Austrian enterprise group · Digital products · Recurring revenue
A European enterprise IT group — datacenter operator, provider, and digitalization partner for C-level executives, government, and state institutions. Growing business. Strong market position in DACH. But a mounting problem in software development.
The in-house engineering team was expensive and underperforming. Output didn't match cost. Attracting young, talented developers to an enterprise brand? Nearly impossible in a market with 96,000 unfilled IT positions in Germany alone. Projects were piling up, but building a team where the business case worked out was a dead end.
They didn't need more hiring campaigns. They needed a fundamentally different structure — one that could deliver engineering capacity at a fraction of the cost, without losing quality, compliance, or cultural integration.
The challenge wasn't ambition. It was structure.
High cost. Low output. No talent pipeline.
We rebuilt the entire model.
Two strategic decisions defined the engagement. First: don't replace the European team — reposition it. Senior architects and technical leads stayed in-house to maintain domain knowledge and client relationships. Execution capacity moved to UNID's embedded team, operating under the same compliance and quality standards but at a fundamentally different cost structure.
Second: don't just deliver projects — build a product organization. We launched an idea lab alongside the service business. A systematic approach to identifying digital product opportunities, validating them at market speed, and killing what doesn't work before it becomes expensive.
Not outsourcing. Restructuring — with a partner who stays.
Still running. Still growing.
The organization runs autonomously. A full engineering, product, design, and DevOps team — embedded, not outsourced. 20+ digital products shipped across enterprise platforms, AI-powered SaaS, and government-grade applications. 6 generating recurring revenue.
The European team was restructured — not reduced, repositioned. Senior architects lead. UNID delivers execution. Costs dropped. Output multiplied. A product and startup culture was established inside an enterprise that had never built software before.
Four years in. They don't depend on us — they choose to stay. Because the model keeps delivering.
We didn't build a team for them. We built an organization that outlasts us.