Arobs had more than 350 employees and independent contractors in its offices in Cluj, Bucharest, Iasi, Galati, Chisinau, Budapest and Helsinki at the end of last year, about 70% of whom working in Cluj-Napoca.
The number of Arobs employees could go up to more than 450 by yearend, according to its growth estimates.
“The main problem as we see it, is the low number of IT graduates, which prevents companies from developing as much as demand would warrant it,” Voicu Oprean, chief executive officer and owner of Arobs Transilvania Software, told ZF Transilvania.
“Forced to recruit experienced specialists fast, to be able to complete new or previously awarded projects, IT companies sometimes have to offer 20% to 30% higher pay than the performance level or unjustifiably high ranking positions just to be able to attract new people.”
Such practices will drive costs up and productivity down in the long run, Oprean said.
Arobs Transilvania Software posted 45 million lei (more than EUR10 million) revenue last year and its number of employees stood at 307 on average, according to the Finance Ministry website. The revenue of the entire Arobs group amounted to about EUR12 million, an increase of 15% year-on-year, Arobs Transilvania Software officials said.
“The main growth drivers were the constant demand for software solutions from the international market, as well as the development of our own products, especially of the Smailo, TrackGPS and Optimall brands. We also had automation products for the public transportation corporations and software solutions for utility companies. We hope to keep the same upward trend this year,” Oprean said.
The fleet monitoring and management solution TrackGPS now numbers more than 2,000 customers in Romania, Hungary and the Republic of Moldova, the officials of the company say, having seen a rise of more than 20% in users in 2013. The latest feature of this solution is the Driving Behavior and the customers that implemented the TrackGPS solution in 2013 include Alpin 57 Lux, Albalact, Alexandrion Grup, Technocer and PostMasters.
As for the Software Services unit, 95% of its customers are foreign customers mostly from Europe and North America.
“Early this year we won a new project from the hospitality industry, which entails redoing the entire existing electronic booking solution and adding new features to it, so as to meet the demands of a luxury hotel chain. We are also developing projects for the automotive industry (…),” Voicu Oprean said.
The company plans to relocate part of its software development team to a new place in Cluj-Napoca this month and start construction on another office building of its own in 2015, a project it estimates to cost some EUR2 million.
Arobs officials said they would continue buying and integrating small fleet monitoring companies into the group this year, without providing further details.
“I invest in startups and am actively and constantly involved in young entrepreneur mentoring programs,” Voicu Oprean said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)