We are closing an intense but very good year for us with a 35% turnover increase YoY. This development is based mainly on new projects with existing clients, but we have also started new partnerships within new industries. If in 2016-2017 we were focused on starting and developing our operations outside Bucharest last year was dedicated to improving efficiency, so basically harvesting on our expanding strategy.
Also, last year we’ve started important projects for talents attraction and training new talents as well as initiatives for expanding our sales services in the online environment.
We are always pursuing growth and so far, we were successful. With this in mind of course, 2019 is not an exception. However, although important, we don’t seek growth at any cost, profitability remains our most important objective. I must admit that I am bit more concerned this year because we obviously see a more difficult internal environment. We are running people businesses, with many jobs for which we are responsible, we need to have predictability, we need to be able to have a medium-long term strategy.
We are used to run many forecasts, but these days seems that we are not keeping the pace, we have our limitations 😊
Personally, I see in 2019 more challenges for the outsourcing industry internally rather than the global environment. We need to be constantly aware of the new trends and technologies and strive to implement them locally so we can maintain our attractiveness and realize our true potential. I have no doubt that we are able to accomplish this, but the challenge will be to realize all these, while being under new legislations pressure, elections year, many disputes and so on. That’s why I think it will not be an easy year.
At the company level of course, there are many differences between a global and a local, independent, relatively small company like us. Challenges defer but for sure the common ground will remain the difficulty of attracting and retaining talent.
To end in a somehow funny note, for our business community, I would recommend patience, enough willpower and capacity to adapt, and flexibility in the budget files, even for this year. For the independent, smaller players, leave the budget, big eyes on the cash-flow 😊
Daniel Mereuță
Managing Director
Optima Solutions Services