SoftServe

Editor's Notes

• #2: Software world changes rapidly, your business changes and we do either. In daily rush and busy work it is important sometimes to get back on the ground and look retrospectively back on where we are and what we do. By this presentation I would like to cover key points where SoftServe is a strong player and might be useful for you. I will demonstrate our latest achievements, probably will refresh in your mind some facts about us and hopefully will even tell you something new.Basically, we are here to empower your business through software development.
• #3: Software development is simple and complex at the same time. Different organizations might understand it differently. I want to bring us on the same page and show how we understand and perform it every single day.
• #4: SoftServe did not reinvent bicycle – we do the same well proven development activities. But it all maters HOW we perform them. Let’s take closer look at each stage.And it all begins with analysis.
• #5: We have business analysis office which selects and develops business analysts – depending on the development lifecycle stage where your company and project are at the moment and its complexity they will perform one, few or full cycle of business analysis functions.Recently, we have successfully finished project at which, thanks to business analysts, we have totally redesigned business model of the company moving their operations and sales to mobile devices. By this, they have been saved from bankruptcy, promoted from 14th place in the rating of their industry to the 3rd, instead of targeted 5th, and raised more money from their investors. Most of credits go to business analyst.Business Analysts are allocated to the team and can be located both offsite and onsite, what we do actually have at some projects, usually from healthcare or enterprise directions, where their deepest investigation and full presence are highly required.-------------------------------------------------------After initial stage of analysis is accomplished we move to the designing our solution. And it is my favorite 
• #6: It is my favorite because most talented and bright technical guys ever are here to help you with design – new technologies and latest trends in the industry are their air and food. Every day they face technical issues and quizes with smile on their face and there is nothing impossible for them.We have special distributed direction for system architecture, user interface and experience, SaaS and Cloud, Mobility, Optimization and Security.And it is all not just about technical side of the question but also about business models, end users, competitors and business goals.Experts of these directions are knowledge holders of the company and its technical drivers – most of time they spend travelling between industry conferences and our customers adopting acquired knowledge.And what is essentially good – they are also present as supervisors and advisors at later stages of software development, next of which is coding.
• #7: Under ‘coding’ I mean not only the process of writing lines of code but more complicated process of bringing ideas and concepts into life through everyday hard work of competent project managers, who successfully adopt best practices of PMI and ScrumAlliance, experienced technical Competence Managers who monitor success of each and every project, evaluate and develop skills of every engineer proving them by number of certificates and later integration results into working systems.And, of course, core and heart of our company – 1,500 talented, bright and passionate of work they do software engineers, 300 of which are Java developers.----------------------------------------------------After our solution has been designed and coded we need to test it!
• #8: For this purpose SoftServe acquires strong expertise both in manual and automated testing, knowledge of engineers is proven by international certification organization.But instead of certificates, best evidence of high level of our QA expertise is a fact that we do quality assurance at healthcare and finance enterprise-level projects where cost of error is extremely high and even unacceptable – health and money.To develop and enlarge QA expertise within the company we have Quality Management Office which serves as a central knowledge and competency point to gather and accumulate experience, case studies and lessons learnt from hundreds of projects from all over the company and transform them into best practices and reusable tools, processes, guidelines and document templates which later are distributed between engineers via special trainings, knowledge evaluations, gap analysis, project audits, tech talks and other management initiatives.Today we employ over 300 QA engineers. About two years ago we have opened our office in Manila, Philippines focused specaily on QA competency.-------------------------------------------And every project sooner or later comes to the support phase.
• #9: At this stage we provide services of enhancement of current system, it’s maintenance, development operations (I mean Level 2 and 3 support) and writing of technical documentation.To be honest, Maintenance and Enhancement – is probably 80% of all work, according to Paretto, and that actually what we do for you too.Technical writing fits best for healthcare and enterprise-level projects where proper documentation is vital but also is a good fit for project of any complexity to keep things in order for later maintenance and support. And we provide Level 2 and 3 support services for high-load systems with high requirements and standards for 24/7 uptime – i.e. for SaaS platforms, networking and security software, again healthcare and enterprise solutions. ---------------------------------------------Of course, described stages of software development do not go so linear, they rather overlap one another, repeat and sometimes even duplicate. Also, part of them might be accomplished at your side or by other vendor. We understand this and we know how to deal with it.---------------------------------------------But now let’s take a look at more human side of SoftServe – quick insight into our people strategy.
• #10: This chart demonstrates trend for SoftServe growth over the years of our history. Please mention that this trend shows that we double our headcount every three years.And according to the data for current day of the second year of the cycle, I can confirm that this trend continuous. Let’s take a look how we achieve this result.
• #11: We have two main functions aimed on staffing and retention at SoftServe – Staffing and Talent Management.We employ 50 new associates every and each month, additional 30 well educated freshers of IT academy are being released every month, best of which are hired too. Our resourcing and recruiting managers work hard to meet the needs of each project and staff right people on time. Average recruitment speed within the company is … and it is achieved the following way.Once we receive request for staffing from our customer, we seek for appropriate specialist inside the company first – we keep approximately 10% of employees in the special buffer zone between assignments when one project ended and waiting for next one named ‘employee reserve’ to be ready to respond to your request immediately. If it is not possible than we look for good candidates outside the organization.Key positions like project managers, consultants of different directions, business analysts, middle and top management are preferably fulfilled by internal resources – it is important to keep company culture at this level and be confident in the background and expertise of the candidate. Also all key people pass psychometric assessments by special vendor.By well designed talent management program, clear career maps with transparent requirements and processes for promotion, high potential development program, performance management, training pools and number of other HR initiatives we keep yearly attrition rate at 10% level and get awards for best employer in Ukraine for two years in a raw already. Thus, 80 of our employees are being promoted every month, which is one promotion per employee every 2,5 years – of course, juniors get promoted more often (every 1-1,5 years) and seniors and higher – less.HR functions are driven by special role in the company – Career Advisor, who serves as advisor in HR questions for Project Managers and as a partner for engineers.Our philosophy is to give opportunities for successful career advancement inside the company for our employees, and you saw at previous slides we do have interesting options for everyone, that’s why people love and trust SoftServe 
• #12: There is much more interesting facts about SoftServe I would like to tell you but it might be better if you review my presentation later again, surf our on-line resources and get back to me with any questions that might raise.Especially, I recommend to take a look at our SaaS and Cloud offering video and subscribe for ExecutiveBrief – magazine for IT managers with really good tips. Try it.
• #13: And remember – wherever you are now and heading next – we have tools how to empower your business through software development.It is important to understand that we might be present at every stage from the very beginning or be helpful at just few of them.Hope that you have heard something new and have better understanding of what is SoftServe today.I am ready to answer your questions now.