q.beyond is a leading German IT service provider for the digitization of medium-sized companies – with around 900 employees and 10 offices in Germany, the company offers extensive expertise in the areas of cloud, SAP and IoT.

“Our employees have never all been here in the office together”

says Olga Lukša, Head of q.beyond in Riga,

“We started our work in Riga in the middle of the pandemic”.

The team currently consists of 9 people, from this week 2 new employees will be added. The team should then grow to 20 by the end of the year.

The goals are ambitious, the investment in Latvia prepares the ground for a stronger international orientation of the German company.

The search for a suitable location began in 2019 across the three Baltic countries. There were several reasons for choosing Latvia, and LIAA Germany (Lettinvest) accompanied the successful process:

1) The excellent accessibility via Riga Airport with various direct connections to and from German cities was decisive for a project that requires the cooperation of cross-border teams in Germany and Latvia.

2) The “talent” available in Latvia is a great advantage – numerous training and development opportunities ensure that there are enough young people available for the jobs. Several universities concentrate on IT subjects, the training and knowledge is at a high level.  International companies open branches and shared service centers in Latvia, interns are sufficiently available.

3) Latvia’s historical connections with Germany help as well, many people study German at schools as a second language after English, and the mentality is similar. For a company that previously only operated in Germany, it required a certain amount of change, to work in an internationally oriented environment and to adapt the processes accordingly – but it has so far been successful.

Since the existing available office infrastructure in Latvia is a big plus for a business settlement, we also wanted to cover this aspect in the journey of q.beyond – and indeed, the first steps in the Latvian business took place in a co-working space before an own office was rented.

The IT industry was geared towards remote working concepts even before the pandemic – currently almost all employees are still working from their home office and only come to the headquarters when necessary.

Olga assumes that in the future about half of the working time employees will spend in the office and the other half of will work from home. In any case, the new office is already designed for 20 jobs, which means that nothing stands in the way of the rapid growth of the Latvian offshoot of q.beyond.

Interview and text Johanna Fischer, tmf knowledge destinations

If you are based in the German-speaking markets and want to invest in Latvia

please contact: Helmuts Salnajs, Botschaftsrat Wirtschaft und Handel
Tel.: +49 (0) 30 609 29 421
Mob.: +49 162 916 9418
E-mail: helmuts.salnajs@liaa.gov.lv
Skype: helmuts.salnajs

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