Our main task is to get a deep understanding of the customer’s business processes and find opportunities for their optimization using our experience
«Our main task is to get a deep understanding of the customer’s business processes and find opportunities for their optimization using our experience»
STEP LOGIC has been boosting the efficiency of the business of its customers since 1992 by offering high-quality innovative IT solutions and services. The company employs more than 600 engineers and specialists certified by global manufacturers, and the number of successfully implemented projects has exceeded 10,000. Dmitriy Yakushev, Commercial Director of STEP LOGIC, talks about the directions of the company’s development throughout its history and nowadays, the principles of business operation and achievements.
ICT-Online.ru: Dmitriy, please tell us about priority lines of developing of STEP LOGIC?
Dmitriy Yakushev: STEP LOGIC is one of the oldest integrators on the market, and it is very important to remember this speaking about development. First of all, development is the company's response to new challenges, new niches and goals.
STEP has been working on the markets for decades and has built up exceptional expertise in various areas. Expertise is in fact a deep understanding of the market. This concept has certain dynamics, and since the company does not slow down, expertise, like a living organism, is constantly evolving. Something is discarded because of technology obsolescence or margin decrease; and something new appears on its place, often as an extension of existing competencies. For example, we had strong capabilities in designing large facilities with complex infrastructure such as data centres even 15 years ago. Five years ago, with the advent of 3D technologies and thermodynamic modelling, we learned how to transfer the real risks of our customers into the virtual space. We have gone even further, we are developing ecosystems of digital twins, which gives our customers game-changing and effective tools for facilities operation. But we started with creating paper blueprints two decades ago, and this experience is invaluable to both us and our customers. Another example is development of physical security systems. We started developing this area many years ago from implementing ACSs, which has now become a deep understanding in the area of integrated security systems based on video analytics, biometrics and neural networks.
This approach is relevant for all our key lines of development: information security, multimedia, unified communications, contact centres, network technologies and many others. We constantly find growth areas, develop and expand professional experience.
This means that we will always have a broader look at the problem of our customers, and that we can be entrusted with any complex task.
ICT-Online.ru: Which areas were developed by the company at all stages of its growth, what are their dynamics?
Dmitriy Yakushev: As mentioned above, a company is a living organism. Its growth and development are determined by the market, first of all, by the customers and their needs, technologies, of course, and experience of our Russian and foreign colleagues. Areas developed by the company from the very early stage of its existence, like network integration, information security and others, of course, did not remain unchanged. We always build our work based on business tasks of our customers. The market corrects these tasks, sets new ones. Our goal is to create the most effective tools for solving these problems, using the most relevant and rapidly changing technologies.
ICT-Online.ru: Which of the STEP LOGIC areas of work are the newest ones? What lead to their implementation, and what is the company trying to achieve by deploying these areas?
Dmitriy Yakushev: Of course, not all new directions evolved from those developed by the company for decades. The consumption model has already been significantly transformed and continues to transform, as does the mentality in general. The vaunted digitalization is not the driver of this transformation but, on the contrary, is a technological response to the needs of the economy and society. Not only does it create new areas, such as Big Data and IoT, but also significantly changes the business model itself. That is why we see that both car sharing and IT solutions as a service are becoming more popular. For example, it is rather difficult for a customer to justify the implementation of their own Security Operation Centre or other complex solutions for information security due to their extremely high cost of ownership (as well as high development dynamics and permanent personnel shortages). In this case, the most effective solution is to get these services as IT solution as a service.
ICT-Online.ru: What factors influence the most when choosing priorities for STEP LOGIC development?
Dmitriy Yakushev: As I said before, the main priorities for us are, first of all, the needs of our customer and technologies that help us solve their problems most effectively. Political and economic situation in the country also makes us adjust business processes, and we view some of them, such as the tendency for import substitution, for example, as the opportunity for development. In cooperation with our colleagues at the NCC holding, we are trying to make the most of these opportunities by offering solutions based on proprietary hardware and software. This way, we are developing domestic ERPs, introducing software and hardware systems based on the integration platform and using proprietary RFID equipment in automation projects.
ICT-Online.ru: What is STEP LOGIC today, what are its biggest advantages, in what areas does it surpass its competitors, and what is it proud of?
Dmitriy Yakushev: Today, STEP LOGIC is one of the most experienced, respected and popular integrators in the market: the company's portfolio includes more than 200 vendors, and customers represent various sectors of economic activity. The NCC corporation capabilities both in terms of production capacity and distribution allow us to produce ready-made solutions.
The company employs about 600 employees, more than 400 of them are our technical experts in various fields. And this is, of course, one of our biggest assets. We are also very strict when it comes to the quality of project management; we managed to gather a very strong team.
ICT-Online.ru: What made it possible for the company to achieve all those things and position itself on the market?
Dmitriy Yakushev: The results of a commercial company can be measured in profit, pool of customers and partners, expertise, reputation, HR brand and even competitors. I sincerely believe that all of that is determined by the business approach.
We are trying to be as useful for our customer as possible, we study in detail the nuances of their business, find growth areas together and create the best solutions by utilising synergy. To do this, a significant expansion of points of contact with the customer is required, primarily involving business analysts, architects, BDM and even economists. Our main task is to get a deep understanding of the customer’s business processes, find opportunities for their optimisation, use the experience from solving similar problems and, utilise all the knowledge and tools to come up with the most effective solution.
ICT-Online.ru: Can you, please, give examples of projects that could not be implemented yesterday but can be finished today. What do you think made that possible?
Dmitriy Yakushev: I can’t name a single one; rather, I see a task of a different nature here: often we are so busy with real work that sometimes we don’t find time to talk about ourselves, our successful projects, competencies and expertise. We are trying to correct this mistake, and this brings a positive result.
ICT-Online.ru: Thank you very much for the interview!
Source: ICT-Online.ru