Known as the leading software house in Romania, SIVECO is also an international player with very good references in more than 20 countries, all over the world. What was your international strategy in these last 10 years?
As a matter of fact, in these last 10 years, our international business has grown steadily. We learned how to successfully compete and win important international bids and accounts, we certified in high end technologies and methodologies, we built a solid references portfolio. Above all, we gained know how in permanently adapting to the evolution of the international markets and to the new economic, legal, financial mechanisms that appear in order to facilitate the integration of new IT in major reform processes of economic, social, political, cultural and technological areas.
What about your projects in EU, after Romania’s ascension?
I’m extremely proud to say that, at least until now, we are the only Romanian IT company that signed commercial contracts directly with the European Commission. There are over 20 projects successfully deployed for EU institutions, in consortium with some of the most important international IT providers. In some cases, we are leading consortiums that are implementing strategic projects for EC. Such a project is the one signed in 2016, that will ensure the European Commission’s Taxation and Customs Union Directorate-General, DG TAXUD the provision of services to be used by all 28 EU countries, covering multifaceted training support programmes, eLearning development and communication services in the field of customs and taxation.
How did you manage to win these contracts?
We offered the best solutions, in the most competitive conditions. We demonstrated to the partners and to the beneficiaries our technical skills, business flexibility and services availability. The European institutions are extremely demanding customers and the projects are very challenging. The fact that we continue to work in these projects confirms that we met their expectations.
We are also contributing to numerous R&D European projects. Only this year we participate in more than 28 projects, meant to improve the people’s lives.
What other references do you have on the international markets?
There are complex, national-wide projects of eLearning, eHealth, eCustoms, eAgriculture developed for public institutions from Bulgaria, Turkey, Moldova, Macedonia, Serbia, Cyprus, Malta, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco.
We are also approaching the private customers with consumer products. We have just launched Wand.education, a web based content creation platform that enables teachers to develop interactive lessons in only some minutes. Wand.education was developed so that any teacher is able to create quickly engaging learning activities, interesting assessments, or learning games to answer today’s students’ needs and requests. It incorporates our expertise in developing eLearning tools and the feedback of successful teachers, administrators, education trainers, and technology officers. Wand.education proves our proactive approach, based on understanding the future needs of our potential users. In this case it is simplifying the delivery of educational content.
We are going this month with Wand.education to London, at BETT Show, the most important European Educational Technology trade show. Moreover, we are going to be present at the second edition of EduVison, an international initiative that was born in 2011, at Bucharest.
Do you have international offices?
Yes, SIVECO has subsidiaries in Belgium, UAE, Turkey and Kazakhstan. The local teams are operationally and commercially acting and their contributions will grow more and more in the future. Currently, SIVECO’s business on 27 national markets is managed from Bucharest HQ and 4 above-mentioned regional offices.
What are your future international plans?
We are going to ensure continuity in traditional markets for SIVECO, which emerging countries from Balkans, Central & Eastern Europe, Persian Gulf area, Middle East & North Africa and CIS. This requires new business models, including public-private partnerships (PPP) and SaaS projects.
Adaptations of solutions dedicated for an EU model to the specific conditions of non-EU countries is another important direction.
A strategic approach is diversification of our export portfolio. As I said we already launched Wand.education.
Another new release is INOVAGRIA, a solution based on integration in a unified solution of agricultural farm management specific activities and resource management specific flows. Our Waste Management Information System is a solution designed to collect, manage, analyze and retrieve large volume of spatially referenced data in order to organize, planning and control all aspects of waste management.
Last but not least, establishing partnerships with worldwide players (global, regional integrators) as well as with new IT players will allow us to diversify solutions for existing and new customers