2018 Leadership Q&A | CTO Vinnie Schoenfelder

What are you most excited about as we enter 2018?

"We're seeing companies focus a lot more on innovation as a practice. Now, we can talk about machine learning, blockchain, voice UI, etc. What's exciting is companies actually have a formal practice in place for evaluating this technology. We're at a place now where we're not looking at it from the perspective of, "I need an iPhone app" or "I need a website." Now, it's about omnichannel realization. If you do have your services set up correctly, we're at a time where you can experiment with innovation then rapidly prototype and test."

What is the biggest challenge you see our clients facing?

"They're concerned about being overtaken by smaller, nimbler companies. It can be difficult to know which trends to invest in and how to leverage them for competitive advantage. Through a combination of an innovation process and technical thought leadership, we can help them stay ahead of these disruptive companies. It's a lot easier to turn the ship when you're a young, small company, and I suppose that's part of our role-to help these big organizations react more quickly."

What are you most thankful for?

"How we've been able to maintain our culture with growth and with a lot of geographically dispersed offices. We've spent a lot time thinking about how we maintain that culture, and that leads directly into our core values. I like working with intelligent, motivated, ethical developers, and in addition to that, I want to be the trusted advisor to our clients. I want to be flexible. I want to be creative. Our focus on the culture is what lets us do all of those things. We've been careful not to become so rigid with our growth that that we're not able to maintain that level of creative problem solving."

What is your favorite CapTech memory?

"Once we were pitching to a client and suggested a solution that was different than the one they originally had in mind, so we were having a little difficulty getting them to buy in, even though our option would take much less time to implement. So, I had an idea when we took a break for lunch, and we were able to pull together a demo prototype in about an hour. To be able to demonstrate instant worth was much more powerful than just sitting around and white boarding a solution. They went with our solution and ended up getting the project done in about two weeks, whereas the other one would have taken months and months and would've been very difficult to implement. That was a lot of fun, as we were able to quickly showcase a solution and ultimately help the client."