Rogomi, Inc., a software application development agency based in the Philippines, is marking its 15th year in business, having been one of the pioneers of mobile app development in the country and an early adopter of the new way of doing work.
The company was founded as a partnership in 2008 by three entrepreneurs – Ramon Pastor, his wife and her sister – under the name Numlock Solutions. It began as a typical web development agency, but, shortly after it launched, Apple decided to allow third-party apps, so the company decided to begin developing apps for iOS. Despite not being from a software development background, Ramon decided to teach himself programming. In 2009, Numlock developed its first iOS apps, with its first Android apps released in the following year.
In 2013, the company decided to incorporate and change its name to Rogomi, with mobile app development as its bread and butter. It works with a wide variety of clients, including startups and SMEs, large domestic businesses, and multinational corporations to create both internal and customer-facing digital products.
According to Ramon, the company has had its fair share of achievements and challenges over the past 15 years. In 2013, it opened a satellite office in Iloilo City, which is in a different island group from the capital, Manila. This provided additional employment opportunities for people with a software development background in the Iloilo region.
However, by 2018, the Iloilo office was very underutilized, so the company decided to close it down, transitioning its employees to work remotely. The following year, it decided to shift even the Manila workforce to remote work due to the worsening traffic situation in the city. Little did they know that the decision would benefit them greatly, as when the COVID pandemic came in 2020, Rogomi was already fully remote and did not suffer any significant interruption in its operations, unlike other companies that were caught unprepared and got massively disrupted.
“Three years after the pandemic lockdowns, many companies in the Philippines and other countries are forcing their employees to come back to the office,” Ramon says. “But we are not following suit. We are sticking to our remote setup, and it has now become part of our company DNA. We give our employees the freedom to work anywhere they choose, and we don’t use any remote monitoring tools. Work-life balance is an integral part of our organizational culture, and we’ve seen how being able to work remotely has resulted in many benefits for our employees.”
Ramon also shared how having a positive organizational culture became a top priority for Rogomi. In its earlier days, it was almost acquired by another company. Rogomi’s employees had already been working in the other company’s office, but, due to various business reasons, the deal wasn’t finalized. It was then when Rogomi’s employees expressed relief about the sale not pushing through, because they found the environment at the would-be buyer much more stressful. Ramon says this opened his eyes to how important culture is to the company, and it became one of its main pillars and a major consideration in any of its future moves.
“The main lesson I learned with that almost-sale is to not just think about the money and always consider the work culture fit,” Ramon says. “While stress at work is unavoidable, work-life balance and a positive culture should not be sacrificed. I definitely want my team members to feel valued, both through their work as a developer and as people. The past several years have shown the importance of having a good work culture to both company performance and employees well-being. We want this culture to be part of the legacy we will leave for future generations, as our contribution to making the world a better place.”
Media contact:
Name: Ramon Pastor
Email: [email protected]
