ICL Services financial results for 2020

— Dmitry, how do you assess the overall financial results for 2020 in the segment of the IT market where your company operates?

— The IT outsourcing sector, represented by ICL Services, is one of the few industries that did not experience serious shocks from the crisis. Government support aimed at equalising the economic conditions of doing business for national IT companies before foreign competitors, coupled with the peak interest in remote support services for IT processes, made it possible to survive the crisis of 2020.
Even Winston Churchill stated that any crisis is a new opportunity. Important is not to miss it. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the world’s largest social network Facebook, also shared his principles of success: ’The biggest risk is not to take any risks. Everything changes very quickly in the world. The only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is to take no risk’.

We tried to follow these principles. As a result, the short-term decline that occurred during the nationwide quarantine last spring, eventually lead successfully to the growth of business activity in the autumn-winter period.

— What are the financial results of 2020 in your company?

— The final over-fulfilment of the initial revenue plans in the ICL Group of companies exceeded 8 %by the end of 2020. At the same time, it should be clarified that the initial plans were fixed with growth, without negative trends. One of the flagships of this success was the activity of the company ICL Services, the volumes of which reached the mark of 40 million euros in the export direction only for 2020.

— Your assessment of the financial success: in which parameters were they bigger than planned and why?
  
— Among the main factors that helped surviving the impact of the viral element and show a good final result, I will mention the following:

1) Close-knit team work of management. Part of the ICL Services management team focused on optimising the negative factors from the pandemic, while the second part successfully paved alternative ways to achieve the goals;

2) Diversification of business areas for the provision of services. The company’s service portfolio includes new types of services that are in demand in the foreign markets and among domestic customers, that massively transferred their staff to remote job;

3) Proactive implementation of the internal remote job initiative. Under the conditions of self-isolation throughout the country in less than a month, the company managed adapting to the changes and continued providing the service to the required extent. By the end of April, the return of all production personnel to the service completed at the rate of 90%—remote job, 10%—duty in the offices.
We already had the experience of the stages of the second and third waves of the global COVID-19. In addition, we identified ways to save costs that still help us achieve our planned profit without compromising our core business.