CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY REPORT 2020
NORDIC TRADITIONS | UKRAINIAN SPIRIT | SUPERIOR SOFTWARE
TABLE OF CONTENTS —
Who We Are ...... 04
Key Facts ...... 06
Mission and Principles ...... 08
Adapting to New Normal ...... 10
Education Goes Online ...... 38
Community Development ...... 52
Ensuring Quality Delivery ...... 58
Business Against Covid-19 ...... 66
03 WHO WE ARE —
Sigma Software is a place where Nordic Traditions meet Ukrainian Spirit to create Superior Software. We combine the best practices and approaches from Swedish and Ukrainian cultures. Taking high demand for quality, minimal hierarchy, freedom of decision-making, and attention to every opinion from Swedes. As a Ukrainian company we demonstrate flexibility and dedication to every project and every customer.
We deliver smartest solutions for over 18 years to our customers around the globe – from Australia to the East Coast of the United States. We work with startups, product houses, and enterprises, providing the products and services that suit our clients the most. Company`s R&D centers are mastering the trending technologies and directions: AR/VR, Blockchain, Machine Learning, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, and others.
04 05 KEY FACTS —
Sigma Software provides cutting-edge technology solutions to our customers in the areas of government, telecommunications, advertising, automotive, gaming, and others.
One of the largest Swedish companies in the field of software development working in Ukraine. Fortum, SAS, Viaplay, Formpipe, Verizon are among our valuable customers all over the world.
06 18 ON TOP-5 YEARS BEST IT EMPLOYERS
2,000 + TOP-100 PROJECTS OUTSOURCING COMPANIES
1,100 + MEMBER OF PEOPLE SIGMA GROUP
20 9 OFFICES COUNTRIES
07 NORDIC TRADITIONS UKRAINIAN SPIRIT SUPERIOR SOFTWARE
08 OUR MISSION —
Provide premier value IT services, keeping the focus on helping our customers to reach their business goals.
OUR PRINCIPLES —
No matter what kind of project we undertake, we always listen, question, and deliver what promised.
09 ADAPTING TO NEW NORMAL: CHALLENGES AND RESULTS
10 The year 2020 brought us some serious challenges: lockdown and switching to remote work required businesses to place significant focus on fighting the consequences, implementing fast changes in order to adapt quickly to the new normal and ensure business continuity for our clients, partners, employees. Our main objectives remained as they were:
§ Providing premier quality services to our customers, helping them to overcome the challenges and use the opportunities that the crisis brought.
§ Education and community development to ensure the high quality of solutions we deliver.
§ Being a responsible employer and providing our employees with a supporting hand when they need it.
11 KEEPING TEAM CULTURE IN 2021
Anatoly Kochetov, Delivery Director
The IT industry was best fitted for the new conditions resulting from the pandemic and lockdown. First of all, due to its ability to quickly switch to remote work. It’s not that difficult for those whose basic toolkit is narrowed to a laptop and Internet access. For example, it took us only three days to switch over a thousand people to 100% remote work.
Eventually, most companies, not just tech-related, realize that this is Ok for everyone to work in this mode. Today large brands such as Facebook, Twitter, or MasterCard are cautious about quarantine easing. They do not prohibit working from the offices, but recommend to continue work in the remote mode if possible.
The question that is on everyone’s mind is how to maintain the culture of openness, innovation, and productivity? It is involved and efficient people, who develop the best products and services and create additional value for the client after all. This helps the company to maintain its position on the market.
Surely with switching to remote, the company faced significant transformation, however, the biggest challenges we met were mental ones. We had to change our habits and minds to adapt to the conditions that actually no one was prepared to. The first thing we`ve noticed is an increase of the average number of employees` working hours. Obviously, it takes time to develop the discipline of working from home and to build clear boundaries between the working and non-working hours.
12 13 When the number of hours goes high, it surely has a positive effect for business, but you have to understand that it is short-term. Lack of work-life balance, combined with social isolation may become very dangerous in long term though. So, our main task was to make sure our specialists can handle these temporary difficulties and escape this widespread trap.
During such periods, when we interact in virtual space only, it is important to fill in any information vacuum and use multiple communication channels. We brought in every chance to reach our people: through our corporate radio, internal social network, online meetings, events, and team buildings, we kept our specialists tuned to the company`s news and updates on a weekly basis.
Now we know it for sure that despite the speedy development of modern communication tools, people are still very sociable creatures. Those tools may help us make our communication more efficient, but they cannot replace personal communication. Keeping this in mind, we tried to get as much off them as we could to relieve the feeling of being locked during the quarantine period: virtual bars, online quizzes, and informal meetings worked very well for us and helped to maintain our team cohesion. To support that culture and atmosphere we created new events: knowledge-sharing sessions on different topics at lunchtime, online morning yoga classes, etc.
The same close contact we maintained with our customers and partners. Staying in touch gives a better understanding of the clients' business climate and needs, when and where our support and assistance is needed the most to help overcome the lockdown impact. The highest ever scores we received this year on the results of Customers` Satisfaction Survey make it clear that we`re on the right way.
14 15 ONLINE FIKA —
Since Sigma Software is a part of Swedish Sigma Group, we organize Fika — traditional coffee breaks in the Swedish lifestyle. It is the time for informal conversation between colleagues, for asking questions, and sharing essential things like company's values and culture. Before the lockdown emerged from the woodwork, we had it in each office as an in-person meeting. Anyone could come and ask founders any questions, voice ideas to discuss, or improvements they see the company can implement. This spring we had it online for the first time. It brought together 600 people, and 81% were satisfied with the amount of news and information afterward.
This unique and warm tradition is a great opportunity to distract from work and chat with colleagues. As you know, the Swedish approach is about the the minimum hierarchy and maximum inclusion of each and every employee. Fika is a great occasion to confirm this again.
16 17 1,100+ PEOPLE, 3 DAYS, 100% SWITCHING TO REMOTE
Julia Nilga, Chief Infrastructure Officer
It was the time of the first COVID-19 cases registered in Wuhan, when we began to work on ensuring business continuity, and intensified this work with the disease spreading outside China. We started with rigorous analysis of the possible scenarios and came up with an action plan in case a lockdown would take place.
To make sure we can be flexible enough and respond quickly to all the changes, we started with rebuilding our VPN system. Earlier it was configured for office work, so that the company could control the presence of antivirus and OS updates on the corporate devices. After the rebuilding, it allowed working from any location with no limitations. Such a transformation normally takes up to 6 months to implement. We managed to do it in two months.
Reshaping VPN was half the battle. We then had to make sure everyone in our big team has all the accesses, all the necessary instructions, is able to connect, and can rely on the help of Service Center any tick of the clock. We also had to take care about staying in touch at various channels people might wanted to use for contacting us – Jira tickets, messengers, emails, phone calls, internal social network, and more. In urgent cases, system administrators even gave house calls to employees to help them with equipment setup. →
18 19 Speaking of which, the company covered the costs of delivering equipment, chairs, tables, and all the necessary stuff to employees homes. We have elaborated a clear schedule for deliveries taking into account all the variables to ensure business continuity. As of now, we are working on replacement of the hard set workplaces with laptops for all the employees of Sigma Software to provide every and each of them with the maximum flexibility.
The lockdown in Ukraine was announced and lifted, but Sigma Software still works remotely. For those who needs to visit the company premises strict sanitary rules are in action. All surfaces that are often touched are disinfected several times a day, face mask requirement is in force, disinfectant and masks are freely available. Of course we all hope that some critical cases won`t happen to our people, still, to be on the safe side, we have also purchased oxygen concentrators and pulse oximeters that employees and their families can use.
The company rethinks usage of its offices spaces, since we have now a solid proof that remote work is possible and even more preferable for some people. On a basis of the HR survey conducted within the company in the spring 2020, we have decided to rent out part of our office spaces, while the other part has two types of workplaces. Fixed ones reserved to certain specialists, who cannot work from their homes, and bookable, so that all the employees working remotely had an opportunity to come to the office when it is necessary.
We have gone through significant changes and managed to make it smoothly. The set of measures we took beforehand as well as our well-knit teams of office and administration support helped us to switch 1,100+ people to remote in just three business days!
20 21 MATCHING 1,100+ REMOTE WORKPLACES WITH SECURITY PRACTICES
Dmytro Tereshchenko, Head of Information Security Department
Switching to remote was a complex and challenging task in many aspects, especially when it came to ensuring security. We have discovered several significant risks, which we had to deal fast, before any serious incidents could take place. When people work from home, firstly they do not always use corporate equipment and sometimes replace it with own devices. Secondly, even if used, the ability to control and manage corporate devices, when they are distributed this much, differs dramatically compared to when the devices are located in the office. Thus, our main goal on the very first stages was to ensure that every workstation connecting to corporate network was checked for the latest operating system and antivirus updates. →
22 23 Limiting the access for those who fail to install updates is not an ultimate solution in the long run. It was necessary to teach people, inform them about the possible consequences, and change their attitude towards security issues. Here are some of the steps we took:
§ Our security team elaborated a series of podcasts on our corporate radio dedicated to security.
§ Several articles on the matter were published to raise employees’ awareness.
§ Security became one of the hot topics to reveal during the internal Sigma Software conference, PM Gathering, uniting online over 200 participants.
This work has eventually paid off. Our colleagues became more attentive to different anomalies, the number of requests for infosec team increased. This includes not only reporting of some suspicious cases, but also they ask for advice on how to ensure security processes and approaches on their projects and how to communicate the security importance to the customers.
Many of our clients already have a clear understanding of security importance, as well as willingness to improve and adjust their processes to make them safer. It is always good to know that you have somebody behind you, who knows all the nuances and can support you with timely and expert support when it is needed. Sigma Software has this expertise, so our clients know they can trust us and rely on our opinion when it comes to security issues.
24 25 REBUILDING HR PROCESSES AND COMMUNICATIONS
Anna Piskun, Head of HR
The year 2020 brought some dramatic changes in the way we used to live, work, communicate, and interact with each other. In order to respond to those changes and make the transition to the remote work painless for our people, we had to adapt all our HR practices, and do it very fast.
When the pandemic started spreading, there were numerous predictions, however no one actually expected the lockdown would affect us this much in every aspect of our lives. With the very first blow the quarantine stroke, we have switched to more flexible and traceable approach and short-term planning, as well as introduced regular daily updates monitoring during HR business partners meetings. This helped us stay tuned to the current situation and respond to changes almost real-rime.
We armed ourselves with the relevant experience of the world leading companies that have been already working 100% remotely and took over their best practices. The knowledge sharing between the colleagues, as well as within the Ukrainian HR community also became a valuable asset for us. →
26 27 Here what we did to help business and our people to struggle all the challenges and get used to the new normal:
§ Some people found themselves unprepared for the new conditions. They had no organized workplaces at their homes, and they had to get used to the fact that they have to stay at home week after week and work side by side to their families, kids, pets, dealing in parallel with household routine and with work tasks. The company helped with delivery and setup of all the necessary equipment, while HR managers were always available to give advice and consultations on how to organize the healthy work-life balance and how to ensure the work efficiency does not suffer.
§ The lockdown not only affects our habits, it can have more serious consequences, affecting the state of mind. Those who felt locked in four walls with efficiency going down, the company provided with free psychotherapist help as an extension to our IT Assistant program.
§ We have noticed that many of our colleagues did not know how to properly reorganize communication within the teams regarding the new conditions. We are often the creatures of habits, so many of our specialists continued with non-regular meetings with cameras turned off. Our first big task was to explain that lack of socialization requires more personal communications and a possibility to see their talk partner. The frequency of meetings with HR Managers increased too, so that everyone in the team would receive support and help when they need it.
Internal communications were significantly intensified. We have conducted a survey for Sigma Software specialists to understand whether they are satisfied with working from home and what difficulties they face.
28 We have revised our communication channels, since we are now deprived of the opportunity to communicate in person. HR news, articles, updates, posts on the corporate social network: everything aims at demonstrating every specialist that they have an expert team of HR managers that are here for them.
We have adapted our HR practices to the remote work. Eventually, every single HR process was revised and rebuilt. Onboarding, team buildings, internal education, corporate events, sport support, loyalty program, everything faced significant transformation. One of the main tasks for HR department in the conditions of remote work is to keep the specialists engaged, ensure they know and share corporate culture, mission, and values, associate themselves with the HR-brand, and still feel like they are a part of big though distributed family.
Surely, the lockdown has caused positive changes too. The company now does not depend on locations, where the offices are open, and our employees can work from wherever they like. The new conditions became a catalyst for huge transformations at all levels and helped to implement the changes that at other times would be most likely postponed or implemented at a very low pace. Moreover, with offices and its stuffing fading into the background, interesting projects, top-notch technologies, expert teams, and non-trivial tasks come to the fore, changing the shape of the employer value proposition for the upcoming years.
29 EVENTS AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO NETWORK IN CONDITIONS OF SHELTERING AT HOMES —
KIDS DAY
Parenting during a pandemic is not the easiest thing as children are affected by physical distancing, quarantines, and school closures. We at Sigma Software try to keep kids happy, healthy, and busy during the lockdown. For this purpose, we organized special Kids Days where children and parents could interact, study playing quizzes, relax, and have fun.
30 VYSHYVANKA DAY
Every year on the third Thursday of May, our team comes to work in embroidered shirts. We decided not to skip the tradition and transform it into an online format — photo challenge on Vyshyvanka Day. Our Workplace, the internal communication platform, was full of ornaments and happy faces of our colleagues!
31 SIGMA SOFTWARE COOKING
As our team were spending all days at homes during the lockdown, we decided to launch yummy initiative — a delicious flashmob called Sigma Software Cooking. Our colleagues showed their hidden talents by sharing their favorite recipes with beloved teammates! As a result, we have 55 new ideas of tasty dishes and good appetite now.
32 EASTER CHARITY FAIR
During COVID-19, older people need to observe self-isolation, so we decided to held an Easter Charity Fair at Sigma Software. Everyone had the opportunity to purchase any branded souvenir, and at the same time, help those in need! During the fair, we managed to collect 19,330 UAH, which we directed to purchase 86 food packages under the project “Order products for grandpa & grandma!”
33 SPORTS SUPPORT —
We support the aspiration of our specialists to an active lifestyle and provide them with various sport activities even in the lockdown:
PARTICIPATION IN MARATHONS
Year after year the number of marathon participants from Sigma Software increases, and 2020 isn’t an exception! During the autumn season, our team has joined 3 races in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv. Running for us is the best way to relax and get mood-boosting effects and energy for the upcoming working weeks.
TRAINING SESSIONS
Since the gyms were closed, we decided to launch the online warm-up activities for our team. Our sporty colleagues ran a mini training sessions for other coworkers to distract from work for a while and stay sporty.
34 35 36 SPORT CHALLENGES
A strong mind in a strong body! Twice a year we organize online sports challenges between our colleagues to feel the spirit of competition and promote a healthy lifestyle. During 2 weeks our teammates share videos and screen proofs of their sport achievements. Plank, jumps, push-ups, squats, burpees categories, and numerous amazing results.
ONLINE YOGA
Every Tuesday and Thursday our colleagues have a chance to meet online and practice yoga with a professional trainer. We believe that doing the postures, breathing exercises and meditation makes our team healthier in body, mind and spirit.
SIGMA SOFTWARE CYCLING TEAM
We are happy to support The Unicorn — Sigma Software cycling team that takes every opportunity to meet and train together. Even the quarantine didn’t stop them to get prepared for the future competitions and next victories, and take the 1st places at Ukrainian competitions.
37 EDUCATION GOES ONLINE
38 39 CONTINUOUS EDUCATION DURING LOCKDOWN
Ievgeniia Iurevych, Training Manager
Internal education always was among the company`s main focuses. The best and high quality services can be only developed by cool professionals who have an opportunity to learn from each other, share knowledge, and adopt the best practices.
The goal of our continuous education program is to ensure professional development of our people from Junior to Middle and then from Middle to Senior and to make this growth more predictable and controlled. So, we knew it well, we should not stop it for a minute and provide people with just as rich possibilities to level up, as it was before the COVID-19 stroke.
Within just weeks we have adapted all our internal programs to online, we had no other way but to ensure the same level of quality as the usual offsite trainings had. First, we worked with trainers and made them believe this is absolutely possible. We have held several knowledge sharing sessions from the speakers that already had a relevant experience, mastered rich functionality of Zoom and taught our trainers how to use it, helped with programs adaptation, especially with practical tasks, and thought through how we should promote online education within the company. We faced some skepticism at some level from our audience as there were tons of free online trainings available, and their quality was not always at a desired level.
40 41 Still, after several programs were successfully held online, our specialists realized that online education has own benefits and is definitely worth taking.
Some of the trainings we also made available for self-education: created a series of short videos and uploaded them to our corporate e-learning tool. This platform allows not only storing educational content so that our employees would have access to it any time they have a minute to take a course. It also has a functionality that provides an opportunity to interact with a trainer, ask questions, upload homeworks, and get them checked automatically or by a mentor.
When the lockdown started, many of the known and trusted resources provided free access to their educational content. Sigma Software training team has selected the best of it allowing to cover the main gaps in skills matrices our people have. These included Algorithms and Data Structure, Databases, Network Fundamentals, Unit Testing, and others.
Remote work and lack of socialization became a catalyst for increasing of knowledge sharing sessions within the company. It was an opportunity to meet and learn how other people live through the new conditions, what challenges they face and how struggle them. During two months we have held 20 knowledge sharing sessions gathering up to 50 participants each. Directions they covered varied a lot: from technical ones to soft skills, business communications in the new conditions, emotional intelligence, and others. A large company-wide conference for Project Managers, PM Gathering, united online over two hundred participants and welcomed experienced speakers from C-level management, skilled Project and Account Managers.
42 CONTINUOUS EDUCATION —
Without any doubt, in the world switched online, we have obtained a lot of opportunities, and virtual education is one of them. During the lockdown, Sigma Software provided equal educational opportunities to all employees organizing our own meetups and conferences:
SIGMA SOFTWARE SHARES
Sigma Software Shares is a series of internal meetings aimed to support each other during quarantine and ensure the professional development of our people. Starting from March 2020, our colleagues have shared their knowledge, cases, experience, and life-hacks in the format of webinars! During just 3 months, Sigma Software has organized 40 webinars which have covered both hard-skills and soft skills topics.
43 44 PM GATHERING
Since 2013 Sigma Software held the annual cross-department knowledge- sharing conference — PM Gathering, an annual event for project managers, team leaders, architects, department managers, and C-level executives. Traditionally, we ran it as an offline conference, but this time we completely transformed our live event into a virtual one.
Our Sigma Software club turned into a real studio with two stages, where the best company experts shared their experience, discussed the failures and successes, and talked about transformations in the company.
For seven years now PM Gathering is a great place to build and develop the PM community, e-meet colleagues from different locations, get inspiration, and share opinions and approaches.
45 NEW FORMATS OF COOPERATION WITH UNIVERSITIES
Andrey Somov, Training Manager
The forced reclusion we all had to keep the last months did not prevent us from our long-term partnership relations with educational establishments all over Ukraine. The new normal definitely put in two cents worth, however we were able to continue almost every single of our previous joint programs we had with universities and schools all over Ukraine. Only now all these activities went online.
§ Traditional Agile practice always engaged distributed teams and students from different locations. Therefore, we were prepared to switch online and held all the workshops, mentorship sessions, and demo pitching without losing efficiency.
§ Sigma Software specialists took part in students theses defense in various universities. Our specialists were eager to help with advice and development of a secure virtual platform with stable connection to ensure theses and course projects presentations run smoothly. →
46 47 § The lockdown did not distract us from our active work in universities` certification commissions, supervisory boards, scientific and methodological commissions. We still participated in all the meetings and contributed to elaboration and improvement of training programs.
§ Data Science summer school for the 2nd year students was adapted for online format. Nevertheless, it still contained a bunch of practical tasks, quite rich theoretical basis, and all-time support from our mentors.
§ About 100 students pass the internship, both group and individual, at Sigma Software yearly. The 2020 became no exception. We have revised our programs in a way to make them suitable for e-learning, and successfully taught youngsters providing them with their first field experience in IT.
§ Numerous student events - open doors days, job fairs, company`s presentations, hackathons, contests - everything was moved to online. To make sure our speakers, mentors, and trainers successfully changed over from offline format that they have used to, we elaborated a set of recommendations on what techniques and practices to use in order to keep the participants' attention without being able to see them in person.
48 TOP 10 FACTS ON IT EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT IN UKRAINE DURING 10 YEARS —
IT education growth always was one of the top priorities for Sigma Software from day one. Without the education development, the further successful evolving of the Ukrainian IT industry is impossible. Our country has a strong engineering school that helped us take the leading place on the European market and compete with global IT hubs. However, the Ukrainian IT education has own weak sides, such as insufficient connections between business and educational establishments, training programs that do not meet current market needs, and others.
Having this in mind, the leading Ukrainian IT companies have been cooperating with universities, colleges, schools for many years. Sigma Software has an impressive background of joint projects, courses, events, trainings, programs that go back to the first days of company`s existence. Ten years ago, we became a member of a newly created IT Committee of European Business Association. Since then, our efforts on IT education development have doubled, so now we are proud to present 10 facts for the last 10 years, covering the most bright company`s contributions to IT education growth.
49 § We have started cooperation with 14 leading tech Universities in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa, and Dnipro. With four more schools that we have partnered before the year 2010, this figure reaches 17.
§ Six labs were equipped by Sigma Software in Ukrainian Universities to provide students with an opportunity to learn using modern machines. The total number of labs now goes up to 8, including the ones on IoT and Data Science directions.
§ Four years ago we have launched a scholarship for getting a Bachelor Degree in computer science for a student of the Ukrainian Catholic University. The scholarship winner recently joined Sigma Software team as a Junior Software Developer.
§ The company joined Okean Elzy in their charity tour to Sweden. The money from the band`s Stockholm concert were doubled by Sigma Software and went to equipping two computer classes in boarding schools for social orphans in Lviv and Kharkiv.
§ We have developed and ran joint courses on Java, .NET, Flash, Agile, Project Management, and other directions with universities in different locations. Sigma Software experts took active part in programs creation and became trainers.
§ About 500 interns passed the internship program at Sigma Software getting their first experience. 87% of them later joined the Sigma Software team.
50 § About 700 students took the Agile course, launched by Sigma Software 10 years ago. It aims at bringing the understanding of project processes, teamwork, and efficient communications to young people.
§ Almost 500 different events for students organized, supported, hosted – open door days, job fairs, contests, workshops, meetups, presentations… For five years Sigma Software organized a student`s startup contest IT-Eureka, that was supported by international education program TEMPUS, and then by the Ministry of Education, gathering hundreds of participants all over Ukraine.
§ Joined several projects for universities teaching staff: launched a scholarship for professors of LNU on a course for building efficient management processes; hosted and organized workshops, meetups, and lectures for professional development.
§ Started joined courses on Java, Python, Artificial Intelligence, and basics of programming with four schools in Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa.
51 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
52 Having a sense of community unites us. Being part of a shared space, whether physical or virtual, gives people the chance to be inspired, connect with other people, reach for new goals, and makes us feel safe and secure. Besides creating and developing communities within the company, we support numerous external conferences and meetups as well as organize our own for the Ukrainian and international markets.
WEBINARS
With all the events taking place worldwide, many businesses are experiencing turbulent times and looking for new opportunities as well as conceive the ways to benefit from them by gaining new knowledge. Sigma Software held series of free webinars “Accelerated Change” aiming to inspire businesses to move forward, present expert views on how businesses, entrepreneurs, and investors can thrive in it, and get a situation under control.
Along 6 months we organized 7 webinars with speakers from the US, Israel, the UK, Sweden, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland! With the help of our experts, we tried to predict the future of various tech areas such as Cybersecurity, Fundraising, Startups, Fintech, Media, and AdTech.
53 54 HACKATHONS
Online hackathons are gaining popularity around the world. No wonder — this is a great opportunity to change the lives of people and communities around the globe, get out of the comfort zone, learn something new, and share experience! In 2020 Sigma Software team participated in a Swedish hackathon Hack the Crisis and IT Arena — Hack the New World event in order to find concepts and tech solutions to one of the biggest crises of recent years. We truly believe that by helping and uniting we can make the world a safer place for all of us.
IT ARENA
Sigma Software have partnered with the largest East-European tech conference — IT Arena, a tech event with a global outlook and scale, which in 2020 took place online, streaming from the city of Lviv, Ukraine. About 4,100 online attendees enjoyed three tracks of speeches, meetups, and discussion panels – Business, Product, and Technology. Sigma Software was a Gold Partner of the event and welcomed our colleagues as speakers at Tech Track and Meetups.
55 UKRAINIAN ISRAELI INNOVATION SUMMIT
A major tech offline-online event, the Ukrainian Israeli Innovation Summit 2020, was launched in Sigma Software office in order to establish cooperation between Israel and Ukraine in the area of innovation. The conference, supported by both the Israeli and Ukrainian governments, covered such topics as Ukrainian- Israeli cooperation during the pandemic, the transformation of the venture investing landscape, the creation of international access that can help overcome the crisis, and the new normal of startup reality.
OPEN TECH WEEK
Sigma Software launched Open Tech Week project three years ago to put together tech meetups, knowledge-sharing sessions, education, and charity initiative. Over the years, the project gained traction, found its fans, and visited most Sigma Software home cities: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, and Odesa. Though many technical meetups and large conferences were cancelled or postponed to a later date, we decided to make Open Tech Week happen online 4 times this year. 40 speakers, 20 tech directions and more than 800 attendees joined us online in order to develop professional skills and fundraise for charity.
56 57 ENSURING QUALITY DELIVERY
58 59 94% CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SCORE IN AN ANNUAL SURVEY
Evgeniy Bachinskiy, Quality Director
Every year the Sigma Software Quality Department runs a Customer Satisfaction Survey that’s goal is to detect the level of customer satisfaction with the services and solutions we provide, to define areas of improvement, and to take steps to become even better. This year for most areas we have received our best ratings ever, 94%, which is significantly higher than the market average.
We strive to establish long-term trustworthy relations with all our customers without exception, and this survey’s feedback displays that we are on the right track. Additionally, we are constantly working to increase and enhance the collection of feedback to better understand the areas we can improve in order to make our clients even happier. Along with providing top-quality software development services to our customers, we pay special attention to non-stop progress of our own expertise, growing specific competences, as well as implementing best practices of software development and project management.
We always take a proactive position in any project we start, suggest ways for improvement and are always ready to go an extra mile to deliver solutions in time and within budgets.
60 61 KEY FINDINGS —
94% 53 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SCORE NET PROMOTER SCORE*
THIS YEAR WE ACHIEVED THE HIGHEST EVER SATISFACTION SCORE OF 94% AND NPS OF 53, WHICH IS HIGHER THAN THE INDUSTRY AVERAGE, 38.
§ The most satisfied groups of clients are Enterprises and Product Houses. They scored 100% satisfaction.
§ Companies that have been our clients for more than 1 year are more satisfied and loyal, scoring satisfaction 100% and NPS 81.
§ The greatest progress show Communication, Quality, and Technical Skills areas.
62 FINDINGS BY AREAS —
TOP 3 areas our clients are satisfied with the most: Communication, Quality, and Technical Skills.
1. COMMUNICATION 94% SATISFACTION
2. QUALITY 92% SATISFACTION
3. TECHNICAL SKILLS 90% SATISFACTION
63 ACKNOWLEDGMENT —
Our desire to become a trusted partner and provider of the highest quality services is often acknowledged by various awards and ratings.
§ EGR B2B Award, IT Supplier 2020
§ Reputation ranking of tech companies in Ukraine
§ Top 50+ Custom Software Development Companies
§ Listed in Global Outsourcing 100® by International Association of Outsourcing Professionals since 2016
§ Top Ukraine App Development Companies according to Clutch
§ Top 1000 Service Providers by Clutch.co
64 65 BUSINESS AGAINST COVID-19
66 67 QUICK RESPONDING TO PRESSING NEEDS OF MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS —
Since the beginning of the pandemic, our company has joined the efforts of the society to protect people and to support healthcare professionals in their hard work.
We, at Sigma Software, have the highest regard for the fight that medical workers lead against the pandemic and try to help them be equipped for this fight. That’s why we have been forwarding protective gear and medical equipment to hospitals and emergency units after the announcement of quarantine.
During the quarantine period, Sigma Software transferred:
§ An oxygen concentrator to an emergency aid hospital;
§ Protective gear to an infectious diseases hospital dedicated to admit patients with confirmed COVID-19 (face masks, medical suits, protective overshoes, and gloves);
§ Protective gear to a first-aid station (face masks, medical suits, protective overshoes).
68 Healthcare professionals are now doing their best to help people overcome the virus. We try to help them in this stiff task. The pandemic affects all businesses and all people around the world. The only way to combat such a global problem is to unite our forces, to support those who have the knowledge and skills in their work, and to help those around us to navigate through the crisis. We, in the IT industry, know how to change quick, and we should help others adapt to the new reality.
69 CONTRIBUTING TO THE UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT INITIATIVE FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESSES DIIA.BUSINESS —
Diia.Business іs a national entrepreneurship development project initiated by the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation. It opened Diia.Business Center in Kharkiv as the first Entrepreneurship Support Center with a consulting area for micro, small, and medium businesses.
This autumn Sigma Software signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with Diia.Business Center in Kharkiv. According to the Memorandum, our company will furnish a business process management solution for the Center.
70 Specifically, we are going to automate business processes for Diia.Business entrepreneur support center. The solution for business processes automation will be based on the technologies of our partner Middleware Inc.: Corezoid Process Engine and Control.events. Customization, integration, and support of the solution will be provided by Sigma Software as our company's contribution to the digital transformation of the Ukrainian government services and support of Ukrainian businesses and startups.
71 SUPPORTING STARTUPS AND SMALL BUSINESSES —
A year ago, we started an ambitious project Sigma Software Labs to contribute to the development of the Ukrainian IT community and take the whole tech ecosystem to the new heights.
Sigma Software Labs provides Ukraine-based startups, small product houses, and service companies office spaces with fully setup and readily available infrastructure. But not just that. Labs’ residents also get new opportunities to grow: access to Sigma Software business and technical experience, best practices, tech excellence knowledgebase, the list of global invest funds, and its customer network. Supported by Sigma Software Labs, new businesses reduce their time-to-market period due to all mentioned opportunities, accelerate response to business changes, keep their products sought-after, and focus on increasing their product quality.
72 In addition to supporting its residents, Sigma Software Labs performs extensive awareness-building work to advance the Ukrainian startup ecosystem. A few examples:
§ Sigma Software Labs holds experience-sharing online events Startup Live: How an entrepreneur becomes serial? At the events, proved Ukrainian startupers tell about their business paths and answer questions from the startup community;
§ Our skilled speakers appear at local meetings for new businesses, such as the Open Doors Day ran by UNIT.City Kharkiv, Startup Workshops by Diia.Business in Kharkiv, local festivals and conferences;
§ We take part in organization of events for Ukrainian startups in cooperation with Lviv Business School, ComeITup, Polish Ukrainian Startup Bridge, UTEW Tech Tribe, Lviv Tech Angels, and others.
73 THANK YOU!
NORDIC TRADITIONS | UKRAINIAN SPIRIT | SUPERIOR SOFTWARE