Neagu has previously worked for S&T, as well as for companies such as HP, Oracle and Ness, as sales manager, and replaces Nicoleta Macovei, who filled this position for around a year and recently left the company.
Valentin Georgescu, who was appointed manager of the services department within S&T, specializes in IT management and has worked for the leading telecommunications companies in Romania. Before being recruited by S&T he was working for Rompetrol.
What are the reasons for the changes made by S&T, one of the largest IT&C integrators on the market, with around EUR50 million in turnover last year?
Bogdan Cocora, general manager of S&T, says the company intends to optimize its activity and increase revenue next year, after it remained flat on a stagnating market.
“We made changes in the structure and we also replaced people. The structure changes are meant to streamline the company’s activity and to help it adjust to current market conditions. We moved from a matrix-based structure of independent business units, which generated some degree of internal competition, to a structure with one single sales department. (…) The principle of responding to the client using one voice is very important for us right now,” Cocora told ZF in an interview.
Which are the market sectors where companies continue to allocate investment budgets for IT? Mircea Neagu says there are several opportunities.
“Next year everybody expects bigger IT spending in the public sector. The telecom sector, which has been falling for 15 quarters, will eventually have to do something about that. As far as sources of revenues are concerned, one of them is cloud computing. This is where there will be money to spend, whether operators see it as an opportunity to generate revenues or to make cost cuts,” Neagu told ZF.
He also believes the utilities sector to be one of the areas where budgets are not likely to be cut.
“On the market there are already large projects being prepared or conducted in two areas which are strategic for us. I am talking about CRM and content management, a market seeing a significant rise at present. We are preparing to meet this market demand,” Neagu added.
“There are a few sectors on the market which are very attractive and are part of our strategy: the financial and banking sector is very interesting for us, so is the utilities sector and the energy sector, where we have a portfolio of contracts and a number of solutions ready,” said Bogdan Cocora, in turn.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)