Outsourcing Destination Guide Romania

Published by: In co-operation with: With support from:

ROMANIA OUTSOURCING DESTINATION GUIDE

ITO & BPO MARKET

EXAMPLES BY GERMAN OUTSOURCING CONTACTS ASSOCIATION TALENT KNOWLEDGE MOTIVATION PROXIMITY ROMANIAN ITO & BPO SERVICES

www.outsourcing-destinations.org Outsourcing Destination Guide Romania

With the Outsourcing Destination Guide Romania we inform about the capabilities and actors of the Romanian ITO and BPO industry.

We inform about market, conditions and actors and show case unique solutions in- vented by Romanian service industry experts in the form of case studies and project reports.

As a result we help decision makers to better understand the advantages and conditions in working with Romanian IT- and business services providers.

6 - Market Insights 18 - Industry Cluster & Associations 22 - Shared Service & BPO Centers 24 - Projects & Case Studies 50 - Profiles & Contacts

Independent information guide by German Outsourcing Association in co-operation with ABSL, ANIS and ClujIT Industry associations and cluster Romania for free global distribution. Calea Victoriei Bukarest Picture: Mihai Petre

Dacia Duster Picture: Edoardo Costa, Wiki, flickr Transfăgărășan, Carpathians Picture: Horia Varlan, Romania

Financial Plaza Bucharest Picture: Mihai Petre THE ROMANIAN ITO & BPO INDUSTRY

6 - Outsourcing to Romania: Building a Compelling Case - by ANIS – As- sociation of the Software and Services Industry in Romania

12 - Romania – Benchmark, IT Centers (Cities) & its BPO Industry - by Tünde Székely, Publication Chair, General Council, German Outsourcing Association

6www.outsourcing-destinations.org THE ROMANIAN ITO & BPO INDUSTRY Outsourcing to Romania: Building a Compelling Case By ANIS – Association of the Software and Services Industry in Romania

In 2012, after several quarters of Romanian companies directly or professionals and graduates. ongoing contraction of the GDP, indirectly involved in software Moreover, there is a sizable num- Romania’s economy managed to development, customization and ber of local companies that pro- grow by 0.7% compared to 2011, commercialization. Undeniably, vide exclusive custom software but still under the National Bank’s there is huge potential for IT soft- development for offshore/near- forecast of 1% growth for 2012. ware and services in Romania, as shore clients in the U.S., Western the penetration rate is still very Europe (France, Italy, Germany, The IT market in Romania grew low compared to similar econo- Benelux, United Kingdom), and, 4.3% year on year in 2012 to reach mies. more recently, the Middle East. a value of $2.92 billion. Hardware accounted for 70.3% of the total Despite several factors need- Romania currently has around 50 market, while software made up ing improvement to maintain offshore centers owned by large 14.8% and IT services 14.9%. IDC or increase the country’s attrac- international IT vendors. More expects IT spending in Romania tiveness for future foreign direct than half of these are business to grow at a CAGR (Compound- investments (FDI), outsourcing process outsourcing (BPO) cent- ed Annual Growth Rate) of 2.4% remains a very profitable busi- ers, 30% are IT services-related over the next five years to total ness in Romania. The country’s centers, and less than 20% are $3.37 billion in 2017. attractiveness as a sourcing loca- R&D facilities. tion is rooted in the lower costs With an expected CAGR of 3.3% of doing business when com- During the last five years, offshor- during the same period, the soft- pared to other countries in the ing in Romania has moved from ware market will expand more region, as well as in the large, basic near-shore provisions to and at a faster pace than the highly skilled pool of IT workers, services with high added value overall IT industry, thus repre- together with a strong aptitude (engineering and software de- senting a huge opportunity for for foreign languages among velopment). According to the

Romanian Ministry of IT and accounted for over 62% of total 2011. In 2012, the Romanian Communications, the number of IT services exports in 2012. The IT sector employed more than employees currently working in other traditional outsourcing 60,000 professionals. The ma- outsourcing (local, offshore, and services, such as BPO, managed jority of them (more than 80%) near-shore) is around 50,000, services, research and develop- are technical specialists, such compared with the 15,000 re- ment services, and engineering as software engineers, analysts, corded in 2007. services together account for the developers, and project manag- remaining 38% of total IT servic- ers. Management and business The growth of the local software es exports. professionals represent less than market (for both packaged and 20% of the total. custom applications) has two Romania’s IT services offshore main sources of development. market reached approximately With more than 300,000 tertiary The first is, as mentioned, the $485 million in 2012 (excluding education graduates per year, establishment of new offshore/ the export of pure licenses) and of which nearly 4,000 are pure nearshore centers in Romania by is expected to accelerate its im- computing graduates, Romania foreign companies seeking new petus in the next years. The struc- seems to have secured its pool opportunities to bring down ture of the offshore/nearshore of candidates in the information costs, and the second is the rise market in Romania is the follow- and communications technol- of local companies more involved ing: IT services (custom applica- ogy sector. As revealed by the in creating their own intellectual tion development/CAD, support, latest IDC-ANIS survey, most of property and successful branded and testing services) account for Romania’s software companies applications. 62%, BPO services for 29%, and increased their number of em- R&D (engineering services) for ployees over the past three years Several factors have contributed the remaining 9%. and are looking to expand fur- to Romania’s appeal as a sourc- ther in the coming three-year ing location. However, it is worth period. mentioning at this point that the Romania’s Competi- main competitive advantages tive Assessment Demand for IT professionals is offered by Romania are still the now greater than ever, generat- lower costs of doing business From human resources to tech- ing marked salary increases and compared to other countries in nology adoption, Romania is well difficulty in recruitment for cer- the region such Slovenia and positioned to compete interna- tain and senior positions. During Croatia, a highly skilled and large tionally in the information tech- the last few years, staff turno- pool of human resources, and nology market. In the following, ver rates at local organizations the market size. we are looking closer at Roma- have decreased substantially as nia’s key competitive strengths, a result of improving salaries, In terms of export revenue struc- the country’s direct competitors, better working conditions, and ture, the overwhelming major- comparative overview of Roma- the emergence of strong teams ity of IT services revenue comes nia vis-à-vis these countries. within companies, among other from customization services (in- factors. cluding custom application de- Romania has the largest pool of velopment services and applica- human capital in Southeastern The latest IDC-ANIS survey tion customization) and support Europe (SEE), with a total labor among local software companies services. These two categories force of more than 9 million in revealed that Romania’s most

threatening competitors when nia compares to the four above- state of the economy and thus it comes to attracting offshore/ mentioned countries. the effect of the aforementioned nearshore investments are Rus- political and regulatory factors. sia (26% of respondents), Ukraine To varying degrees, economic Strong macroeconomic indica- (23% of respondents), Bulgaria and political factors influence the tors suggest a favorable climate (17% of respondents), and Po- cost of running a business in a for foreign investment. land (16% of respondents). In the given country. Indicators such as following, we analyse how Roma- GDP and FDI reflect the current

Comparison of Economic and Political Factors, 2011

Measurement Romania Bulgaria Russia Ukraine Poland

Political Stability (country risk) 67.5 67.1 73.4 64.8 73.9 Investment into Education - US$M 9%* 10.7%* 18.2%* 17.4%* 12.4%* Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 3.6 3.3 2.4 2.3 5.5 Employee Visa Waiver Schemes No No No No No GDP per capita (US$) 8,862 7,131 12,948 3,618 13,451 FDI (US$M) 1,390 973 -19,738 8,340 12,927 Unemployment rate 7.40% 11.10% 6.50% 7.50% 9.70% Piracy rates 63% 64% 63% 84% 53&

Note: *estimate ; Data Source: PRS Group, Forfas, Transparency International, National Finance Departments, IDC, 2012 ; Table Source: Software and IT Services in Romania, ANIS, 2013

Over the last decade, the costs Based on the table above, Roma- improving the overall economic of doing business in CEE have nia presents a mixed picture: The conditions to increase the GDP risen significantly, in line with country is relatively politically per capita. the growth experienced in the stable, enjoys a rather low un- five economies. Despite the re- employment rate, and provides a Poland and Russia are by far cent economic turbulence in the decent level of intellectual prop- the most advanced countries in region, the countries have con- erty rights. However, significant terms of ICT adoption, each with tinued on growth trajectories, improvements are needed in ICT spending of around $500 per reflected in the GDP per capita in terms of investing more into the capita. When looking at IT and all five. educational system, attracting communications spending com- more foreign investment, and bined, Romania outpaces only

Ukraine, a country in the early highest fixed broadband pen- double-digit growth per year stages of technology adoption etration by population and with (28% in 2012 in number of con- (90% of IT spending is accounted one of the fastest broadband nections), Romania is expected for by hardware sales). services in Europe and, argu- to close the gap fast. ably, worldwide. Though mobile In terms of broadband adoption, broadband is less developed In 2011, Russia had far and away Romania stands out, with the than in Poland and Bulgaria, with CEE’s largest labor force, with

IT&C Penetration and Technology Adoption

Measurement Romania Bulgaria Russia Ukraine

Population (million) 18.8 7.3 143.1 44.9 PC Penetration in Population 16.7 21.8 33.9 22 Broadband Penetration (fixed) in Population (%) 19 16.8 14.9 n/a IT Spending per capita ($) 154.42 148.96 239.79 95.79 Hardware Spending (% of Total IT) 70.2 74 67.9 89.9 Packaged Software Spending (% of Total IT) 14.9 14.1 13.4 4 IT Services Spending (% of Total IT) 14.9 11.9 18.8 6.2 Telecom Services Spending per capita ($) 173.46 247.06 246.11 117.34 Smartphones Spending per capita ($) 25.93 22.82 26.78 10.28 Broadband Penetration (mobile) in Population (%) 36.4 41.7 30.2 n/a

Data Source: IDC, 2012, Table Source: Software and IT Services, ANIS, 2013

over 75.4million workers. The availability, which can serve as a Poland. Among these countries, second biggest country in this re- starting point to develop further Romania ranks 4th, with a fairly gard was Ukraine, with just over activities. large pool of graduates. 22.1million workers. In absolute terms Romania has the fourth Russia has the largest number of The social science, legal, and largest labour force among the tertiary graduates within the CEE business areas of study are the five competing countries con- region, almost triple the num- most popular in CEE countries sidered above, thus offering a ber than the next biggest coun- and Romania saw 56.0% of all reasonably extended resource try, Ukraine, closely followed by graduates (174,008) earn degrees

in these areas in 2011. Romania and student population and the The author: Valerica Dragomir compares to Poland in terms of strong language skills that are has been working for ANIS since engineering, manufacturing and available in the country’s labor 2001 and has contributed to the construction graduates, of which force. development of the association, IT&C companies can find eligible first as a Project Manager and candidates, as well. Romania is one of the largest since 2005 from the position of countries in CEE and has a di- Executive Director. Ms. Dragomir In Romania 95.4% of the student verse linguistic profile, which has been coordinating Romanian population was studying English makes it especially attractive for national presence at CeBIT Han- in 2011, meaning that more than BPO operations that require cli- nover, the most important IT&C 1.74 million students were study- ent-facing interaction with cus- fair in Europe, since 2005, and ing English in Romania, while, in tomers. In addition, Romania is was involved in strategic plan- Poland, the number was 2.62 mil- home to very capable program- ning for all ANIS business and in- lion. ming talent, and many offshore/ formal events. nearshore investors are utilizing When it comes to German, the country for their R&D opera- As Co-Chairperson of the roma- 156,236 students in Romania tions. niaIT Branding Committee since were studying the language in 2007, where several industry as- 2011, which amounted to 8.6% The fact that Romania is home to sociations and ministries are rep- of students. By contrast, in Po- more offshore/nearshore cent- resented, Ms. Dragomir has been land, due to the vicinity and the ers than any other SEE country an active part in the design of German influences, the number speaks to its reputation among strategic campaigns for promo- is ten times larger. In Romania, investors; despite the obvious tion of the national brand – “ro- French is studied by students at challenges in some areas, the maniaIT - Creative Tallent. Tech- higher levels than in any other business environment has prov- nical Excellence”. Ms. Dragomir country in CEE, with over 1.55 en to be relatively attractive to represents ANIS in public events million students (85.0%) study- those looking to CEE to house and is acting as association’s ing the language in the country parts of their offshore/nearshore spokesperson. in 2011. No other country in CEE networks. came close to this total, with Po- Contact: Valerica Dragomir, land next, at 131,609 students The source for the data included in [email protected] learning French. the article is „Software & IT Servic- es in Romania - A Study on the De- velopment of the Industry of Soft- The Bottom-line: ware and IT Services in Romania Romania is well- in 2013”, commissioned by ANIS – Association of the Software and positioned vis-à-vis Services Industry in Romania and its direct competitors developed by IDC – International Data Corporation. For more infor- The main attraction for investors mation: http://bit.ly/ITstudy when considering Romania is the size of the country’s labor force

Copyright @ All rights reserved. German Outsourcing Association 11 THE ROMANIAN ITO & BPO INDUSTRY Romania – Benchmark, IT Centers & its BPO Industry By Tünde Székely, Publication Chair, General Council, German Outsourcing Association

Choosing your outsourcing ser- 1. Benchmark emerging destinations list of vice provider is a key decision the Times Outsourcing Business amid present moderate eco- International rating agencies and supplement 2012, preceded by nomic growth. Whether to turn reports confer a good position Jamaica, Chile, United Kingdom, to Asia, Latin-America or Europe to the Central Eastern European Ghana and Poland, and followed is not only a geographical pref- country. In October 2012 Jones by South Africa, Russia, Vietnam erence but a matter of complex Lang LaSalle ranked Romania 9th and The Philippines. decision matrix. Central and East- globally among outsourcing des- ern Europe has seen its technol- tinations by the number of jobs Romania is present with five ogy outsourcing business surge created due to foreign direct in- companies in Deloitte’s Top Tech- in the last ten years. Romania, vestment. Data from the report nology Fast 500 EMEA 2013, a positioned among the top ten points out that between 2008 program recognizing technology outsourcing locations worldwide and 2012 a number of 40 out- companies that have achieved gained more and more attention sourcing projects created 11,438 the fastest rates of revenue in the international ranking lists. jobs in Romania. “A.T.Kearney growth in Europe, the Middle Investors have chosen Roma- Global Services Location Index East and Africa during the previ- nia for its sparkling information 2011” ranks Romania 25th re- ous five years. technology outsourcing activi- garding its attractiveness for IT&C ties, software development and services, positioning the country According to the latest Cushman research programs, knowledge after Bulgaria and Poland, well & Wakefield’s Business Process process outsourcing and busi- ahead of Hungary, Czech Repub- Outsourcing Location Index, Ro- ness process outsourcing opera- lic and Slovakia. mania is ranked 2nd, just after tions, as well as for shared service Chile (ranked 1st) and before center capacity. Romania occupies the 6th po- Poland (ranked 3rd). As you can sition globally in the top 10 see in Table 1, Romania pro-

vides good offshoring conditions the study conducted in 2013 by of the interrogated companies (namely: appropriate labor force, the Romanian Employer’s Associ- are spending less than 15% of adequate business environment, ation of the Software and Servic- their turnover on R&D purposes, short time to first supply and es Industry (ANIS) and IDC Roma- whereas 16% of the questioned good IT infrastructure) and it is nia. Custom software application companies allocate no budget an affordable region (in terms of development has registered a for R&D purposes. Main obstacle labor costs, property costs and growth by 4.5% in 2012 reaching therefore in producing their own inflation level). the value of EUR Mil. 292.9; 83.1% software applications / products of this figure accounts for export. is the capital shortage for R&D ITO Facts and Figures activity. Research and development total- Romania is member of the Euro- ized EUR Mil. 88.99, an increase Another challenge is deficiency pean Union which simplifies legal compared to EUR Mil. 83.2 regis- of governmental facilities that and financial issues; tered in 2011. would encourage companies to- wards engaging in R&D projects. The country has affordable labor Under present economic context Shortage of marketing budget and real estate costs and under- the IT market annual growth rate that would empower new prod- went major infrastructure up- is estimated to be around 2.4% in uct release is another obstacle. grades in recent years. the coming five years, whereas Other constraints to consider the software application devel- include high R&D costs, increas- It has a good connectivity by air to opment market is expected to ingly competitive business envi- Europe. expand by an annual growth rate ronment and legal deficiency for of 3.3% - stays in the study. This protection of intellectual prop- Bucharest, the capital city with a is a huge opportunity to compa- erty rights. population close to 1.7 million was nies that are exclusively activat- ranked 44th in Tholons Top Out- ing as software development ser- Nevertheless, the Romanian sourcing Destinations 2013. vice providers. As a matter of fact Government has been consist- 43% of software development ent with the 100% income tax Romanian Ministries of Economy service providers are generating exemption for IT employees even and Regional Development posi- 53% of total revenues. after joining the European Union. tioned Cluj-Napoca, the 2nd largest city after the capital, as the Challenges Software Develop- center of information services in ment Companies Face Romania; as a result Cluj IT Cluster 2. Romanian and Liberty Technology Park were Companies specializing exclu- IT-Centers (Cities) founded. sively in custom software development or software outsourcing Bucharest The economy is projected to grow services give little importance to by 2.7% in 2014 and by 3.5% in research and development pro- Bucharest, the capital city oc- 2015. jects. However, intellectual prop- cupies the pole position in the erty achievements are directly Romanian IT&C industry, giving The Romanian software market related to technological research 67% of the country’s turnover, has expanded by 5.7% amount- and development activity. The 56% of the number of employees ing EUR Mil. 572.3 – according to ANIS study points out that 60% and over 60% of the GDP contri-

bution of all three subsectors – contribution of Bucharest to the total turnover and the number of software and services, hardware industry turnover during the last employees in the sector has been and telecom. 27 of the 30 big- two years is a clear indication growing over the last years. Cor- gest companies in software and that the capital loses ground in porations opened new R&D cent- services and 190 of the 290 com- favor of the North-West region. ers or expanded existing ones. panies with revenues over EUR 1 The most important software Million are based in Bucharest; Cluj-Napoca and service companies are: PGP the city is home to local com- Corporation (data protection panies, integrators and solution After Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca is and security software), HP soft- providers, as well as support and the second city by the number of ware development center, Eval- R&D centers of IT multinational software and services companies ueserve, Sykes, SAP. companies. A drop of 10% in the based here; also, the share in the

UKRAINE

MOLDOVA HUNGARY

ROMANIA

SERBIA BLACK SEA

BULGARIA

Important acquisitions took Szélyes, CEO Codespring, a local (business process software de- place in 2013 in Cluj-Napoca: In- software development and out- velopment). Elektrobit, a lead- tel has acquired Kno, a company sourcing company. ing developer of cutting edge producing educational software embedded technology solutions with offices in USA, India and Ro- Other important IT hubs are for the automotive and wireless mania; the Japanese NTT Data Timisoara, Iasi, Craiova and industries, announced an expan- has acquired EBS and Evoline, Brasov. sion in Brasov with plans to grow part of Evogroup, was bought by its local team to more than 100 Accenture. R&D activities in Continental Au- software developers over time. tomotive (+50%) contributed The new Brasov office will focus Not surprisingly places KPMG Ad- to the IT sector expansion of on automotive software product visory Cluj-Napoca amongst the Timisoara. Add to that the activ- development and testing. first 31 word destinations for in- ity of software development and vestments in the field of informa- outsourcing companies of AICI tion technology, pointing out the Worldwide, Saguaro Print, OCE key aspects that make the city a Software, Internet Marketing On- 3. Romanian BPO location of choice: professional line and Berg Computers. Industry labor pool, attractive costs and geographic proximity. Iasi BPO centers have either been set up in large Romanian cities What’s more, in 2012 Cluj-Napoca Iasi has been ranked as the 75th or entered the Romanian market appears for the first time on Tho- city globally for the highest in- through acquisition of local com- lons’ list of leading locations for ternet penetration. Although in panies. The majority of the main outsourcing services. Global ser- 2010 the number of employees BPO players from Bucharest have vice and outsourcing consultan- of the sector was on the rise, each opened at least one service cy firm Tholons included in his compared to 2009, the revenues center in large cities, around the Top 100 Outsourcing Cities 2012 decreased by 10%. Some of the main established university cent- report Cluj-Napoca as a new en- local companies have experi- ers. To name just a few: Wipro, HP, try and positioned the city on the enced difficulties, but they were Siemens, Bosch have expanded 96th place on the global map of compensated by a better evolu- in Timişoara, Intesa San Paolo top outsourcing destinations. tion of development and sup- Bank, Route 66, IBM’s second port centers opened in the last center has opened up in Braşov, Hosting nearly 250 ICT com- years: Continental Automotive, Capgemini set up offices in Iaşi, panies, with roughly 5000 ac- Capgemini, Genpact and Ama- XL World opened operations in tive software engineers, Cluj- zon. Iaşi, Bacău and Oradea. Napoca’s software market has expanded by 48.8% in the last Craiova Cluj-Napoca has emerged as a two years. BPO hub not only for software BLACK SEA Investors from Craiova include development services, but for IT “Cluj-Napoca is a vibrating IT Hella (software design and devel- helpdesk, financial & accounting, center. Together with all Cluj IT opment center), French CS Group procurement, audit, tax and advi- Cluster members we are active (customized software develop- sory services. KPMG has opened promoters of the ‘Cluj Innovation ment for technology systems) an audit & tax advisory service City’ project” – declared Levente and Dutch NetROM Software BV center in Cluj-Napoca, serving

banking, pharmaceuticals, en- Europe, with focus on technical companies from Western Europe ergy, insurance, cosmetics and support and client service. with outsourcing agreements in chemical industries. Sykes is a the country. US based BPO service provider The HP BPO center in Cluj- in communication, financial Napoca works with employees Other important BPO service pro- and medical services, technol- in California on data center au- viders with offices in Cluj-Napoca ogy, transportation and enter- tomation software sold globally are: Bombardier Transportation, tainment. The office opened in and designed to help in allocat- Genpact, PwC, Emerson, EXL Ser- Cluj-Napoca in September 2010 ing IT spend and resources based vice and Deloitte. (Tünde Széke- works exclusively for the South- on business priorities. IT service ly) Korean company Samsung in center was opened especially for

The author: Tünde Székely is a Senior Marketing, Public Relations and Communications professional, specialized in the IT&C industry. She is holding a Bachelor of Arts Degree for Hungarian and German Lan- guages and was awarded with the “Fodor Éva” Prize for Literature. Cur- rently she is coordinating the marketing and PR activity of Codespring, a software development and outsourcing company from Cluj, Roma- nia and acts as Publication Chair Romania at the German Outsourc- ing Association. She is a proficient user of German, English, Romanian and Hungarian languages. You may contact her at szekely.tunde@ outsourcing-verband.org or 0043699 1130 4173.

Palace of the Parliament of Romania

Credit: Mihai Petre, Wiki

2828 33 77 44

28 companies 3 universities 7 public 4 continents 3500+ employees 85000+ students institutions covered by 100+ mil Eur and catalyst direct deliveries export revenue organizations

WHERE OPPORTUNITIES MEET INTERESTS contact1

99 115%5% 115+5+ 500+500+

9 major areas 15% 15+ years 500+ of expertise average experience in IT graduates growth/year IT solutions each year

[email protected] www.clujit.ro INDUSTRY CLUSTER & ASSOCIATIONS IN ROMANIA

Providing industry insights, information and contacts

19 - ABSL Romania - Association of Business Service Leaders in Romania 20 - ANIS - Employers Association of the Software and Services Industry 21 - CLUJ IT - IT-Industry Cluster of the Region Cluj-Napoca INDUSTRY CLUSTER & ASSOCIATIONS

The Association of Business formation Technology Outsourc- Its mission is to lead the Busi- Service Leaders in Romania ing (ITO), Research and Develop- ness Service Sector’s expansion (ABSL) is a leading organization ment (R&D). and transformation into an inte- representing the business ser- gral part of Romania’s economic vices sector, gathering high pro- The association is a platform to growth through industry col- file companies which conduct exchange knowledge, experi- laboration and by engaging au- business in the area of Shared ence and best practices between thorities and interest groups in Services Center (SSC), Business sector players. developing the key operational Process Outsourcing (BPO), In- and development aspects.

Contact Alecsandra Lițu, Public Relations, [email protected] Catalin Ciupercescu, Project Management, +40 372 584088, [email protected]

Website: www.absl.ro

Recent Publications

both Romanian wards promoting a new business and foreign capi- model for the national software tal, small and me- industry onto the creation of pro- dium companies prietary software. as well as multinational ones, ANIS’ vision can be transposed with presence in into a 3-pillars strategy: the main techni- • A plan to grow the internal soft- ANIS represents the interests of cal universities in the country. ware market – for creating local Romanian IT companies and sup- ANIS aims to contribute to pro- products that can be exported in ports the development of the moting Romania as a regional later stages software and services industry, leader for software development • A plan to encourage creation as well as the growth of compa- and established exporter for of proprietary software products nies involved both in outsourc- high quality software products – startups, accelerators, incuba- ing projects and in developing and services. ANIS is also acting tors, entrepreneurial education proprietary applications. as main point of contact for infor- programs mation regarding the industry. • A plan to support outsourcing The association was founded in and R&D centers, based on crea- 1998 and now includes approx. ANIS’ efforts on short and me- tivity and not on costs. 100 members – companies with dium term are concentrated to-

Contact Ms. Valerica Dragomir, Executive Director, [email protected] +40-21-312.1397

Web: www.anis.ro

Recent Publications Follow/Connect www.xing.com/companies/anis www.twitter.com/ANIS_RO www.facebook.com/ANIS.Romania

The city of Cluj and a half year ago, Cluj IT Cluster is is home to six now recognized as the one single public universi- contact point that gives access to ties with more 28 companies, more than 3,500 IT than 100,000 specialists, 3 research intensive uni- students which versities and a number of other cat- vibrantly popu- alyst organizations. Our company late our town. members cover the full range of IT Cluj IT Cluster is a not-for-profit This has been the appropriate envi- services in almost any industry and association working to increase ronment for the organic growth of have a global reach with satisfied the competitiveness of the Ro- an industry which relies very much customers from all over the world. manian IT sector and to achieve on technologically savvy individu- international recognition of Cluj als and on the desire for constant If you are in search for added value area as a regional IT Hub where improvement. IT services you do not need to look unmatched services are widely any further. available. The emergence of an IT cluster came naturally. Established just one

Contact Cluj IT Cluster, Memorandumului Street, No. 28, 400114 Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Email: [email protected] , Phone: +40 755 122 057

Web: www.clujit.ro

Events

Video

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Source: KPMG Romania “Romania as the destination for SSCs and BPO “ SHARED SERVICES & BPO CENTERS

Brasov Siemens IT Solutions & Services ; Computer Generated Solutions ; Cluj-Napoca IBM GDC ; DCI Database ; Wind Technologies HP (GEBOC) ; Genpact ; Eval- ueserve ; Office Depot ; Bom- Iasi bardier Transportation ; Emer- Amazon Development son Center ; Continental Au- tomotive ; E.On Servicii ; Ness ; XL World

Oradea XL World Targu Mures E.On Servicii

Timisoara HP ; S&T ; WIPRO ; Oracle ; Bosch Com- munication Centre ; Siemens IT Solutions & Services ; Continental Automo- tive ; Alcatel Lucent

Sibiu Bucharest Computer Generated Solutions ; HP (GEBOC) ; IBM GDC ; Oracle EMEA ; Microsoft ; Continental Automotive WNS Global Services ; Bosch Communication Centre ; Petrom SSC ; Computer Generated Solutions ; Gen- pact ; Ericsson GSDC ; S&T, P&G Procurement Center ; WIPRO ; Siemens IT Solutions & Services ; Mellon Romania

19 - Controlling product quality through centralized customer feedback

22 - Continuous delivery process

26 - Building an advanced IT support scheme for a public agency

30 - WVI-ERM: Electronic Records Management Revisited

34 - E-Learning Educational Techniques

38 - The near-shore, White Label Web Manufacture* concept

www.outsourcing-destinations.org INDUSTRY INSIGHTS & CASES Controlling product quality via centralized customer feedback By Cornelia Stan, Creative Consultant, Accesa, Romania

Using SharePoint for product is- ties. And so is customer feed- quality. Employee and customer sue tracking back. Processing it efficiently – involvement – had the great- internally and using it to have a est importance as information better control over product qual- inputs. That’s why we created ity – that was the technological an issue tracking solution using The SharePoint chal- challenge Accesa had to answer a collaborative-wise option for lenge to by implementing a solution. the implementation: SharePoint. Afterwards, the future central Today’s organizations face in- The solution’s beneficiary acti- projects’ features were easy to creasingly complex challenges. vated in the Manufacturing in- identify: they were connected One of the most multifaceted dustry: construction machinery, with the roles people have in an challenges is: using data to maxi- mining equipment, domestic organization, their responsibili- mize business performance indi- appliances, aerospace and trans- ties and how they make use of cators. portation systems. High atten- information. tion to detail and the capacity of The challenge assumes that mul- delivering a versatile, yet reliable Controlling information in an tiple combinations of data can software solution were factors organizational environment re- be used to have an impact on: for the project’s success. quires flexibility and SharePoint project management efficiency, was the option which extensively better time and task manage- offered it. Even if SharePoint was ment, generating product qual- primarily used to record and ity measurements, customer sat- The SharePoint an- track product issues, its sharing isfaction, accelerating product swer and cooperative functions pro- development and even optimiz- vided the potential to transform ing costs. For young companies, The key to proposing the solu- the SharePoint issue tracking so- but also for companies with a tion was to identify which were lution in a complete circuit for is- history, product quality becomes the most important elements in sue management. the center of all of these activi- using the platform for product

With respect to users, there was allowed configuring users’ roles, eration and implemented in the a need for an easier control over issue tracking stages and mas- solution. processes which was achieved ter data definition. The extranet due to its user-friendly design. solution was available for clients Using SharePoint as a response Related to change management and transposed in a central- to product quality management, and quality control there were ized interface (users and clients not only helps improve product two stakes: to collect external could access it with a password quality, but also process qual- information and then to further and a username). Moreover, for ity. Moreover, once it is already create an environment to pro- smooth data collection, security used as a collaboration platform cess it efficiently. was a top priority which also un- in some organizations, it can be covered the need to create differ- adapted in order to be integrated The functional structure of Share- ent security levels for each type with many other scenarios: sales, Point as an issue tracking solu- of user. Product quality was gen- recruiting, document manage- tion allowed: erated through the automated ment and so on. • defining the problem – iden- issue management in order to tification and description of the capture, resolve and report is- potential defect; sues. The automation cycle was The author: Cornelia Stan, Crea- • analyzing the product defect; complete when customer feed- tive Consultant, Accesa. Cornelia • building the team – the pro- back was processed. is Accesa’s representative in mat- ject coordinator could assign in- ters of innovation and creativity, dividual roles and create a team; which are indispensable in the tasks may differ from one role to management of technological another; Drawing conclusions change. Also, her main interests • containment – the product consist in finding and spreading Considering the human aspect is taken out from the manufac- ideas which can ultimately drive in the organizational context, the turing process until defects are a shift of perspective. Email ad- need for control becomes more solved; dress: [email protected]. and more astringent. Specifically, • identification of the root caus- it brings up-front the challenge es of the defect; of transforming technical func- • initiating corrective actions; tionalities into actual controls • checking results effectiveness which can be used to improve after proceeding with corrective change management: faster re- actions; sponse to issues, more relevant • knowledge transfer – the ac- answers to issues, better organ- cumulated knowledge could ized issue solving. be transferred to other internal teams or departments; Functionally speaking, the ability • issue closing. to drive enhanced control over products quality can be reflected The SharePoint intranet solution though creating relevant reports, was customized to be synchro- deploying product containment nized with the existing extranet on time and knowledge transfer. solution, which revealed the All these were taken in consid- true flexibility of SharePoint: it

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www.accesa.eu INDUSTRY INSIGHTS & CASES Continuous delivery process By Sorin Jucovschi, Java Team Leader at RINF, Romania

1. What is “Continu- ployment pipeline: a set of vali- 2. The pipeline dations through which a piece of ous Delivery”? software must pass on its way to The continuous delivery pro- release. Code is compiled if nec- cess is composed of a number of When talking about software essary and then packaged by a small steps that are put together development one of the most build server every time a change forming a build pipeline. important things to talk about is committed to a source con- is quality releases. Going from a trol repository, then tested by a So the build pipeline is the auto- project plan to a released prod- number of different techniques matic manifestation of the deliv- uct is a difficult journey, one that (possibly including manual test- ery process. has to be carefully planned and ing) before it can be marked as precisely executed. releasable and deployed to the Every step in the pipeline should production infrastructure. define quality gates that let the The Continuos Delivery Process process continue with the next is a design practice used in soft- The principles of continuous de- step only if those quality gates ware development to automate livery are: are satisfied. For instance the and improve the process of soft- 1. Every commit into the VCS can compilation step should allow ware delivery. It uses techniques result in a release; passing to the next step only if such as automated testing, con- 2. Automate everything! all the sources compile without tinuous integration and continu- 3. Automated tests are essential errors or the integration test step ous deployment in order to allow 4. Done means released! will allow passing only if all tests software to be developed to a succeed. These quality gates will high standard and easily pack- allow the process to keep qual- aged and deployed to test envi- “...Continuous Delivery is not ity standards and also to fail the ronments, resulting in the ability Continuous Integration. Con- whole build if some of the stand- to rapidly, reliably and repeatedly tinuous Delivery is being in the ards are not met. Developers will push out enhancements and bug position to ship your product get information on the failure fixes to customers at low risk and whenever you want, day or and after correcting the prob- with minimal manual overhead. night...”! Neal Ford!. lems the whole pipeline should be started all over again. Continuous delivery treats the commonplace notion of a de-

• functional tests goes wrong, however, with the “... Computers are designed • (load tests) push of another button we can to do simple repetitive tasks. put back the previous release The second you have humans The goal of this stage is to make into production just as easily. doing repetitive tasks, all the sure the project works on a func- computers get together late at tional level. The functional tests night and laugh at you...”! “... Continuous Delivery is all are automated tests run against Neal Ford!. about reducing risk – if you the browser (in the case of our ever need something to sell demo pipeline) where we simu- the idea of Continuous Deliv- 2.1 Stages in the late user interaction with our ap- ery to management, this is a plication. They can replace most walk in the park – you are able pipeline of the effort put into manual to minimize risk to your project testing. As an additional extra with this one thing more than One other concept in continuous step we can also have some load anything else in your project deployment is that the pipeline tests where we simulate multiple lifecycle...”! Evan Bottcher should be separated into stages. persons using the application all The first stage in the pipeline is at the same time thus simulating the commit stage. some real life examples of en- gagement. The author: Sorin Jucovschi This stage is made up of the fol- is a Java Team Leader at RINF, lowing steps: The next two stages are the UAT with 10+ years’ experience in • compile source code / run unit stage and production stage. In programming and leading de- test each of them we retrieve the velopment teams. He has deep • integration tests deploy artifacts from the reposi- knowledge of Java technologies • code analyses tory and deploy to the environ- in particular, but his passion for • assemble deploy artifacts ment with the same name. What software development spans • publish artifacts to organiza- is important to note here is that multiple languages, frameworks tion repository these two stages of the pipeline, and technologies. With a mix although automatic, are the only of expert technical knowledge, This is the stage of the pipeline ones where manual trigger is strong leadership skills and busi- in which we have to make sure required. For instance not every ness acumen, he has helped de- the project works on a technical commit that results in a new ar- liver successful projects for large level. This stage of the pipeline tifact will be put to acceptance players in financial, telecom and should never be broken and if testing, but we have to make media sectors. Get in touch with this is to happen the team needs sure that if needed all published Sorin via LinkedIn (profile). to fix it as soon as possible. artifacts can be candidates for UAT. The next stage in the pipeline is the acceptance stage. In this At the end of UAT a decision is stage we have the following made to promote the build to steps: production and after the deci- • retrieve the deploy artifacts sion is take we only have to push from the repository • deploy the a button and we will promote the artifacts to the test server build to production. If anything

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Source: Wiki, KPMG Romania “Romania as the destination for SSCs and BPO “ INDUSTRY INSIGHTS & CASES Building an advanced IT support scheme for a public agency By Cristi Tauber, IT Support BU Manager, Sistec Romania

The Challenge tive Directory. The first challenge a trust relationship was created. was to replace the old Windows In the first step of the action, us- The Client had been a long term NT domain controller with up to ers, their data and computers partner of the vendor - provid- date new servers and migrate the accounts were migrated to the ing onsite maintenance services users with minimum downtime, new domain, still being able to for their hardware and software without network interruptions access the old domain. For user systems for many years. Because and access to internal and ex- and data migration, we prepared of the outdated and unreliable IT ternal resources. Because of the some scripts that helped us to infrastructure, it could not meet old technology that could not automate the process. Next step the strict requirements of data be directly upgraded, the vendor was to move services to the new security and consistency. The needed to create a new Windows domain and optimize the con- infrastructure was made of old Domain and migrate the policies, figurations: moving to Active Windows NT domain, Linux mail data, users and computer ac- Directory based DNS (domain server and Linux router, uncon- counts. name services) and DHCP serv- trolled internet access for users, ers, reduce the local network directly attached printers and old After a complete analysis of the space from /16 network to /23, server hardware. client’s requests, the vendor sub- implementing DFS (Distributed mitted a proposal for the transi- Files System) and Active Direc- tion. The plan for this project was tory publishing for printers and to build a new infrastructure, files. The more granular secu- The Solution based on the newest Windows rity in Windows Server 2008 R2 Server available on the market helped us to implement a strict After discussion, the decision (Windows Server 2008 R2) and and secure policy for file sharing was to replace the current infra- start adding resources. services and resources manage- structure and start with the foun- To access resources in the old ment. dation: Microsoft Windows Ac- domain from the new domain,

A good Active Directory imple- placed with a CISCO ASA firewall configuration. This migration mentation is the key factor for fu- device. This new firewall has a needed to be done without ture application deployment and better performance in terms of breaking the mail system, in a infrastructure management. network, security and manage- 24h working environment. Being ability, to better secure the users integrated into Active Directory, After securing the user, the ven- and local services. Exchange extends user profiles dor continued with the network. with new features for commu- The old 100Mbps switches were For securing the email communications. Using integrated auto changed with 1Gbps switches, nications, the vendor proposed discover feature the client setup with management capabilities a migration from the Linux mail was a straight forward process. and the Linux router was re- server to a Microsoft Exchange The Exchange mailbox was add-

Copyright @ All rights reserved. German Outsourcing Association 33 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS & CASES ed to the workstation of every much as 70 % after rationalizing • Focus on strategy rather than Reliable IT outsourcing partner users and working together with and optimizing the infrastruc- fire-fighting - more time to focus the Linux mail server. After modi- ture. on aligning IT to the business fying the DNS entries for mail • Trusted IT Partner - a mutu- server and switching to the Ex- Centralized administration and ally beneficial IT partnership was change server, the old outlook implementation of others’ tech- formed. files used for Linux mail server nologies ensures increased desk- were kept locally for archive pur- top availability, based on the fact pose. that all users are following stand- About the author: Cristi Tauber Future steps include SharePoint ardized software and settings. is an IT Support BU Manager with 10 Years of implementation for easier file Additionally this has increased more than 10 years’ experience organization and manipulation, compliance with the company’s in the IT&C industry. He has a software outsourcing a management system for infra- desktop policy management. solid technical and management structure (System Center family) With remote management and background with substantial Focus on building dedicated nearshore teams, long-term approach. and virtualization. troubleshooting, the team is able experi¬ence in information tech- to eliminate the problems from nologies outsourcing. Currently Day-to-day management of the their desktops. In addition, the he is responsible with manage- infrastructure is now being han- reporting tools and alarms en- ment of all IT related activities of dled by our support team whilst sure that any problems are put our company, as well as provide to continues with further en- right before it affects the net- administrative direction and sup- hancement projects. work performance. port for daily operational activi- 300 Software development ties of the IT department. You Reduced Complexity by Con- may contact him at cristi.tauber@ and QA engineers Technologies solidating Servers by 33 Percent sistec.ro - The Active Directory implemen- With broad technical knowledge and quality-driven mindset. tation has helped consolidate • Windows NT all users under a single domain. • Windows Server 2008 R2 Every user is listed in the global • Windows Active Directory address book. What’s more, this • Microsoft Exchange Server now is the foundation for access • Windows Forefront Endpoint to infrastructure applications Protection and internal sites and portals for Trusted by • CISCO Switches and ASA employees and consultants. global clients

Benefits for the Client Other key advantages Among which T-Systems, Symantec, Pﬁzer Vienna eMarketing Centre, Better Operational Control - The Renault Technocentre France. • Scalability of the infrastructure new IT infrastructure has ena- design which can be quickly ex- bled the client to optimize its in- panded frastructure and thus reduce the • Availability and reliability re- cost of operations and the total sulting from a rock-solid IT infra- cost of ownership. Desktop man- structure agement has been reduced by as www.fortech.ro

10 Years of software outsourcing

Focus on building dedicated nearshore teams, long-term approach.

300 Software development and QA engineers

With broad technical knowledge and quality-driven mindset.

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Among which T-Systems, Symantec, Pﬁzer Vienna eMarketing Centre, Renault Technocentre France.

www.fortech.ro INDUSTRY INSIGHTS & CASES WVI-ERM: Electronic Records Management Revisited By Ionut Dumitru, CTO and Co-Founder at Webventure Interactive, Romania

Records management for me- Most of established Electronic ficiently managing the available dium and large enterprises tends Content Management suites space, is considerable. to be more time and resources available do not have sophisticat- consuming as time passes and ed physical records management the number of documents tends features such as space manage- to grow at an accelerated pace. ment or advanced tools for box The Solution Externalizing the physical archive tracking using barcodes, RFID A very efficient Electronic Re- to reduce document storage and so on. These features can be cords Management system able costs is a recommended solution found in very specific physical re- to keep track of: for many types of companies cords management products. - Storage facilities with spe- that need to use their human re- cific architecture (warehouses, sources and office space more -ef shelves, boxes, occupied vol- ficiently. The Challenge umes); - Warehouse load and load When looking at an Electronic The suppliers of records storage forecasting; Records Management solution services have to be very efficient - Check-in/check-out orders for a service outsourcing pro- and cost effective in order to be and requests placed by clients; vider it’s necessary to consider accepted as providers, as they - Client interaction and direct both physical records as well as will always bring an increase of client access to electronic re- electronic records. Ideally, the immediate operating expendi- cords; solution covers both, so that us- tures. Having a large document - Contract management and ers can locate any record using base to deal with and a large billing; the same interface regardless of number of owners, the effort - 3-tap check-in/check-out so- type or format. needed for keeping and operat- lution for mobile devices used by ing the storage facility, while ef- operators;

- Compliance with legislative mented a powerful and malle- tracted from the warehouse and regulations; able warehouse map definition transported back and forth to - Disposal requests initiated by tool that is able to accommodate or from the client, or new boxes the clients. many situations. Therefore, when are coming in, or old documents placing a box of documents in need to be disposed - these are We started building the solution the warehouse the system is set all done by using a flexible Re- by performing an extended busi- to automatically calculate the quests module, that allow clients ness analysis at one of the big- appropriate occupying position to just log in through web access, gest service providers from this depending on box size, ease of place a request and then receive industry that wanted to increase placement in terms of height and a completion notification. the human resource efficiency in depth of the stack or row, and on order to be more competitive in grouping all boxes stored for a Every step along the way is terms of costs and speed of reac- particular client. completely automatized: re- tion. calculating the position in the warehouse upon extraction or Clear and simple ar- insertion, specifying drop loca- chiving flow tion, or printing out shipping documents. A straightforward For fast insertion of a box, op- request-fulfill process, with no- erators have to only select some tifications along the way, keeps quick information. Fast tagging track of everyone’s activities and and categorizing is possible helps managers stay on top of through a seamless User Inter- processes by having 360 degrees face built especially for ease of visibility. use. Also, to retrieve information about a box (position or con- tents), all operators have to do is to scan the barcode attached to a Digital archiving box, or, if they don’t have physi- Some documents need to be cal access to the box, they can available electronically at all use the powerful and intuitive time. Or just need to be stored search feature. Both desktop and indefinitely, without ever being mobile devices are used to ac- disposed. cess the system from anywhere Automating space in the warehouse. The operators scan this kind of management document, and, just by hitting a few clicks, associate it with the The standard container used in physical records. All a client has records management is the box. Simplifying commu- to do is to place a request in or- It usually fits predetermined di- nications der to initiate the just in time mensions, but reality has proven scanning process. At the end of that flexibility is an important On a day-by-day basis, various the process every scanned item factor in operations manage- needs have to be met. Either is accessible online. ment. This is why we imple- boxes have to be rapidly ex-

Keeping track of ser- a good idea to refuse new con- M.Sc. in Project Management, tracts because of lack of storage has an experience of 10+ years in vices delivered and perspective. SME and Enterprise management systems. He is Co-Founder and Easy contract management fea- CTO of technology start-up We- tures and services integration bventure Interactive - an agency helps users draw quantitative specialized in custom web de- and qualitative reports about velopment and e-commerce so- services provided to clients. De- lutions for Romanian and Euro- pending on the contract type pean markets. Besides having a and services included, the ERM is solid technical and management able to calculate billable services background, Ionut believes every for every client. Exporting data To mitigate these constraints, project needs to be addressed for the Accounting department good sales plans need to be con- particularly and that transparent is also a well-appreciated feature sistent with varying load and customer relationships are a de- of the system. with potential extensions of ex- cisive factor for successful long- isting contracts. Depending on term partnerships. His commit- these factors, the ERM is able to ment is to establish Webventure Project future ware- project load variance and status Interactive as one of the most at any given moment in the fu- reliable near shore companies in house load ture, thus providing valuable tac- Eastern Europe. tic information. To maximize the profitability, the Contact Ionut at: ionut.dumitru@ service provider has to always About the author: Ionut Dumit- webventure.ro or call +4 0725 have full capacity on all ware- ru, B.Sc. in Computer Science and 072 325. houses. On the other side, it’s not

Peleș Castle, Sinaia

Credit: Tiberiu Sahlean, Wiki

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS & CASES E-Learning Educational Techniques By Cristian SPOIALĂ, Chief Technical Officer at ASSIST Software, Romania

New technologies are changing Paris Innovation Bourse cluster of Competence is determined by the way we live, work, play, com- innovative technology start-ups. regular exposure to authentic municate, and learn. Keeping up spoken English, generated by with these changes and adapting current, interesting content that to the evolving needs of today’s The Idea of the motivates students to use the organizations is certainly a chal- Platform service regularly. The content is lenging task. In the current arti- themed on topics of general in- cle we aim to analyze new possi- The main goal of the platform terest, for instance a movie show- bilities for reaching learners and was to create a dedicated web- ing in local cinemas, or a visual deliver content. This study pro- site for English language learning dictionary vocabulary themed vides information on a succesful and to immerse learners in An- on a major news event. e-learning platform based on ed- glophone language and culture. ucational strategies and special The English Attack! founders en- Learning effectiveness is en- techniques for teaching/learning visaged a platform to be used by hanced by lessons that are al- at distance. each student, as a complement ways situated in a specific con- to other forms of training, but the text, have a short duration and same time also designed to be are illustrated by a video or a se- Early Recognition adopted as a training resource by lection of photos. schools, universities, language In 2010 - 2011, the English Attack! training centers and companies. Storing newly acquired language e-learning platform has been fi- in long-term memory can only nalist and/or winner of a number Today it is widely used both in be achieved by repeating the of European and French technol- class and as homework platform content learned at appropri- ogy start-up competitions, in- by teachers, educational estab- ate intervals. This is achieved by cluding PLUGG in Brussels, Tech lishments and students in over encouraging repetition of the Crunch Paris, Seedcamp Paris (it 30 countries worldwide. learned items through series of was voted among the top 5 start- educational games that are dy- ups) and The Next Web in Am- The platform is based on the fol- namically driven by video and sterdam. That year the e-learning lowing pedagogical principles: photo content on the platform. platform was accepted into the

Errors by learners should not considering the platform was de- stable presence, continuity being be penalized but seen as an at- signed to have multiple modules a strategic factor when outsourc- tempt to solve the task, as in like e-learning modules, educa- ing development. video games, when they are per- tional games, and a B2B module. ceived as a natural consequence. The latter is a component for or- Site traffic has increased steadily This principle is reinforced by a ganizations which can manage as English learners sign in from rewarding ecosystem consisting their learners on the platform, in- all over the world, so the plat- in positive feedback achieved spect their learning progress and form has needed to scale and ad- through the points collected for benefit from centralized access just to those changes rapidly. An- each activity and the badges to the platform. A coaching mod- other requirement was the need awarded for specific learning ule was also designed, consisting to publish new modules without tasks. of a progress-tracking tool that the disruption of provisioning allows learners to measure their new servers. absorption of individual learning How they did it units while following coaching By eliminating valuable time tips. duplicating content for 26 user Initially, the Entertainment interface languages, Drupal Learning company (publishers Through the use of open source templates allowed the develop- of the online service) looked for software, the development team ment team to quickly define and a new, more flexible develop- was able to integrate content ef- streamline its workflow process. ment platform to better fit its ficiently, while providing access This enabled the team to rapidly business model. They prefered to over 1,000 video exercises, deploy content across borders, an outsourcing company to cre- over 5,000 multimedia vocabu- an ability that is paramount in ate a new website that reflects lary items and thousands of ed- fueling the platform’s interna- the pedagogical approach to ucational game combinations tional growth and reach. language learning based on cog- available to learners all over the nitive neuroscience and having world. access to development results Challenges from initial stages. Because new features had to be Performance. Considering that thoroughly tested before being As part of an extensive research most users are logged users, per- published on the public plat- for a development platform and formance in scaling the platform form, all development took place outsourcing partner, Entertai- was a challenge. To achieve this, in a testing environment which ment Learning specified a cost- automatic deployment software is almost identical with the live effective, enterprise-level system like Salt was used to automati- environment. This is the way the that wasn’t going to require a cally configure a server in matter software team developed most lot of upkeep. Using the require- of minutes. 4-Tier architecture of the features with visibility on ments and design as a starting was used to scale horizontally. actual user experience. point, the development team This consists in a Load Balancer, built an architecture that pro- Web applications, Storage and Of great importance to the client vides consistency and flexibility. Databases. In case of any failure, was the availability and depend- another server with same con- ability of the development team The development team prefered figuration and data is activated over time which was able to pro- Drupal for its modular structure, to handle the traffic. vide this thanks to its solid and

Another challenge was the news- methodology, an Agile software ing on global expansion and en- letter feature. Personalizations of development framework. This tering new markets, a product the newsletters were needed, so made the development very flex- launch was traditionally a huge an external service could not be ible and easy to adapt to chang- challenge. Thanks to the devel- used. The challenge was that the ing features. The client has good opment team results and com- system has to send a large num- visibility on the development petencies, the website can now ber of emails in a short time and and control over the features. All generate content and provide it preferrably directly to a user’s the code is under revision control to English learners according to Inbox (avoiding the Spam fold- for the managers to follow and individualized weekly learning er). To accomplish this, a Python review the changes. objectives. See more at: http:// backend was developed to send assist-software.net/project/eng- the emails via Amazon SES. All The development team brings lish-attack the sending is done asynchro- to this project a large number of nously and is capable of fulfilling skills, from game development About the author: Cristian Amazon SES limits. At this very to server optimizations. These SPOIALĂ, Chief Technical Officer moment the service is capable include frontend development at ASSIST Software company. of sending 250k emails less than (CSS+, Javascript), backend de- Cristian has a solid technical and one hour while the size limits can velopment (PHP, Drupal, Python, management background with be increased without any prob- Node.js), database optimizations, over 7 years substantial experi- lem. This performance was made server optimizations. Thanks to ence in information technologies possible by using the asynchro- the team results and competen- outsourcing. He has lead and nous API from Amazon. cies, the team has been working participated in the development on the website for over 3 years of customized large software Mobile optimization was another now, to bring new features and solutions for public and private challenging task considering the the latest technologies to the sectors, with a proven record of large number of mobile devices platform. successful project delivery. He in the market. HTML5 has been brings value to the company by used intensively but on some constantly supporting the team browsers it is not fully supported The Result members to update their knowl- yet. To overcome this, support edge, conquer new areas of ex- The Entertainment Learning was provided for old browsers pertise, adhere to the quality company was able to bring the with few users and workarounds management system of the com- English learning platform to the were also added. Right now the pany. You’re welcome to contact public in less than 6 months. The website and games work on a Cristian Spoiala at: cristian.spoia- users now have a flexible multi- large majority of devices (phones, [email protected]. language platform that offers a tablets with Android or iOS). The content management workflow. most popular devices were used in-house in order to provide reli- The online platform currently able tests. aligns with its ambition of delivering an engaging learning Skills experience, with a pedagogical approach to language learning For internal management, the based on cognitive neuroscience. development team used Scrum Because the platform is embark-

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Copyright @ All rights reserved. German Outsourcing Association 43 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS & CASES The near-shore, White Label Web Manufac- ture* concept. By de Castelnau Nicolas, Transylvania Consulting SRL, Romania

German and Western European tract (non disclosure agreement). Characteristics Web Agencies are close to their If the potential partner is located markets and their clients, but within the EU, it is (legally) a clear This kind of collaboration is suit- they often lack the technical advantage. able for companies subcontract- workforce on varied fields, and ing between one website per tri- the flexibility to adjust when they Practically, nobody outside from mester and several websites per face unpredictable and quickly people from your company and week. evolving work load. people from subcontracting company shall know that web- Practically, when client agency sites that you delivered to com- considers that final client needs’ The concept pany X, Y, Z were subcontracted. are clarified and stable, it sends This means to apply the White written specifications (necessary Label system: your supplier does To separate sales and project because of the distance), which not communicate on your clients, management (in relation with can include schemes, drawings, and neither on your company. final client), which remains local, to a near-shore websites devel- from web sites creation, mainte- opment project manager. This partner shall be experienced nance and promotion which can and clearly understand your be made by a near-shore partner. This might also include instruc- needs. tions for the graphic creation Of course, this partner must be part (main colors, example (s) of He shall have a global techni- trustworthy, which means, at web sites final client likes, etc) if cal capability and the ability least: this part is also required. to evolve with technology and trends. He must commit to full confiden- And there might also be instruc- tiality, which implies a clear con- tions on client wishes for Search

Engine Optimization service (Ge- velopment will be necessary ; cated team that can not easily ographical area of business, rel- creation or modification of spe- be scaled so that everybody has evant keywords, etc). cific module(s), etc enough work to do, but not too much... The project manager makes an When your manufacture con- estimates of billable time needed siders that a website is ready, You can request, and obtain that to create the website (for exam- it is tested internally, then you all the development will be made ple 80 hours). Price per hour is are notified that a final version on Open Source free languages agreed on a yearly base, things is available on subcontractor’s (PHP, Jquery, etc), with elements are quite simple. server. If no misunderstanding is free of rights (free pictures, etc...), identified, or after modification, preferably without Flash Tech- As soon as the quotation is vali- the website can be uploaded on- nology... dated, ie the manufacture be- line, either on a temporary URL, comes a firm order, this project is or to its final one. Using responsive design is ad- added to Manufacture ‘s produc- vised, as it is much cheaper than tion plan. From this moment, net-linking developing mobile applications actions (SEO) can be made pro- for each existing platform. gressively, and can be helped by community management on so- If the subcontracting company The production flow cial networks. is experienced enough, it might have developed (thanks to ac- If client agency does not sup- Site maintenance and update cumulated knowledge) a specific ply the web design (usually on will then take place on request, framework that generates web- .psd form) a graphic proposal is in case final client cannot or does sites that shall be easier to up- prepared and sent to it for vali- not wish to make modifications date by un-experimented end- dation. When changes are re- himself. users than with common « big » quested, the manufacture will standard CMS. realize them until an agreement is reached on a final base. You will collaborate with a spe- Sample of advantag- cialized company which already In parallel, if SEO services are re- has a functional workflow and quired, content of every page is es for this system experienced people who can optimized. Will be also created Client Web Agency has access to guide you in this new type of col- meta elements, and generation a pool of resources, of expertise. laboration. scheme for dynamic elements (e- There is no need for a distant commerce, etc...) dedicated team, Agency will be- come a graphic designer when Then (after the graphic design necessary (as soon as one be- Proximity validation) begins the integra- comes available, which is usually tion (HTML and CSS) phase, with - Very limited time lag (in most quite quick), later a web integra- content insertion (text, pictures, cases 1-2 hours at most) tor, a PHP programmer, a system products, meta...) administrator, a SEO specialist, - Short distance allowing fre- etc This dramatically reduces the In several cases, specific PHP de- quent visits to the manufacture, costs in comparison with a dedi-

but also when necessary (impor- final client could not be made on sales and project manage- tant project...) visits from manu- aware from the very beginning ment, taking advantage of re- facture project manager to your that « small modifications reduced production costs and in- Headquarter. (Within UE no need quests » in his view might imply creased flexibility. for visa) significant over-costs for the project... - Web specialists are Europeans, and share the same basic culture, Moreover it is usually observed Visit which decreases the risk of mis- that a first collaboration with a It can be observed that many col- understanding compared to col- distant company brings losses. laborations see the day of light laboration with people of other The main cause is that every after a visit to a Web Manufac- continents. company has habits, implicit re- ture: quests which can vary quite a lot from a company to another. By It is indeed essential for the cli- definition these aspects won’t ent Web Agency to be sure that Complementarity / be specified, so they won’t be its new partner offers « on site quoted, and they will have to be the value chain » production, and does not de- implemented later, as free modi- pend on significant further sub- Web agencies have strengths, fications. contracting (or even chain sub- which are their knowledge of contracting) which might imply their market, their ability to or- Usually, as implicit requests be- a much bigger risk, especially ganize efficiently the exchange come clear, the second project for deadlines. In this matter web of data with their clients, their ca- will work better, and the third one manufacture MUST be fully trans- pacity to specify clearly what the even better (and so on), bringing parent, and accept visits willingly. client needs, etc. profitability for both partners. This point is very important if you Even if work will be almost only Web manufacture are usually far consider that most end users cli- distant work, it is very important away, and if they open an office ents can only be one shot clients to know personally your partner, in your country, they might have : they will order a web site (which and for project managers to meet real issues to manage and control shall be editable by themselves) one other at least once. Mutual their people there. Consequently and their next order might come respect is increased (especially very few will accept such a risk. at best 4-5 years later for an up- after a few beers are shared at to-date new website. evening...) and it significantly re- Remaining far away, they don’t duces tensions in future or pre- have the ability, the human ex- This means that long term col- existing collaboration. pertise to manage an efficient laboration between Web Agen- contact with un-specialized fi- cies and Web Manufactures is the For information, the editor of nal clients. Even if they sell at a best option, both structures are this article, Transylvania Consult- higher price, changes added by truly complementary, and not in ing SRL is located in Cluj Napoca final client that was not helped competition. Manufactures ben- (Klausenburg - 2nd biggest Ro- by somebody beside him to be efit from a stable collaboration, manian city and main city of more specific might bring losses stable specification documents Transylvania). Visits are very easy to the manufacture. This is espe- and stable implicit requirements. to organize as there are direct cially true in the case in which For their part Agencies can focus

flights from Germany and Aus- stress. Then a bigger project will Cristian Gabor. Since then he is tria, and from the moment you be safe, and after it an even big- CFO, initial interlocutor for west- come to the airport we can ar- ger... ern web agencies potential cli- range all your local transports, ents, website editor, and he man- book a hotel for you, take care of * Manufacture combines notions ages Transycons’ SEO and social the meals... of significant production capac- networks animation team. Con- ity, but also work made by hand. tact: [email protected] So it represents the combination of industrial organization with Test human creativity and « touch ». To begin a collaboration, the best The author: de Castelnau Nicolas option is to subcontract first a is specialized in marketing and quite small and simple website company administration. After project, which must be not ur- professional experience in sever- gent. This will be the perfect op- al countries he created Transylva- portunity to discover your « im- nia Consulting SRL in 2002 with plicit », without causing losses or a Romanian IT engineer partner,

City Gate Towers, Bucharest

Credit: Mihai Petre, Wiki

Source: CEE ITO Review 2010

www.outsourcing-destinations.org Alcatel-Lucent, Altadis/Imperial Tobacco, ATE Bank, National Bank of Greece, EFG Eurobank-Ergasias, BCR Erste Group, BLOM Bank France Paris, BP, CEC Bank, Coca-Cola, Continental, Daiichi-Sankyo Europe, Delloite, Enel, Ericsson, Eurosites, GoodYear, Heineken, IBM, Infineon Technologies, Landis+Gyr, Liberty Aerospace, LightSpeed, L’île des Médias, Metro Group, Microsoft, Molis, Motorola, MyVideo, Orange GSM, Parrot, NOVARTIS, Société Générale, SolidWorks Corporation, Sysmex, Thomson Reuters, Unilever, Vodafone, Xerox COMPANY PROFILES & CONTACTS

Profiles and contacts of Romanian ITO & BPO services providers

www.outsourcing-destinations.org Founded in 2004, Accesa is a up by the newest technology tions (MS SharePoint, MS BizTalk) value-based technology consult- trends. • Business Intelligence (SSAS, ing company with local offices in SSIS, SSRS, QlikView) Germany (München) and Roma- Our services outline a unique • Internet and Intranet Appli- nia (Cluj-Napoca, Oradea) having delivery portfolio that address cations a business approach that fully IT companies, start-ups, medium • Mobile and Cloud enabled confirms its company identity: and large-scale organizations solutions managing technological change. while encompassing architecture and design, development and Contact information: Addressing specific customer implementation, project man- Phone: +40 364 566 538 challenges, Accesa’s experience agement and process strategy. E-mail: [email protected] spans various international mar- Website: www.accesa.eu kets, where it acts as a trusted Solutions we deliver: technology partner that supports • Tailored business software delivering performance and solutions solves the challenges brought • Microsoft Server based solu-

• Outsourcing services of software DevReach, etc. They are experts projects working as software developers / solution architects on their day Founded in 2006, Avaelgo is an IT Technologies: to day jobs, with their hands on Services Company specialized in Windows Azure, Microsoft .NET, all the latest Microsoft and iOS software development, software Silverlight, Windows Communi- technologies. consulting and technical training cation Foundation, ASP.NET, ASP. on Microsoft technologies. NET MVC, HTML 5, SQL Server, Certifications: SharePoint Microsoft Most Valuable Profes- Software development services: sional, Microsoft Specialist, Mi- • Custom software solutions tai- Avaelgo Training provides Soft- crosoft Certified Professional, lored for specific needs ware development training on PMI Agile Certified Practitioner, • Cloud solutions on Microsoft’s Microsoft technologies and iOS. Microsoft Certified Technology Windows Azure platform Our trainers are well known in Specialist • Custom Geographical Information the Microsoft world, being in- Systems vited as speakers at many high- Contact information: • Document Management Systems profile conferences like Microsoft Phone: +40 256 220 923 using Microsoft SharePoint TechEd North America and Eu- Email: [email protected] • Solutions for the Gaming industry rope, Microsoft Summit, ITCamp, Web: www.avaelgo.ro

51 izing existing enterprise applica- rience to design, build, integrate tions to be mobile friendly, we and operate private clouds for build cross-compatible applica- customers, or host the client’s tions that are fully functional and application services on our AS- easy to use. We are experienced SIST Cloud. in building scalable applications ASSIST is a software develop- for the most popular platforms ASSIST has participated in ment company focused toward including iPhone, Android and many research and develop- developing complex software Windows Phone. ment project from EU FP7 and products. ASSIST has a proven Eurostars. The strategic advan- track record in providing soft- Custom Application Develop- tages are the high standards in ware development solutions by ment is also a part of our offer development&services with rea- providing quality outputs that and customers can take advan- sonable prices, that comes from complete customer expecta- tage of our expertise in deliver- the excellent quality of the hu- tions. The usage of Agile, Scrum ing high quality software that man resources. methodology has massively facil- meet challenging requirements, itated the development process- using highly productive, distrib- Contact: es, ensuring quality and on-time uted agile development teams Tipografiei Street 1, Suceava delivery. and industry best practices. 720043, Romania Phone: +40-230-521-100 From designing ground breaking Based on Cloud Computing tech- Email: [email protected] mobile applications to custom- nology we deliver enterprise in- Web: www.assist-software.net frastructure expertise and expe-

[e-spres-oh] is a digital software Services - Cocoa Touch based apps with development company with cur- We are capable of offering all kind modern UI’s rently 30+ professionals on board, of development solutions, from - API driven service centric apps focused on creating amazing suc- small web or mobile apps to full- - HTML5, CSS3, SVG, Web Fonts cess stories every day. featured online platforms. We are - DRY & KISS concepts specialized in building RESTful web - BEM implementations We have a team of developers, services and knitting API mashups. who love to create, share, learn Contact and grow and our strongest be- We cover all the mainstream tech- Stefan Szakal, CEO lief is that nothing is impossible as nologies including: Phone: +40 728.345.345 long as you have the right people - PHP, Python, Javascript, Java Email: [email protected] in your team. Our focus on offering - OOP & AOP Web: www.e-spres-oh.com the right conditions for the right - LAMP/LEMP and NodeJS-based people has allowed us to double in - SaaS size every year, since our inception - - Ajax, SSI, MVC while retaining almost 100% of our - CSS/JS/HTML5 team. - iOS

52 in growing our team’s skills, opti- (CRM, ERP, Business Administration, mizing our processes, increasing etc) our productivity and in innovation. • Web Application Development With an experience of more than 5 (Java, ASP.Net, PHP, Typo3, Zend years delivering 30+ projects and Framework) 10000+ man-days, our team suc- • Web Portals (IBM WebSphere CodeSphere specializes in deliver- cessfully answers to any challenge Portal, Liferay Portal) ing software outsourcing and cus- during analysis, design, develop- • Business Intelligence Solutions tom software development ser- ment, testing or implementation (IBM Cognos BI, Pentaho BI, Jasper vices. phase of a software project. Soft BI) • Data Analysis Solutions (IBM I2) Since our inception, back in 2008, CodeSphere is a reliable provider of • Document Management Systems we have focused on delivering off-shore and near-shore software (IBM FileNet, Alfresco DMS) top-class solutions to our clients, outsourcing, delivering complete • Mobile Application Development developing custom enterprise ap- software services for: (Android, iOS) plications, web portals, business in- Application Development, Support telligence solutions and document & Maintenance, Refactoring and Contact management systems. Migrations, Product Development , Dan Damian, Managing Partner Testing and Quality Assurance, Cus- Email: [email protected] As the sphere symbols complete- tomer Support , IT Consultancy Phone: +40767901780 ness and perfection, so is our vision Web: www.codesphere.ro when it comes to our services, and Services and solutions: Web: www.codesphere.eu for that we are constantly investing • Custom Enterprise Applications

teams, European business cul- dows, Linux, Mac OS ; PL: C/C++, ture, and the ability to fine-tune C#, Visual Basic .Net, Java any cooperation. • Mobile Applications: OS: iOS, Android, Windows Phone ; PL: Services Offered: Objective C, Java, C#; Software Development: full soft- • Web applications / Services: Company Description: Code- ware development life cycle or Application Servers: Apache spring is a software development implication at any stage in the Tomcat, Jboss, IIS 7.0 PL: C#, Vis- and outsourcing company from development process, mobile ual Basic, Java Cluj-Napoca, Romania, active on development; Software Out- • Databases: Relational: Micro- the global market. We develop sourcing: nearshore, offshore; soft SQL 2010, Oracle, Solid DB, custom solutions and add-ons Software Testing: manual testing, Sybase, PosgresSQL, MySQL, covering the entire life cycle of a automated testing; IT Security: NoSQL: MongoDB ; Object Ori- complex software development physical security (access control ented: Versant VOD ; Compact: project. system), network and informa- Microsoft SQL Compact, SQLite tion security and business con- Codespring offers added value tinuity; Web Development: weB Contact: through business process know- programming, web design, SEO; Phone: +40-364-113110 how and technical expertise in Mobile Development: iOS, An- CEO: Mr. SZELYES Levente, a number of industries. Code- droid, Windows Phone. [email protected] spring’s strengths are its 15 year COO: Mr. BREM Walter, IT&C experience, dedicated Technical Expertise: [email protected] • Desktop Applications: OS: Win- Web: www.codespring.ro

53 The constant preoccupation to CROS ERP (Enterprise Resources know the clients’ needs, to opti- Planning); CROS FRC (Supply, mize their business process and Billing and Customer Relations even to set new standards in cer- system destined for public utility tain industries, have contributed companies); CROS Leasing - In- to the maintenance of a vast surance; CROS Car Service; CROS portfolio of important clients Warehouse; CROS Barcodes; from different fields of activity. CROS Production Planning; CROS Supply Chain; CROS Web; CROS Among the most important sup- The CRIsoft solutions are used CRM; CROS Budget Control; CROS pliers of IT systems dedicated to by a large variety of clients from integration with GIS (Geographic business management in Roma- different industries (distribution, Information System). nia, CRIsoft remains the most production, utilities, services, stable company of the IT&C mar- leasing and insurance, trade). Contact: ket, with more than 20 years of Address: Bd. Victoriei, nr. 12, et. 2, activity. All this time, it has been The range of CRIsoft products 500214, Braşov one of the top largest software is CROS™ (CRIsoft Organization companies in the country with Server™) - a modular, open and Phone: +40-268-471670 more then 100 employees, exter- flexible integrated IT system des- Fax: +40-268-478670 nal collaborators, subcontractors tined for use by the organiza- Email: [email protected] and partners. tions’ management: Web: www.crisoft.ro

than merely assuming Our partners: the role of a supplier. You Siemens, bwin.party, Kalixa, Getec will get a team that is ac- DAM, Sylien Games, Alecom tively involved in your product development Our areas of expertise (but not process, acquiring all the limited to) are: Peace of mind when quality mat- industry know-how necessary to Railway automation, Drives tech- ters! add real value to your products. You nologies, Manufacturing Execution will have a partnership based on Systems (MES), Product Lifecycle Innovative software product devel- transparency (giving you access to Management (PLM), Mobile tech- opment and support services via project details at all times) and flexi- nologies, Application Service Desk, outsourcing. bility (we always tailor our methods SAP Basis Operation, Software li- to our clients’ needs). cense clearing Taking advantage of evoline outsourcing, you will get the same Also, our employees speak English, Contact: quality products and services as German, Hungarian and Romanian, Robert EROS, Head of Sales & Mar- you would in-house, based on a facilitating easy communication. keting cost-effective, transparent, flexible We know that the quality/price Email: [email protected] and long-term partnership. ratio has an important role in out- Mobile: +40 725 991799 sourcing partnerships. Therefore, Web: www.evoline.ro We prefer interactive and long-term you will not only get functioning partnerships with our clients rather products, but high quality code as well, at a very competitive price. Repeatedly included in Deloitte ternal processes and highly skilled which T-Systems, Symantec, Pfizer rankings of the fastest growing IT professionals with quality-driven Vienna eMarketing Centre and Re- technology companies in Central mindset. Hundreds of successfully nault Technocentre France. Europe and EMEA (2010, 2011 and delivered projects and tens of satis- 2013), Fortech is one of the most fied clients recommend us as a reli- Broad technology expertise, includ- dynamic software outsourcing able and trusted outsourcing part- ing .NET, Java, C/C++, PHP, Mobile, companies in Cluj-Napoca and Ro- ner for the long term needs of our niche technologies such as Cobol, mania. clients. Teamcenter etc. Services in complementary areas Our business model and collabora- Key Facts: such as IT support, translations and tion approach is to build dedicated 10 Years of experience in software graphical design. nearshore teams, fully integrated in outsourcing. our clients’ teams and calibrated to 300 Software development and QA Contact: our clients’ processes. engineers and growing. Calin Vaduva, CEO Phone: +40 264 453303 The value we add results from a Hundreds of projects successfully Email: [email protected] proven experience in building delivered to more than 100 clients Web: www.fortech.ro dedicated partnerships, strong in- in Europe and the USA, among

subsidiary of Imprezzio your business needs and your Inc., a Microsoft Silver current software platforms. Certified Partner, is located Cluj-Napoca, Ro- As a company and as individu- mania. We are a full-ser- als, we value honesty, integrity, vice IT solution provider continual self-improvement and dedicated to creating ef- mutual respect. Our team mainly With a reputation for solving ficient, productive and intuitive consists of college valedictori- complex IT integration assign- software solutions for businesses ans and winners of international ments for many valued clients, of all sizes at competitive rates. software competitions, whose we have been creating business knowledge and creativity are re- software for over a decade, from Our main speciality is the de- flected in the services we provide. our offices in North America and velopment of enterprise-class Always striving for excellence, we Europe. Industry leaders in the web applications, mobile apps hold ourselves accountable to insurance and parking verticals and embedded systems. We’ve our clients as we provide them rely on Imprezzio as a trustwor- demonstrated to all our clients with valuable results. thy software solution provider. our ability to meet their evolv- They have chosen to work with ing needs in a dynamic business Phone: +40-364.881.355 us due to our responsiveness, environment. We are experts in Email: [email protected] flexibility, creativity and high se- designing solutions from scratch Web: www.imprezzioglobal.com curity standards. as well as building on our existing products. We ensure that our Imprezzio Global, the European solutions are 100% in tune with companies and their Basic outsourcing services clients. Leveraging structure: the existing compe- • IT systems hardware and soft- tencies and valuable ware outsourcing references, Kapsch • IT specialist outsourcing Kapsch srl is the Romanian sub- proposes outsourcing IT services • Helpdesk outsourcing sidiary of Kapsch BusinessCom, to companies who want to focus • Services ensuring operability of a company of the Kapsch Group on their core businesses instead the IT and leading ICT service partner of investing in the IT department. • Proactive conceptual work on in Austria, Central and Eastern Beside a comprehensive offer of IT technology strategy & plan- Europe with over 1,400 employ- outsourcing services, we act as ning ees and annual sales exceeding an extension for the pool of re- • IT structure design, optimiza- 300 million euros. The Romanian sources of our customers, ready tion, implementation subsidiary operates since 2009, to solve any complex and critical • IT department projects man- by providing services to Kapsch problems that might occure. agement and realization global customers with local activities, as well as for local busi- We offer a mature, commercially Contact: nesses and public institutions. competitive and widely avail- Bogdan Learschi, Communica- The efficiency and professional- able portfolio of IT services, so tion Manager ism of Romanian specialists led that our customers can create an Tel. +40 21 4087373 to the establishment in 2013 of a optimal outsourcing model that Email: [email protected] International Delivery Center of- suits their needs, thus building Web: www.kapsch.ro fering support for Kapsch Group an ideal relationship.

the most efficient combination of ment is to execute and deliver the offshore and on site services in or- projects in time, of high quality and der to reach the best quality - price within the budget. level. The relatively high number of par- We cover all the current major tech- allel active clients, our simultane- nologies, as well as many legacy en- ous presence on Romanian market vironments. and on Western Europe market or the diversity of our activities repre- We provide software development, sent strategic elements that recom- third party maintenance, consult- mend Kepler-Rominfo as a reliable, ing services, dedicated teams and long term partner. remote systems monitoring; we have expertise in financial, telecom, Contacts: Kepler-Rominfo represents one retail, automotive and chemical in- Phone: +40 21 233 10 80 of the leading Romanian compa- dustries. Email: [email protected] nies providing software services Web: www.kepler-rominfo.com and solutions. Employing current- The business model followed from ly more than 200 specialists and the beginning of our company is with a portfolio of more than 1000 based on the development of long projects for over 100 clients from term relationships with our clients, more than 30 countries worldwide, ensuring a successful partnership Kepler-Rominfo brings to its clients for both sides. Our main commit- core business processes maintaining secure networks. and be one step ahead • Custom software development. of your competitors. The continuing investment in education and training of our special- The quality of services ists and, not least, strong partner- and the products of- ships with some of the leading fered by us, make world producers of products and Power Net Consulting is one of the Power Net Consulting a safe and systems recommend us as supplier leading providers of integrated so- an accurate partnership for the big of reliable and efficient solutions, lutions in Romania. companies or public governmental with applications in various fields institutions from Romania. and multiple industries. We are specialized in delivering completely flexible outsourced IT Area of expertise: Contact: services in the mid-market. Out- • Consulting, and implementation 238th Eminescu Street, 2nd district, sourcing isn’t a package: it’s the of scalable and complex embed- Bucharest - Romania highest level of service we provide ded systems, tailored to suit cus- Claudia Panait, Sales Manager to our customers, and because tomer needs. Phone: +4021-201.94.81 service is about flexibility above all • Consulting, planning and imple- Email: [email protected] else, we deliver our services accord- mentation of IT strategies for or- Web: www.power.ro ing to your need. ganizations operating in areas such as industrial, banking, public sector, We offer cost effective services, that etc. allows you to concentrate on your • Designing, implementing, and

tices, delivery: Germany, Hungary, • cloud scalable archi- Spain, Bulgaria, Czech Repub- tecture, lic, Slovakia, Greece, 1 internal • optimizing TCO and Learning and Development plat- Time2Market. form of IT contractors, supported • competence retention by a talent reallocation system & knowledge capture, Country contacts RINF is an IT Service Provider Additionally we deliver remote Bucharest, Romania, Phone: +40 which delivers Software Devel- BPO projects and onsite IT ser- 374 919 666, Email: bucharest@ opment and Application Man- vices. rinfgroup.eu agement services. Paris, France, Phone: +33 616 273 Company history 078, Email: [email protected] Our technical project manag- 2006 - RINF began providing IT Brussels, Belgium, Phone: +32 ers from the delivery centers contracting services in Romania 483 592 466, Email: brussels@ are focused on: 2009 - Expanding focus to in- rinfgroup.eu • improving the clients’ KPIs clude ITO and BPO projects in EU London, UK, Phone: +44 7426 584 • deliverables stability, countries 821, Email: [email protected] • decreasing reworks through 2012 - 5 operating branches: Ro- Wroclaw, Poland, Phone: +48 717 code scalability, mania, Poland, UK, France, Bel- 860 800, Email: [email protected] • flexibility in resources alloca- gium, Finland, 2 fully operational tion, delivery centers in Bucharest, 7 Web: www.rinf.ro • improving management prac- additional countries of project tise ; web graphic de- according to time spent, with signers, web integra- detailed time-sheet (relevant for tors, PHP programers, small modifications on existing system admin, pro- websites). ject managers, SEO and social network We do not impose you to hire a Transylvania Consulting SRL is a operators. We deliver monthly team for a long period, we offer Web manufacture (Web factory) over 30 websites, with a wide you (within a short adjustment created in Cluj Napoca (Klausen- diversity of sizes and character- deadline) the right expertise at burg – Romania) in 2002. istics. the right time. It is managed by two partners, a French Business Administrator We developed (in PHP) and im- For info or visit please contact : and a Romanian computer engi- prove our own intuitive and pow- neer erful back office, and occasion- Nicolas de Castelnau ally use standards CMS such as Transylvania Consulting SRL The manufacture collaborates WordPress, CMS Made simple, or with Western Europe Web Agen- e-commerce platforms like Open Phone: : 0040364116140 cies from France, Belgium, and Cart, Prestashop or Magento. Mobile : 0040741181223 more episodically Switzerland Email : [email protected] and Germany. Projects can be developed on a Skype : transycons fixed price project agreement Web: www.transycons.com We currently employ 30 people, (especially big projects with clear including a wide variety of exper- stable specifications) or billed

Founded in 1994, Sistec is well ing complete IT solutions: software, DMS software known and appreciated by its cli- IT service network, Hosting and IT - Interfaces and software develop- ents and partners for profession- Outsourcing, Security and infra- ment on demand alism, business acumen and the structure, document management. - IT Outsourcing, managed hosting ability to add value to any business Sistec’s solutions are based on tech- and cloud services through its IT solutions and technologies offered by: Abas, IBM, Ora- - Maintenance & support for office nologies. We investigate how tech- cle, Microsoft, Cisco, Sony, Canon, equipment, infrastructure adminis- nology and services can help peo- Xerox and other well-known OEM tration and managed print solu- ple and companies to improve their producers. tions business processes. Headquartered - Security solutions, IT infrastruc- in Bucharest and with a large re- Our product ture and communications systems gional office in Cluj Napoca, Sistec We developed and constantly im- - Physical and digital archiving has national coverage through prove our own intuitive and robust small offices located in all major Ro- ERP system (Cogito) dedicated to Contacts: manian cities. Retail and Distribution companies. Bucharest: +40219633, +40214083003 Cluj Napoca: +40264590282 Areas of specialization Services offered Email: [email protected] [email protected] Sistec is a system integrator provid- - Implementation of ERP/ CRM / Web: www.sistec.ro Acollada of TotalSoft: helping you Oracle (Oracle Database, Oracle BI • 10+ years collaborations with our create innovative, cost effective so- and Java Development) and Pro- clients lutions ahead of your competition. ject Management methodologies, • Business know-how in the served Acollada offers unique expertise in industries Established in 1994, TotalSoft has a providing massive know-how for • Compliance with industry stand- team of 400 specialists, a portfolio industries like Telecom, Healthcare, ards & country-specific business of over 1,500 customers and im- Automotive and Services. rules plementations in 28 countries on • Knowledgeable in all major tech- 4 continents. TotalSoft has a sound TotalSoft is one of the main provid- nologies & platforms expertise in designing, developers of business software in Central • Cultural affinity with Western ing and implementing customized and Eastern Europe, and the lead- Europe & the US software projects for medium and ing ERP producer in Romania, with • End-to-end project lifecycle sup- large companies. a constant presence in Top 5 largest port software companies nationwide. Acollada is the Software Develop- Contact details ment Division of TotalSoft - the larg- Phone: +4021 335 17 09 est software exporter in Romania. Why totalsoft? E:mail: [email protected] With more than 200 employees • 20 years of experience Web: www.acollada.com certified in Microsoft (.net frame- • 300+ successful international www.totalsoft.ro work, SQL, CRM and SharePoint), projects www.charisma.ro

WebVenture Interactive is a team - English language proficiency. - Consultancy and Project Man- of Software, Web and Mobile De- agement; velopment that stands out from We are usually working on the - Maintenance and support on IT the crowd thanks to the follow- following type of projects: solutions. ing competitive qualities: - Custom Software, Web and Mo- - Stunning communication skills bile Development (starting with We are using Agile Scrum in our within the project, from scratch Business Analysis and Software workflow, this giving us flexibility to finish; Requirement Specifications and and high-efficiency. - Great business analysis and ending with final deployment software requirement specifica- and post-delivery maintenance Contact information: tion writing skills; and future development); Ciprian Salceanu, Business De- - Talent in realistically evaluating - Web Development using popu- velopment Manager, ciprian.sal- the projects and recommending lar CMS’s (WordPress, Joomla!, [email protected] the optimal technical solutions; Drupal); Phone: +40732010010 - Constantly up to date with the - E-commerce implementations Email: [email protected] latest technologies; using top platforms (Magento, Web: www.webventure.ro - Passionate and serious devel- PrestaShop) or custom develop- opment team; ment; WNS (Holdings) Limited is a lead- ment services such as finance Contact information: ing global business process man- and accounting, customer care, WNS Global Services (P) Ltd, agement company. technology solutions, research Bucharest, Romania and analytics and industry spe- WNS offers business value to cific back office and front office Catalin Iorgulescu, CEO 200+ global clients by combin- processes. [email protected] ing operational excellence with Alecsandra Lițu, PR deep domain expertise in key in- As of December 31, 2013, WNS [email protected] dustry verticals including Travel, had 26,578 professionals across Insurance, Banking and Financial 33 delivery centres worldwide in- Phone: +40 372 303 000 Services, Manufacturing, Retail cluding China, Costa Rica, India, Fax: +40 372 303 000 and Consumer Packaged Goods, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Web: www.wns.com Shipping and Logistics, Health- South Africa, Sri Lanka, United care and Utilities. Kingdom and the United States.

WNS delivers an entire spectrum of business process manage-

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PUBLISHER The Outsourcing Destination Guide Romania is published by German Outsourcing Association Germany, in co-operation with the industry associations ABSL, ANIS and Cluj-IT, Romania

EDITORS Stephan Fricke, German Outsourcing Association, The Outsourcing Journal

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