Catching Up with Mateusz Kopij, Head of Technology at Hypermedia Linked by Isobar

Isobar welcomes Mateusz (Matt) Kopij to Hypermedia Linked by Isobar as Head of Technology from The Travel Corporation, where he held the Tech Lead role.

Matt has spent most of his 12 year career working outside of Poland — and says he stopped counting the countries after he reached the 150 mark. Here he discusses his career so far.

Q> Hi! You have spent most of your career outside of Poland — where have you been, and what have you been up to?

MK> For a long time I have been working as a consultant solving business problems, mainly in the telecom and banking industries. It meant working directly with clients trying to understand their needs and trying to find a solution for the challenges they faced. It also required plenty of travelling — I was being sent from one country to another every few days!

This is mainly due to not many people having a strong business understanding coupled with a deep technical knowledge which is key in finding the right solution for a business challenge. When you also include the amount of travelling required, not being in your home or even your home country for a year or more is quite difficult sometimes. But, it was definitely a great experience — I’ve met huge amounts of interesting people and I certainly learnt a lot.

Q> Your last assignment was in London with The Travel Corporation — what was that like? What challenges did you encounter?

MK> London is great, I absolutely love it! I like multicultural places full of people from around the world. And The Travel Corporation was just like London — full of amazing people representing different cultures. We all had a lot of fun.

The main challenge was changing the mindset of business focused people to enable them to see technology for what it really is — a driving wheel of a company. Plenty of time was spent on resolving communication problems between non-technical people and the technology team. I believe that we achieved a lot. To the point that it was the tech team that started to recommend business modifications and process improvements, instead of just being a team implementing solutions.

Q> We agree that technology is the driving force behind businesses today — what do you think the big opportunities are for our clients?

MK> I believe that there are multiple opportunities out there. If we constantly monitor products that we implement and deliver, we can also see how to improve them, based on data that we gather and tests that we run.

Delivering a product is just the beginning of a longer journey of optimisation of conversion rates, sales, and so on. Our clients thank us for looking at savings and extra revenue that they can gain by staying longer with us. We have great people with multiple skills in Isobar and the Dentsu Aegis Network, so let’s use it!

Q> Finally, what bit of tech can’t you live without?

MK> I can’t live without the Internet. This is the most important technology to me. I am constantly discovering it over and over again. The Internet is evolving, and it is much more now than it used to be in the past. Look at services like YouTube and Netflix, which have taken over television as we know it. Look at social media applications that help us connect and share our thoughts in day to day life. The Internet is changing who we are, how we act and how we behave — it amends our culture. It is a great example of what technology is today.