Within the declining margin condi­tions banks pay special attention to the solutions capable of business structure optimization, new products and services deploy acceleration. Ivan GOLENEV, the Univef Company CEO told NBJ about the usefulness of IT outsourcing and IT outstaffing for the goals mentioned above, about the peculiarities of credit-financial institute tasks automation approach­es and that outsourcing is available not only for the narrow circle of customers.

NBJ: Ivan, Univef have appeared at the Russian IT market recently. What products will be developed and what services will be provided by the company?

I. GOLENEV: Univef was established to pro­vide services in the field of replicable soft­ware development outsourcing for a client, including the services on the basis of an "as a service" model.

Our services allow a customer focus on core business, and shift on a contractor the issues of resource provision, recruit­ment and rotation of specialists, internal process management and staff motivation.

Univef was established by people who mostly worked in the system integration, were involved in the development and implementation of software solutions in the area of monitoring and control, process automation and information exchange sys­tems. We have brought together the experts who have extensive experience in project work within their areas of expertise in various industries (banks, telecom, power engineering, transport, media companies).

NBJ: What was the prerequisite for the start-up project in the field of IT outsourc­ing and IT outstaffing?

I. GOLENEV: Technical experts who estab­lished the company were successfully engaged in development outsourcing for some Western partners, but the basic practice and expertise they have gained in projects related to the implementation of their solutions on the territory of the Rus­sian Federation. Moreover they actually performed as integrators, as some kind of bridge between Western companies and end-users of their products in our country.

Russian IT market situation is chang­ing: vendors want to work directly with clients and clients want to get software and services directly from manufacturer, as they deal in the West now. Integrators work there primarily with governmen­tal customers, meanwhile large financial institutions for development and imple­mentation projects attract outsourcing software companies, preferably of inter­national level with development centres in India and in China. The need in integrator engagement is thus reduced to a minimum, or the integrator becomes a consultant and is invited as an expert. Besides, the busi­ness of large service providers is develop­ing quite actively providing infrastructure and information services according to an "as a service" model. The current condi­tions are best suited for a tech company establishment that will provide high qual­ity services for software vendors according to outsourcing model for software devel­opers in Russia, CIS and Eastern Europe, as well as directly to customers for devel­oper resources outstaffing.

NBJ: Univef determines for itself two pri­ority sectors of business: the finances and telecommunications. What was the reason of such a choice?

I. GOLENEV: I don't think it will be an exag­geration to say that these industries are the most advanced ones in terms of automa­tion. It is the financial and telecommuni­cation companies which form the greatest demand for IT solutions. An important role played the fact that the experts making up the backbone of our team have the work experience with the companies of these industries. So, our leading developers have been performing outsourcing of automa­tion systems development for IT support and maintenance processes for several years in one of the major Austrian banks. Besides, they have experience of monitor­ing and workflow visualization system development in a major Russian communi­cations provider.

NBJ: Are there any projects in company portfolio implemented by the order and together with Russian financial organizations?

I. GOLENEV: Yes, there are. However, until now these projects were based mainly on a classical implementation of IT solutions. Now we change the approach and begin to offer our customers from the financial sec­tor some business automation solutions besides IT automation solution.

NBJ: Please, explain the difference between these two approaches.

I. GOLENEV: First of all, the second case is mainly about business problems solution. In other words, it is more broad and capa­cious compared with IT tasks automation. Thus, the services we offer to our partners are becoming more popular. Today we offer the solutions for business services moni­toring, BPM-solutions (Business Process Management - Editor's note).

NBJ: In other words, a change of approach and, presumably, the product line of the company is the response to the change of requests from loyal and prospective customers.

I. GOLENEV: Absolutely. If we talk about the bank sector, there are customers who increasingly focus their attention not just on the availability and survivability of IT services, but also on the tools by which they can manage their business services. In addition it is not a secret that today a good number of companies is engaged in software development. If we remained within the implementa­tion of IT automation solutions, the likelihood of getting lost among others would be high. Therefore we decided to offer the market some products and services that are at the intersection of business and IT. We have accumulated corresponding expertise and experience: most of our experts have implemented software solutions in the half of the top ten Russian banks which have become Univef customers now.

NBJ: The top ten banks a priori have much more capacities than some small and medium financial lending institutions. Can we say that the Univef services are available only for a narrow circle?

I. GOLENEV: No, they are completely afford­able for the banks which do not occupy leading positions: our approach is quite flexible and our product line is diversified. In other words, a customer may choose a service that is not only demanded but also not very costly for him. So, if a bank is interested in IT outsourcing or IT outstaff-ing (e.g. there is a need for experts working on his site, but not as his employees), we are able to satisfy this request, as the Univef team has the experience of similar project implementation and our employees have a unique expertise for Russia concerning some solutions. Again, our price condi­tions are quite reasonable.

NBJ: The attitude to IT outsourcing and IT outstaffing in Russian banks can be described as intense and doubtful. Yet the demand for these services grows and therefore the competition between com­panies and integrators increases. What are the key competitive advantages of Univef company in this area?

I. GOLENEV: In respect of outsourcing our main advantage is the development of niche solutions that are at the inter­section of business and IT. I want to say that nowadays there are a few companies offering similar products to banks.

One more advantage is our team which is able to anticipate the customer needs and market trends. So two years ago, the group of developers, who joined the Univef team now, offered the cloud Service Desk to the market. At that time their colleagues doubted whether the product was in demand, because it is believed that the process auto­mation system shall be in-house, an internal one. Nevertheless, we have included it in the Univef portfolio and now we see that the interest to this solution is growing day by day.

All this supports our belief that we are able to compete with the market leaders even as a start-up project.