Marko Perovic, CEO of NPS - NPS in a new round

(Marko Perovic)

The first time we had the opportunity to speak to Marko Perović, Director of NPS, was when we were preparing the second issue of our magazine for the year of 2004, when he decided to come out for the first time and say something about the enterprise, about the plans and intensification of the company’s presence and its business operations in then Serbia and Montenegro. Almost eight years later, we met again, and out collocutor this time is also Igor Pavlica, Executive Director of Saga. The reason is a new start, a topic which connects both our collocutors. How and why – read on to find out. Our first question was:

What is currently happening in NPS?

NPS Group was founded in Ljubljana 15 years ago, but a little over a year ago, the two owners, Mladen Gvozdenović and me, decided to split up due to different views of the business goals in the future… The company was split in two enterprises, based in Belgrade and Ljubljana. They are completely separated in terms of the ownership, bud they kept the same name, which undoubtedly represents a brand in business informatics in our region and there was no reason to change it.

However, the Ljubljana-based company, unlike the Belgrade-based one, decided to step out from the ERP business and work only with business intelligence, which was not unexpected at all. What was new was that in Belgrade, after the separation, we initiated a new integration, this time with the New Frontier Group (NFG).

Igor Pavlica, Executive Director of Saga, which has been the member of the Group since 2009, and me hereby wish to inform the public that from the New Year, or most probably from January 2012, after we finish all necessary activities, NPS Belgrade will join the Group.

Why have you decided to integrate into NFG and what do you expect out of that move?

Considering the general situation, globalization, as well as our need to permanently offer new quality and new challenges, new products and services and interesting future to our clients and employees, it was quite natural to think about new partnerships and integrations. With this move we are pursuing our mission to enable our clients to be efficient and successful, while we develop the existing potential of our employees, which is why we are constantly opened for ideas and people which can improve our company. Apart from that, we will continue nurturing the values we have respected all these years – focus on success of each client, honesty, responsibility, and trust in all relations, as well as innovations, which provides solutions and processes with additional value. Our vision of being successful and measuring our success with the satisfaction of our clients and employees is very similar to the vision of NFG.

Joining and growing by integrating into a large group will allow as to additionally improve the quality and extend the scope and range of services we offer, promote internal organization of business processes, enter markets we haven’t been present in, and by doing that, to finally get the right opportunity to start with various specializations, added Perović.We will be able to learn from more experienced partners, because the Group is consisted of mostly large companies (only one of them is smaller than us) with ten to twenty years of market experience, and the management of NFG consists of people with vast experience, primarily former regional directors of large enterprises.With integration we get access to valuable knowledge, experience, and skills that I hope will help us notice possible weak spots faster than before, and, although I think we, as a company, have good organization and great project implementation skills, we will use every opportunity and chance to become even better.

Who are the people that lead NFG, what is their aim and what are the results until now?

This question was answered by Igor Pavlica. All the people who manage NFG have many years of international experience. Those are the people who developed businesses and conquered new markets, the people who are well familiar with the organization of all kinds of businesses, and who enabled the growth and development of IT enterprises with their creative abilities. So the fact that the company New Frontier, from which it all began, was founded with the ambitious goal of growing into the most successful IT service provider in Central and Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Russia, is not surprising.Its founders believed that there was potential which could satisfy the local, but also the global needs of developing markets, that it was possible to identify, unite, and profile it in order to offer solutions for more than one specific industry, better than other companies. Currently, they are well on the way to realize that vision. Their mission is to help regional companies compete in the global market, and to offer support to international companies, such as banks and telecoms, in order to achieve efficient performance in regional markets.

For achieving its goals, New Frontier Group has, from the very start, used the approach “buy and build”, focusing not only on acquisitions and buying other companies, but also to organic growth. By applying that strategy all these years, the company has constantly developed and expanded, both organically and geographically, thanks to the investments into powerful local companies, bringing them under the same roof.

Around a year after the foundation (in August 2006 in Austria), late 2007, New Frontier bought Czech company Profinit and Romanian firm Romsys. At the end of 2008, the Group welcomed Slovakian company Cogent, and Hungarian enterprises Xapt and Grepton, and finished the year of 2009 with the integration of Serbia-based Saga. During 2010 and 2011, Austrian firm NF S3 and Polish company Smartupz joined NFG.

The Group has been constantly using well positioned and recognizable brands of its members, such as Saga in the markets of our regions, at the same time promoting NFG as a uniting force which connects all its members, guaranteeing reliable service in the whole region.

Despite the economic crisis, the Group still advances well. The revenue we made last year reached over one hundred million euros. We currently do business in 12 countries and employ over 1,000 IT professionals.

(Igor Pavlica)

A long way still lies in front of us. We are trying hard to expand our abilities in order to provide our clients greater value through IT. Our basic principle of serving the clients in a quick and flexible manner, doing only what will have real and positive effects on their business, will still remain our guideline in our work. We are convinced that the future will bring us many more IT solutions and numerous clients that will know they’ll be able to rely on us.

In Central and Eastern Europe, languages and business practices significantly differ from country to country and from region to region, but since all of our members are located in those places and know the local markets well, you can still expect from us to offer the best practice and real experts for your local market.

Our offer includes very wide range of fields among which are self service and mobile solutions, web portals, software as a service solutions (SaaS), industry solutions, financial and risk management, business analytics, people and workforce management, strategy execution management, custom solutions, information management, collaboration and client relationship management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), business process management (BPM), and IT services management, security and continuity, storage and computing, network and communications.

What changes are awaiting NPS and what can be expected out of the forthcoming integration?

In the past we wanted to do as many things as possible, or to have as many services in our portfolio as possible. Then, we realized that we needed to specialize in a limited field, in other words, we needed to narrow our focus, and today, as I can see, it seems that the best is to combine these two stands, in other words,a company should have diverse focuses without affecting the quality of the offered services, explained Perović. In order to achieve a high quality realization of projects in a company, it is no longer enough to just organize one area of its business operations, because there are always several others related segments and none of them is minor or simple. Surely, it is connected with the emergence of new technologies and new business approaches we should always have timely and quality answers for, in the form of solutions we offer.

That is why 30 people we currently have are not enough, and perhaps not even 50. We need space and a lot of specialties which have to be combined in a way that each project we realize is rounded and successful.

Our greatest advantage is still Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Apart from its usage in the fields of trade, distribution, public administration, retailing, accounting, transport, etc., we have specialized in particular for its application in manufacturing companies, and lately in construction industry – especially in civil engineering. Of course, we offer Dynamics AX and NAV Express as well. However, entering the NF Group, we got access to experience of the other member companies that have worked or are working on bigger projects and with other EPR systems. One such company is Hungarian-based Xapt, which is primarily focused on MS Dynamics AX, while being present in both American and Canadian market. Last summer, it was chosen for Microsoft’s partner of the year! It currently works for Caterpillar on a large-scale project, almost inconceivable from our perspective. Thanks to that, we’ll be able to promote some of our expert knowledge, while getting other opportunities. The Romanian member of the Group, Romsys, is a large partner of SAP, and although it doesn’t mean we will become specialists for SAP solutions, we have the opportunity to acquire some new knowledge and new contacts through that partner company. And so on, each member of the Group has its potential, solutions and valuable experience.

When you work with Dynamics, which is our major focus, the most of the things start in USA, and after a year or two, it transfers to Europe and finally to Serbia. However, through NFG we will be near the source of information and we won’t have to wait for so long. This is how we provide both ourselves and our clients with the competitive advantage by using the latest information technologies in the in the shortest period from their emergence.

What help can Saga provide you with?

In a nutshell, Saga opens new possibilities for us. What we used to be proud of, as a narrowly focused company dealing only with software, does no longer apply. Now we have to take care of the hardware communication and anything else necessary to round a whole as well. When a client comes to us, he has to be able to get everything. Whether he came because of the infrastructure and he got everything else, or he came for business informatics, so he’ll get the infrastructure, is no longer important. What is important is that he gets everything in one place, and that all of the equipment is of the highest quality.

Surely, because of its 20 years of existence, the quality, and the scope of its portfolio, Saga will have a greater role in our collaboration, but the collaboration will still remain mutual, or, as I like to say,… we will give Saga one piece, and it’ll give us ten, while the clients will have all eleven pieces available.

What relationship do you expect to have with numerous partners NFG cooperates with?

The relationships with our principals will definitely rise to a new, higher level, which is logical, considering the dispersion of the Group in a larger market. We are entering new circles that are even higher than those we’ve just entered, such as MS President’sClub that provides us with direct connection with Microsoft, which is very important to us. That means being at the source of information and getting it timely. I don’t need to add that the partner list includes companies such as Oracle, IBM, SAP, HP, EMC, Informatica, Cisco...

What can your employees expect from entering NFG?

Entering such a large group is not simple in any aspect. That is why the preparations lasted so long, and the expectations are probably greater than what our result will be, at least in the first year.

Igor Pavlica already said that NFG has around 1,000 employees, which is not a small number, so there is a completely different level of personnel policy which is not possible to maintain in smaller firms. For example, a certain number of people, who are recognized as the future driving force of the Group, are selected every year from each of the member company, and they get additional guidance. That is where the borders between the companies disappear. Mentors can come from one company and the chosen employees from the other. That tells that a lot of attention is being dedicated to the development perspective staff. For us at NPS, it is important that our people know that it is another comparative advantage they can count on. No matter how much the salaries are important to the staff, the possibility of progressing, getting additional training and fulfilling own ambitions in this way certainly brings a new value to working in NPS. This kind of human capital management does not represent a usual practice in our domestic companies. When you have ten to fifteen people in a company all together with the director and the owner, there is no possibility for such work with people, but in a larger company, it is both necessary and possible, because there are motivated resources and required capital.

What is the most important to you in this integration project?

There are three most important things to me: to keep and develop a base of good, skilled people, who are satisfied with what they do and who see the purpose and the aim of what they are doing, then to create fields of new knowledge and expertise and implement new, and above all Microsoft’s business solutions into our offer, and, thirdly, but equally important – local and regional recognition in the market, with the aim of participating in demanding, multidisciplinary projects regardless of their size.

(Note: complete text is taken from JISA magazine)