Viktor Dyachkov: "There Is Still No Certainty in the Restrictions that Have Arisen"

— How can you comment on the situation in the domestic IT market?
— At the moment, it’s difficult to make any predictions for the IT market: there are too many unknown variables. There is still no certainty regarding the sanctions: are suppliers leaving for good or just for the time of the escalation of the foreign policy conflict? Do they stop the implementation of new projects or suspend all the current ones? Regardless of the answer, business — although under pressure from national governments — is trying to make the best decisions for itself.

— What do you rely on in your work now that the whole world is upside down? What gives you the strength not to give up and fight? What makes you confident that your company will not only continue to operate but also thrive? What helps you stay resourceful, remain a leader for your team?
— To be confident in your abilities, you need to have some sort of mainstay. For our company, this mainstay is our best international practices, 30 years of experience, victories in numerous ratings, thousands of successfully implemented projects and unique service expertise for Russia. And for me, as a manager, the ICL team is the mainstay. Our specialists are our most valuable and reliable resource and motivator.
To overcome all the challenges together, we’ve created an anti-crisis headquarters, which includes the key team leaders. There, we’ve clearly outlined our strategy for action and the further development of the company. We work closely with customers every day and actively explore new international markets that are open to us. Thanks to our team and its proactivity, willingness to make the right managerial decisions and professionalism, I have the strength «to fight» every day. Only with this kind of synergy is it possible to develop a company, despite any difficulties, and to fulfill all its obligations to customers.

— Victor Vasilyevich, could you tell us about any new lines of business or new competencies that opened up in the company in 2021?
— In recent years, the company has embraced automation. Among the solutions in this area is the Automated Smart Assistant (ASA). ASA’s main task is the automation of routine tasks of technical support specialists. The solution was initially tested on the internal processes of the company and proved highly effective. We provide this service for external customers as well. I’d like to note that in 2021, the ASA solution saved more than 5,200 hours of employee time, coordinated more than 170,000 service requests and incidents, and issued more than 130 incident resolution recommendations daily.

In December 2020, the ACA solution was recognized as the best project of the year in the IT and Digital Technology category and received the Time for Innovation 2020 award.

Among the technologies new to us in the company’s portfolio is BIM technology. This technology is most suitable for comprehensive construction/infrastructure projects when digital transformation accompanies you all the way from the design stage. And by the time of the construction stage, a complete digital model of the buildings is already available. This is one of the branches of transformation associated with existing physical assets.

Noting the multidisciplinary nature of the company, we’ve been developing content monitoring for video streaming services, social networks, and other media since 2020. The growth of this market and our participation in it as a service organization is also an interesting way to apply artificial intelligence. Employee work combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning tools creates efficient and productive business models that can process huge amounts of video and information, while also detecting unwanted stories in the content of streaming services.

We are also interested in the further development of BPM systems, the development of systems with minimal program code.

One of the industries that received additional impetus for development in 2020-21 was logistics. Due to the mass remote working and changes in consumer behavior that led to delivery workloads augmenting exponentially, the demand for products designed for industry representatives in terms of on-site support for equipment and processes increased manifold. Many companies began to deploy postal terminals in order to reduce delivery expenses. Previously, Ozon was the only large company that had them, now everyone’s installing postal terminals: Sber, Yandex, and others. We, as an outsourcing company, are actively involved in these processes in different regions of the country. We were also approached by clients from the catering industry with requests to organize food delivery from restaurants and adapt their IT infrastructure to the one-stop-shop principle, hand-outs and delivery.

— Were there any changes within the company in 2021?
— Yes, of course. Some of the most important and meaningful to us:
• Opening of a new business unit of a group of companies in Kaliningrad.
• Having participated in the Health and Education national projects, where the company took 16% of the market, ICL became the largest Russian manufacturer of computer equipment for these segments.
• The pandemic has brought not only remote work but, as a consequence, high employee mobility. If previously you had to go somewhere to work, now you don’t. Everything can be done from a home office. For our industry, which primarily relies on a highly intelligent resource, employee mobility issues are becoming one of the key challenges on the path to continued success. We’ve come to the conclusion that the hybrid model is more effective for the organization of our work.
• One of the finalists of the Leaders of Russia — 2021 federal contest was Yakov Krotov, service manager of ICL Services. And a year ago another ICL Services expert, Timur Kaidanniy, demonstrated good results in the contest and won the superfinal, receiving mentoring from the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov. Today, Timur leads the company’s innovation block and actively uses his managerial skills to solve problems.
• ICL Group has successfully completed an independent audit of the Information Security Management System and received a new ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certificate. The positive resolution was issued following an audit by the British Standards Institute (BSI).
• ICL Group confirmed the maturity of its competencies in the 1C:ERP solutions and projects by getting partner statuses with 1C: ERP Center and 1C: ERP Center — Production. These statuses mean that the company measures up to the quality management system in accordance with the requirements of ISO 9001 and has always provided a quality package of consulting and implementation services.
• ICL Group once again became the best Russian company to produce equipment (according to the RAEX agency).
• On October 27, 2021, ICL Group and Huawei signed a cooperation agreement, which enables long-term cooperation in the ICT segment, including such promising areas as Digital Power and Data Centers.

— Tell us about the company’s plans for the next six months.
— The prospects of the IT sector, both in the country as a whole and in Tatarstan in particular, will depend on how quickly and efficiently the most painful issues are solved. Among them are staff outflow, the disconnection from SWIFT, the sanctions against Russian banks, the inability to accept payments, the restrictions related to the supply of processors to Russia, the departure of major vendors, and many others.
It’s more likely that in the near future, we should expect the lengthening of supply chains of IT equipment and software solutions, which will become bypassed and indirect. We should also expect a change in the vector of the Russian business’ scaling, building partnerships in the directions of Asia, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union countries that are loyal to Russia.

If we talk about Tatarstan in comparison with other Russian regions, I think there’ll be an uneven start. The current state of IT in Tatarstan is one of the most dynamic and productive in the Russian market. At the end of November 2021, ANO Dialogue compiled a rating of Russian regions which compared their work in the Internet. Tatarstan was second only to the Kaluga Region. In other similar ratings of Russian regions evaluating the level of their IT development, Tatarstan is often in the lead, losing the first place only to the federal cities — Moscow and St. Petersburg.