Interview with Softacom CEO: How IT consulting can help you to minimize risks and costs

Overview

In the era of digitalization, the majority of companies that work in different industries have already fully realized the importance of software solutions for the optimization of their business processes. Nevertheless, a lot of businesses still ignore such services as IT consulting and, in general, seriously underestimate the role of professional consulting in their projects.

To help you better understand why we insist on the significance of IT consulting, we decided to talk to Softacom CEO Yury Bruev, who has been working in the industry for more than 10 years. Over these years, Yury has managed to successfully launch more than 30 projects for companies of different types and sizes. 

Yury, let us start with a very straightforward question. Some people think that IT consulting is just an utter waste of money. Is it really so? Do software development companies offer such services only in order to increase their revenue?

Unfortunately, this opinion is really a very popular one. And I absolutely understand why it happens so. A lot of people just do not have enough information about these services and the outcomes that they get if they turn to them. At Softacom, we are not interested in “selling” as many services as possible. Vice versa, we do our best to help our customers to optimize their expenses and we want them to invest their funds only in those products and services that can bring real value to them. Based on our experience, we are absolutely confident that IT consulting services can be a very feasible investment in your common project’s success.

Thanks to IT consulting, you can better understand whether you are moving in the right direction with your project. As a result, you can avoid a lot of serious risks.

Can you specify what IT consulting services are?

In a very broad meaning, these are advisory services that are aimed at assessing solutions, technologies, methodologies, and strategies for making a conclusion about their efficiency and feasibility in each particular case.

There can be different types of consulting services. For example, we provide:

• Enterprise architecture consulting. We can analyze your IT delivery architecture and systems and develop a strategy for their improvement.
• Strategic and technology consulting. Our experts can estimate the performance of your solutions and their sustainability for the future in order to find out whether any modernization efforts are required.
• Business analysis in software development and modernization services. We will consider the viability of your ideas for building new apps or modernizing existing solutions given the ongoing market conditions.

To reach the goals of the analysis phase, we organize discovery workshops and kick-off sessions, analyze the project’s feasibility, estimate the required resources, define key tasks, and prioritize them. And that’s only a small part of all the included steps. 

• Software state check and quality audit. If you are not satisfied with the performance of your software, we can review its state and define all the reasons for the growing number of failures and downtimes. We can also provide recommendations on how to ensure seamless running of your solutions.

Can you please explain what steps are typically included in IT consulting services?

Though all projects and solutions are different and they all require a highly individual approach, it is possible to define some standard steps.

1. Analysis. When you come to us, our IT consulting experts will examine your existing solution (or an idea, if there are not any ready products) and the way users interact with it (or are expected to interact).
2. Planning. Then, our experts will offer a strategy and a plan that will help you to use advanced technologies and tools in the most appropriate way and explain how you can improve your products or ideas.
3. Implementation. We will provide the required recommendations for the smooth implementation of all the updates in accordance with your existing work processes.
4. Further improvement. Our team will also prepare tips for your further software enhancements once all the initial goals are met. 

Does all that you’ve told us mean that customers can really turn to IT consulting even if they do not have a precise idea for their future project?

Yes, it is so. We do not expect that our clients will come to us with a ready solution. It’s enough to come with a request, just with an idea, or a preliminary plan. Our team has 15+ years of experience and over these years, our experts have accumulated enough knowledge to cope with tasks of any complexity and we can work with requests of different types.

You can come to us even if you have zero understanding of how to address existing issues. We will analyze them and offer different variants of possible ways to deal with them.

You can also turn to our IT business analysis services when you already have plans to launch a project but at the same time, there are concerns related to its feasibility. We will estimate whether it is really sensible to invest in such a product at a particular period of time and will suggest possible improvements if it is required.

Moreover, among our customers who turn to us for such services, there are businesses that are not satisfied with the ongoing state of their existing software products. Our specialists can study your case to choose the right strategy for introducing enhancements. For example, we may offer you to migrate your app to the cloud or to re-engineer it. There are no universal solutions. Each case should be viewed individually.

If customers come to Softacom to order IT consulting services, what results they can expect to get?

First of all, they will get a deep and detailed analysis of their software solution (if they already have it), as well as an analysis of their existing software infrastructure and the task that they want to address with their software solution. At this step, our experts may find out that the desired solution won’t be able to fulfill all the tasks that a client expects it to perform. And we will always inform a client about it and offer an alternative approach. The results of this part of the work will be delivered in the form of a document with a full description of project requirements that will be necessary for the development team to better understand each case and offer the most appropriate solution.

Secondly, our business analysts can prepare a clear set of tasks for the successful project realization based on the tech specifications. 

Thirdly, we will elaborate a roadmap for your project. We will have a clear picture of the client’s expectations, requirements, ongoing business needs, and the desired functionality of the solution. All this will help us to find the most efficient way to deal with all the issues and create a plan for seamless software implementation. As a result, clients will get a good understanding of the scope of work, the required budget, possible time frames, etc. Based on this information, they can estimate whether they are ready to proceed with project realization right now or if they need time to get prepared for this step.

There is one more thing that is worth mentioning. Our customers also always receive well-structured project documentation which is really vital in the long run. Sometimes businesses do not realize the importance of tech documentation, nevertheless, it will be of great use in the future when there is a need to enrich a solution with new functionality or to migrate it to another platform.

Yury, you’ve mentioned that after the consulting stage, customers  may wonder if they are ready to start launching a project. Does it mean that after working with Softacom’s consulting team, they are not obliged to cooperate with the company’s developers?

Yes, you’ve got it right! We do not have any rules that can push businesses to continue working with us after IT consulting. Let’s be honest the majority of customers really stay with us after these services and we also build the desired software solutions for them. But that’s only their choice, not an obligation. There are also cases when businesses need to take a pause before starting a project. Some other companies may turn to us for consulting services, but prefer to use their own in-house team. And that’s also completely okay.

Can you summarize the key benefits that a company may get thanks to IT consulting?

Let me highlight once again that while some companies believe that by avoiding this step, they can save their money. It’s not so. Of course, the work of all the experts who will be involved in the analysis of your case (business analysts, developers, designers) should be paid. But these expenses can’t be even compared with the financial losses that can be related to an unsuccessful project launch. It means that the first benefit is the possibility of avoiding unreasonable expenses, risks, and financial losses.

Secondly, you will get a clear project vision and a detailed action plan. Thanks to IT consulting, you will know the most efficient ways to address your needs and the most appropriate approaches to your project realization.

Thirdly, you can greatly save your time and avoid unnecessary work. Based on our experience, we can say that quite often after viewing the results of software analysis, our clients change their initial request. For example, there are cases when customers come to us with a request to migrate their app to the latest version of the used technology but we demonstrate that it’s more feasible to opt for another technology for migration in software development. As a result, it is possible to achieve the necessary result faster and without extra expenses.

Last but not least, you will have good tech documentation that is of great use for further work on your project.

Today there are quite a lot of companies that offer similar services. But is there anything that makes Softacom stand out from the crowd, in your opinion?

I believe that our approach to doing business speaks louder than any words. We always sincerely want to help our customers by finding the most optimized and efficient solutions for them. We never offer just the most expensive services. We concentrate on elaborating those approaches that will be suitable for different budgets but at the same time will help to achieve the desired results as soon as possible.

When we offer a plan to a client, we never insist on its implementation. It’s up to customers to decide whether they want to invest further in their projects. We are very flexible. We are always ready for a dialogue and we do our best to find a solution that will be the most reasonable in both short-term and long-term perspectives.