Until 2005, you have claimed that the company had achieved more than expected; established at the European market of information systems, and was ready to cope with new challenges standing before software companies after extension of the European Union. Consequently, how does the promising growth of the company continue in the new European dimension since beginning of this year?
On the one hand, concrete technical results entitle us to make such a statement, on the other, we are aware of being able to establish ourselves, and stand the test in this market.
Apparently you mean projects that you have signed and contracted with the European Commission. Could you elaborate on them?
Projects belonging to them help to enhance innovation, contribute to development of our products and services, e.g. creation of learning system for development of projects in the area of science and innovation. Application projects belong to another category. First, it is the eFarmer focused on development of claim submission system for farmers, preparation and implementation. It covers the V4 countries and its main objective is to provide assistance to farmers in applying for aids from funds of the European Union. Its domain lies in internetisation, electronic claim submission, and electronic services with aim to provide information support of development in agricultural sector of the small and medium sized farmers in the region of V-4 countries. Another application project includes development of learning programmes for small and medium sized enterprises in the field of knowledge management (BPM – Business Process Management, eBusiness, Project Management, eLearning), that is, new technologies and approaches how to enhance competitiveness of small European companies. Here, we act as coordinator cooperating with partners from Greece, United Kingdom, Romania, and besides coordination we look after dissemination of these results i.e. know-how through pilot trainings also for our small and medium sized enterprises.
www.eulobby.net portal aroused particular attention of professionals as the first stride in the process of visualizing accredited lobbyists of the European Parliament, rendering complex profile of each lobbyist and lobbying organization, enabling interested persons to find out who works for whom, and what he/she works on.
Viewing the fact that the European Union endeavours to „reunite” citizens creation of this portal is deemed to be an innovative and practical initiative of transparency and visualisation of work of interest groups for them, and contribution to assist the new members in understanding the “ Brussels internal culture”. Eulobby.net is a pilot on-line register of lobbying organisation and lobbyists created for clients to identify lobbyists that may effectively promote their interests within the European institutions. The website is in progress; new companies and lobbyists get registered each week and expand the database of 2500 companies and 5000 individuals accredited with the European Parliament. Interested persons may contact clients with no costs. Using highly intelligent website tools one can easily find a lobbyist by means of a key word, name of organisation, country or political affiliation. The motivation for the project implementation consisted again in professional opportunity to make sure that our intelligent portal technologies are good enough also for multicultural presentation of public affairs. Everything indicates that yes, they are. As a by-product of this project is the visualisation of our company in Brussels through technology solutions.
And everything indicates also that nowadays it is not a problem for you to cooperate with partners beyond Slovakia . How have you got ready, literally, for a big leap of your company in the European environment of information technologies?
We have had technical skills. We needed to enhance our own self-confidence and assurance. Until recently, it was the language barrier because our people though having English knowledge (English is our working language) did not dare draft a quotation in English. We overcame it. We had poor presentation skills, here we also significantly improved.
Another very important skill is to work in a team and to recognise results of those that have already achieved something, build on them and based on them make efforts to develop new ones. Simply said, we have no stage fright anymore to play in the “premier league” of the European information technologies. Consequently, we are not only apt but also convinced that we can compete in this market. Speaking about the European market we do not understand it only as a space geographically limited but as products and services that can be supplied for 450 millions populations. It is not enough to establish therein only it necessitates also rendering competitive services. We are a smaller company, as a result, we must concentrate on narrower span of services, that is, our basic profile of BPM, hence to design, automate, optimise business and administrative processes and related information services. We must be able to foresee where are the opportunities and gaps in the market of the European information technologies to be able to break through.
You often travel to Brussels where you have one of the branches of your company, at the same time you act as lobbyist there. Since you cover plenty of official and private meetings you gather a lot of information on Slovakia . In your opinion, what is the image of our country in the European context?
Thanks also to our positive macro-economic results and reforms the Slovak Republic has very good reputation in EU and Brussels . They take us for sound members of the new family as well as for equal partner. Apprehensions of Europe about the negative development in Slovakia are behind us. With equal skills Slovak companies need not have psychological restraints in acquisitions of works and services whether it is to get a job for an individual or to submit a bid in a commercial tender. Our company in the Brussels branch office has actively been performing four years; technical results have not arrived from one day to the next. Opinion that can be collected from informal meetings only is positive. Our position is getting better from month to month but we may not forget the “time window” of our opportunities. If Europe extends by other countries the space gets narrower for companies establishment while the development programmes for our region will not be that extensive either compared to actual ones. We become an “old” country and the attention will turn to others. We have a unique opportunity to break through right now when being on a swing of prosperity as the new member state of the European Union.
If you were to deliver a New Year Address tomorrow, how would you describe this year of your company?
As visionary with realistic view, I would mark it as a year of stabilising results that we have accomplished. We cannot and do not want to take big strides; not to chase after new results, but rather to prove before ourselves that we can win not only a tender but also accomplish it in quality, produce a positive reference for another step upwards. We intend to complete in quality the projects and tenders that we had signed with the European Commission. However, our destination is not only the European Commission, we wish to provide services for other European clients, too. We have applied for big tenders of European size, and hope to see our intellect and skill visualised there, as well. We know where to speed up, where lagging, lack of creativity, reluctance to cooperate internationally prevail. However, our destination is not only the European Commission. In the next phase of our establishment at the global market we intend rendering information services and solutions to other European clients. If we accomplish this goal I could say again that we have advanced further.