants, or .....heads, but never the "E" word. That would imply that certain people at Citywest are subordinate to others; a concept that's alien to us. Since the very beginning, we've strived to keep our organisation as flat as possible. We manage to do this due to the type of people that work here. It's not easy getting a job at CityWest. Anyone that does manage to make it past our screening and later reveals arrogance, selfishness or starts behaving like a "bad apple" gets thrown out, we refuse to let the what we've built be poisoned by small thinkers. What we're left with is people that love what they do. They take pride when anyone in the organization succeeds and feel responsible for every failure. When they see someone struggling with a problem they step in unasked - to offer help. It's a team thing, and by the way our newest member of the team has been there for four years. We each take accountability for our individual contributions because we feel an obligation to the team and client to do so, not because a job description or an organisational chart says that we're supposed to. Honestly, our people are our greatest asset. Why should this matter to you? Because people that take ownership in their company's success and are allowed to focus 100% on what they love doing - rather than internal drama and politics - will consistently produce great work.
Now lets talk about our clients
It's difficult for us to measure client lifetime value because the majority of our clients never leave. Sure, the quality of our work plays a part in this, but the real glue is the type of relationships we form. The foundation of these relationships is trust. Trust that is earned through honest conversations sometimes filled with difficult questions that make you feel "uncomfortable" If we don't agree with a certain approach, we'll let you know, our philosohpy is that pleasant robustness in discussions is always encourgaged and reciprocated. We've always felt that if we provided our clients open access to our experience, knowledge and intelligence and not merely drive them to solutions we can bill for then our profitability would take care of itself. It has proven true every single year since 1994.
You need it when!?
We are a close knit team and consequently have the ability to get things done quickly. Without fail at some point every client we work with needs something urgently, some aplogise for this others push hard, we don't mind either way as we are dedicated to respond to today's market realities. Our clients range from the large-international organisations to small regional operators and they all share the need for speed, so there's no need to worry if we can handle the pressure we know the drill. This is where our smaller size and flat organisation really comes into it's own.
There's our confession. It may not be the most compelling "About Us" page you've ever read, but it's honest. And as we mentioned, honesty is where we believe all lasting relationships should begin.