Interview with Haris Zachariades, CEO SoftOne Romania.
One year after SoftOne Technologies decided to open an office in Romania, Bucharest respectively, you have recently announced that this year the company will set up a stronger presence in Cluj-Napoca, a city considered Romania’s Silicon Valley. What are SoftOne strengths on such a competitive area?
One and a half year after establishing our Bucharest office, we are in the process of further expanding our presence nationally, and naturally the first step is Cluj-Napoca, one of the fastest growing business communities in Romania.
SoftOne, as a leading vendor in Cloud ERP / SaaS market, brings out a new proposition to the table, a proposition that will prove a game changer for Small and Medium Enterprises. Our strength lies in our expertise to assist businesses, regardless of their size or industry to realize the full value proposition of the cloud.
Part of our international development strategy is to further penetrate the Romanian market with our flagship product – Soft1 ERP. In this respect, our main objectives for this year are to double our national partners network, in order for our solutions to be available in all counties across Romania, and to steadily grow our client portfolio.
According to the company strategy, you take Romania as a primary hub for expansion into other countries in the region. What attracted you to invest here?
SoftOne served Romanian companies, through our partners network, even before establishing an office in Bucharest. The increased demand for our products and services, resulted in setting up a subsidiary in Romania. For the exact reason we decided to open an office in Cluj-Napoca in the near future: our clients are interested for the full circle of solutions and services offered by SoftOne.
We believe that Romania is an extremely interesting market, particularly for the type of technology provided by SoftOne. It has a highly trained and qualified workforce and a excellent telecommunications infrastructure thus we believe it is the epicenter for development in Southeastern Europe.
SoftOne Technologies’ experience in Romania is at the beginning. What are the expectations in terms of local market contribution to the financial performance of the Greek mother company over the next five years?
Last year, SoftOne Technologies registered a turnover of EUR 7 million consolidated revenues. We expect in the next 2-3 years half of the company’s revenue to be generated from our business centers in Southeast Europe. We believe it is crucial to double our performance on the local market from one year to the next, in order to achieve this goal.
Romania is indeed a hub for regional expansion for us. We are here to stay and we will continue to invest and develop. We intend to penetrate and coordinate many neighbouring markets from our Romanian office, such as Bulgaria, Serbia, Moldova and Hungary.
You describe yourself as a ‘dynamic’ company, which is providing IT services for business. But how can you describe the Romanian customer compared to the one in other countries where you are operating?
We are targeting the huge SME segment, but SoftOne supports any company that aspires to optimize costs, automate and streamline core business processes and improve its overall operational efficiency.
Romanians are very keen on technology and they follow up on all what is new in this industry. The Cloud is highly appreciated on a wide scale and its benefits are easily understood and foreseen. This is why we believe our cloud solutions will continue to register increasing success on the local market.
We believe Romania is a growing market, having many companies with great potential. Especially those which trust on technology to improve their effectiveness. The Romanian market has gone through many experiments over time, and companies know what they lack and know what must be done in order for their needs to be met. Businesses today need to achieve better and faster results. SoftOne enters the market as a provider of integrated services, which not only delivers cutting edge solutions, but that also supports a long-term customer partnership based on trust.
People are always searching for innovative technologies. Does advanced technology generate new business models or vice versa?
The development of modern technologies (cloud, mobility, social media, etc.) have brought significant changes in the way we work, communicate, and, in general, in the way we live. We should take advantage of the possibilities offered by new technology in regards to our businesses as well. Take the ERP systems, for example – they were created with the purpose of helping companies optimize their business processes and increase their productivity. Efficiency became a status quo soon after. Technology has always set trends and marked changes in the way businesses operate and has also shaped people’s expectations for innovation.
As technology advances, new business models are being created and solutions are often faster, more efficient and affordable. Software as a service (SaaS) is the perfect example of true value innovation. Using new technologies such as cloud computing, business no longer have to make large upfront investments for business software solutions that only work in the confinement of their offices. Every business may now operate a complete, high-end IT system, without any compromises, satisfying easily even the increasing need for working from anywhere and with any device.