Bucharest, 20th of July 2006 – Following its excellent growth during the last few years SIVECO Romania continued to have during the first semester of 2006 outstanding results.
SIVECO Romania has succeeded to fulfill its objectives for this period of the year: 58 new contracts signed, 90% of them from the private sector; the company also initiated new projects and continued the national projects that have started in the latest years.
Among the companies that became SIVECO Romania’s clients in 2006 we can mention: WINMARKT, RODMIR EXPERT, TMUCB , MEDLIFE, SUCEAVA UNIVERSITY, ROMENERGO, INTFOR GALATI, MAREX Brăila, AKER Tulcea, ROMANIAN NAVAL AUTHORITY, TOTAL ELECTRIC OLTENIA Râmnicu Vâlcea, NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION FOR STATE RESERVES, Unicom Bunkering, INSURANCE SUPERVISORY COMMISSION etc.
Until the end of 2006, the company wants to increase its portfolio with another 120 clients.
In 2006, SIVECO Romania continued its major national projects such as: The National House for Health Insurance, Petrom and MedC. We also successfully continued the implementations at Romanceram, Com Auto Meridian, Anticorosiv, Marconf, Ultex, Traian Vuia International Airport of Timisoara, Uztel Ploieşti, Carpatair and finished projects like: Celco, Dobrogea Biscuit, Arpechim Pitesti, Congaz, Alcoa Fujikura.
SIVECO Romania Customer Satisfaction survey conducted by the company in May and June 2006 shows that most of SIVECO Romania’s clients (88%) considers that working with this company is easy and profitable. The main reasons were the company’s products and services capabilities to solve problems, as well as the flexibility (adaptability) of the products.
Rapid and qualitative services, complete and in time accessibility to documentation, are main reasons invoked by the customers.
In accordance with its policy to constantly expand its national partner network in different areas of the country: Cluj Napoca, Târgu Mureş, Neamţ, Călăraşi, Vrancea, Argeş, Braşov, Timişoara. A special attention was paid to marketing and sales activities as well as increasing profit with the help of the partners. Moreover, within the Partners Day that took place in June, at Poiana Braşov this strategy was analyzed again and consolidated.
Recently, the local management team with the assistance of an international business consultants team elaborated the company’s strategy for the next five years.
During this period of time SIVECO Romania aims to develop from the most important Romanian software house to a regional software integrator, and in 10 years to become an European leader.
Because, in a mature and transparent business environment listing a company to the Stock Exchange is a natural and necessary step, in the next three years, SIVECO Romania’ stakeholders will evaluate the opportunity to start off legal formalities in order to prepare the company to be listed to the Stock Exchange.
“Decision making process to list the company to the Stock Exchange is going to be influenced by our stakeholders’ constant evaluations on stock exchange market. As Intel capital and Enterprise Investors have a very good expertise in this area, the decision to list the company to the Bucharest Stock Exchange will be made when the company will be prepared for it” declares Irina SOCOL, General Manager of SIVECO Romania.
In order to achieve these goals we will continue to keep up with the previous years rate growth in terms of turnover and profit and to maintain a well-balanced rate between exports (50%) and domestic activity (50%).
The product strategy include: standard products, custom applications, extending functionalities to our ongoing national eHealth and eLearning projects and duplicating them on international markets, implementing third party applications.
The present development strategy focus on intense R&D investments, aiming to launch new products with great potential in terms of commercial value.
A special attention is paid to extending the business on external markets.
A favorable premise for achieving this goal are the business partnerships with global leading companies such as Intel, HP, IBM, Oracle, Bull, Microsoft.
“Actually, SIVECO Romania aims to become strategic partner of these global companies a decisive action already being made when the company was included in Intel Capital’s portfolio. By collaborating with these companies, SIVECO Romania has access to the global partner network of each of them” says Ms. Irina SOCOL.
As part of Intel, Intel Capital evaluates the most promising investments, offers business and technology consultancy to all the companies in its portfolio and gives acces to the latest technologies in the industry.
Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested more than US$4 billion in more than 1,000 companies spanning more than 30 countries. During this time, about 160 portfolio companies have been acquired and another 150 have gone public on exchanges around the world.
Intel Capital has investments managers employed in 25 countries in the world. Only last year, Intel Capital invested about US$130 million in about 140 deals with approximately 40 percent of funds invested outside the United States.
In 2005, Intel Capital and Enterprise Investors the largest private equity firm in Central and Eastern Europe, announced a 12 mil $ investment in SIVECO Romania. This is the biggest investment in IT domain and in our country until now and one of the most important international IT investments in Central and Eastern Europe.
Improving our business model also means to improve our organizational processes and human resources management.
As the business develops, SIVECO team is going to have 500 members until the end of 2006, the quantitative growth being sustained by qualitative growth.
SIVECO Romania’s constant care for the improvement of the employees competencies by ensuring an adequate training, a present working environment and by recognizing everyone’ s contribution to the development of the company, place SIVECO Romania in the top of the best employers on the labor market.
The expertise and professionalism of SIVECO team brought this year prestigious awards and important internal and international acknowledgements for the company.
Thus, in June 2006 SIVECO Romania received from OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the „Innovative Domestic investor of the year 2006” Award in Vienna.
This award has great importance for the company, OECD being one of the most important international forums to address economic, social, challenges at global level, an apolitical association of the most developed and democratic countries. Its mission is to promote policies designed to achieve sustainable economic growth in member countries strengthening efficiency expanding free trade and contributing to economic growth in world. The forum has currently thirty full members, that seek answers to global economic and social challenges and helps governments to foster prosperity and fight poverty through economic growth, financial stability, trade and investment, technology, innovation, entrepreneurship and development co-operation.
For more than 40 years, the OECD has been one of the world’s largest and most reliable sources of comparable statistical, economic and social data.
The value and validity of the OECD internationally agreed instruments, decisions and recommendations is so high, that it is practically constituted as a functioning matrix of the world economy.
In May 2006, CEFTAC (Central European advocacy for a Fair and Transparent Competition) declared SIVECO’ s activity as "The most transparent behavior of a company in a competitive environment”.
An organism that cultivates the developpment and strengthening of an open European business area, based on the principles of free competition and economic competitiveness, CEFTAC Platform yearly awards Romanian companies from various economic fields, as a recognition of their effort to create a local transparent and competitive business environment. The other companies nominated for the award received by SIVECO were General Electric, Orange, OMV, UNITA and Reckitt – Benckiser.
Arch of Europe Awards is an annual recognition of Business Initiative Directions (BID) Association and are given to those companies that contributed to the development of the local business environment and last but not least for their efforts, and commitment to quality principles. Business Initiative Directions (BID) is a pioneer in corporate communication quality field. BID brand is present in 163 countries of the world and set the basis for implementing a complete quality process, based on the criteria of QC 100 -Total Quality Management.
The TQM QC 100 standard is the result of many years of work by many business management specialists.
The quality management principles, which respect TQM QC 100 criteria are also the basis of the quality system implemented in SIVECO Romania.
The value of the company’s products was also acknowledged. SIVECO Applications received Excellency Award from PC World Magazine and SIVECO Business Analyzer was recognized as “the best e-business solution” (Galati Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture IT&C Awards, 2006).
Responsible member of the community SIVECO Romania extended and diversified its involvement in sustaining the Romanian society, initiating, organizing and financing educational, cultural and humanitarian activities.
SIVECO Virtual Center for Excellency successfully continued last years initiatives. Launched at the beginning of 2003, SIVECO Virtual Center for Excellency gathers a series of initiatives started by SIVECO Romania in the educational field, initiatives that contribute to promoting creativity in computer assisted learning.
This initiative is based on the company’ s concern for complete and complex eLearning solutions.
This year under the patronage of SIVECO Virtual Center for Excellency, took place the forth edition of CUPA SIVECO international competition, the second edition of “The chance to become a Champion” competition and the launching of SIVECO Academy within the Bucharest Academy for Economic Studies.
Also, in 2006 within SIVECO Virtual Center for Excellency were initiated two corporate responsibility activities, "Be intelligent, do not be violent" campaign, a campaign for fighting against violence in schools and a series of actions aiming to train rural communities in computer assisted learning („Să învăţăm să învăţăm” campaign – in Breasta, Dolj county in partnership with World Vision, a non governmental organization).
Last but not least, SIVECO Romania actively sustains the national and international initiatives meant to improve the level of transparency and credibility of Romanian business climate and constantly contribute to consolidate business ethics and corruption eradication, being one of the first company that become a member of Global Compact and PACI (Partnering Against Corruption Initiative).
„For the second semester of 2006,we plan to successfully consolidate and extend our ongoing projects, to further invest in our R&D projects and identify the local and international business opportunities, especially as a turn key projects provider” said Irina Socol. „ We wish to increase our turnover with 20 percent, to continue to expand our business on those verticals with great potential (production, utilities, construction, retail). We will continue to contribute to Romanian software industry awareness in the world and to the development of and ethical and responsible business environment in Romania”.