From humble beginnings thirty years ago, software outsourcing firm ELEKS has gone on to become a key player on the global stage. To mark three decades in business, ELEKS’s founder Oleksiy Skrypnyk and CEO Andriy Krupa offer their insights on the company’s hard-won success.
What is the secret of your success?
In Skrypnyk’s eyes, ELEKS is built on its people. “I believe that what sets ELEKS apart is the dedication of the teams and our willingness to go to any length to find the right solution for our clients. It is our people who have made us the success that we are today”.
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According to Krupa, ELEKS wanted to be a company that could foster mutually beneficial growth partnerships with its clients and, together, take on complex projects. It’s this people-centric approach – to both clients and colleagues – that distinguishes it from its competitors.
Skrypnyk elaborates, “back in the early 2000s, we started restructuring to place the best people in the most prominent roles. My father had been our bookkeeper and administrative director until we hired professionals to fulfil those roles. From there, we just kept bringing in more of the right people. I understood that the biggest limitation for a company was the people managing it.”
Finding and retaining talent is ELEKS’s top priority. It’s passionate about creating growth opportunities that challenge the status quo and enhancing its project portfolio with boundary-pushing collaborations.
Krupa highlights a corporate startup incubator that the company is working on to showcase and develop ideas from senior talent. And there is a drive to expand career opportunities, nurture talent and broaden the skill set of all employees.
He states, “if you take good care of people, they will take good care of your company”.
In March 2013, Ukraine ranked fourth in the world in terms of home-grown certified IT professionals. Fast-forward to the present day, and the country is now hailed as one of the world’s leading exporters of IT services-growing, in fact, by an unprecedented 20% during the COVID-19 crisis.
What was it like to launch one of the world’s leading outsourcing businesses in 1991?
The ’90 was a tricky time for Ukraine and a really challenging time to go into business. We had to find a way to become stable during the turbulence, so we started working directly with our customers. We evolved our business model to become an outsourcing partner, and it’s because of that, things really started to go from strength to strength for us.
How did ELEKS grow to became an industry leader?
There was a mindset shift within the business, whereby we switched to become a true client partner. We started working collaboratively with, instead of for, our customers. I think this is one of the key reasons we’re now considered a top global outsourcing business, counting many Fortune 500 companies among our clientele.
What is the best advice you’ve received throughout your career with ELEKS?
It was probably the simple statement : “You’re still Alex”, meaning that, although we were growing, we were still just a group of friends building software together and ought to keep our feet on the ground. Even now, we’re still a group of friends – albeit more than 1,600 of us and counting-doing what we are most passionate about.
What has been your most exciting project to date?
R&D is at the heart of everything we do, and we’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to develop so many exciting projects. One of the most memorable was Luftronix, a project ELEKS partnered on to commercialise high-precision autonomous navigation for drone-based scans of large aircraft. The idea originated from an engineer’s fascination with drones and evolved into commercial solution that has caught the attention of major aircraft manufactures. In 2020, MAUtechnic, Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) and Luftronix, Inc. collaboratively conducted drone-based scans of UIA’s Boing 737-800 aircraft in Kyiv.
What are some of the biggest challenges for ELEKS right now?
I’d say it’s finding the right people to manage the company. That’s why ELEKS is now focused on sourcing the best people from around the world, including Ukraine. We’re seeking the most elite IT professionals and, fundamentally, code writers from across the globe-going straight to the source so that we can write superior software.
As a global company, what lessons are you learning from your clients?
It’s been a steep learning curve. We have quickly had to educate ourselves, not only in the small cultural nuances but also in the differing expectations of the various global markets. And it’s a continuous education. What’s the difference between working in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the Arab Emirates, for example? Then there’s Japan, an entirely different place altogether. But it gives us great joy to become fluent in these markets.
With the digital landscape evolving at a rate of knots, the future looks bright for Ukraine’s IT sector, and ELEKS will continue to lead the way for its peers.
ABOUT US
600+ end-to-end solutions delivered
90% of clients do more than one project with us
57 Net Promoter Score (NPS)
30 years of experience
If you need a partner of choice for your business, contact us at eleks.com
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