With funding from the European Union under its EU4Business initiative, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has helped a leading Ukrainian IT company to diversify its product line, opening doors to new international markets. As a result of this support, Integrity Vision LLC increased its turnover, number of employees and developed software platforms for Financial Technologies (FINTECH) and the Internet of Things (IOT).
The story of Integrity Vision traces back to early 2010 when two seasoned IT professionals with 15 years of experience, Inna Soloviova and Oleg Polovynko, decided to join forces and start an enterprise offering various IT system integration solutions.
Integrity Vision started its operations as a reseller of brand name computers with the ultimate goal of growing into a software application and consulting business. Soon, it became the leading IT enterprise in Ukraine, providing a variety of software solutions such as IT service and asset management, web portal solutions, mobile applications and many others.
“We established Integrity Vision in 2010 as a fast growing start-up. There was no time for strategy development, planning, budgeting marketing campaign and things like that. In 2014 we experienced a difficult period in our country and in business as well and faced the task to hold our market position and at least to survive,” said Oleg Polovink, CEO Integrity Vision LLC.
Sustainable business growth
As the owners explain, one of the key problems was the fact that the core technology was dependent on international vendors’ platforms, and this dependency created obstacles for sustainable business growth.
Which is where EU4Business and the EBRD stepped in: as part of the Advice for Small Businesses (ASB) programme, Integrity Vision benefitted from international advisory assistance that aimed to re-organise the enterprise, improve corporate governance, create a team to develop new software platforms for FINTECH and IOT applications and explore international opportunities.
Integrity Vision went through a complex full-cycle support, including IT market trend outlook, gap analysis of core competences, corporate organisation restructure, core business process improvement, onsite training for promoting marketing and sales and platform technology as well as international partnerships.
More specifically, within the project:
- Senior executives visited COMPUTEX 2016, the leading global ICT show to foster international partnerships and familiarise themselves with the best practices
- Transaction Management System (TMS) was introduced for developing Omni channel software platform
- Training in sales and marketing was conducted to promote international outreach
- Life cycle of operation process improvement from Sales-Purchase-Logistics-Warehouse - Cash flow management was developed
“Thanks to the project held under the EBRD support and EU financing, while most of the young businesses stopped their existence, we did not merely survive, but also increased our performance, turnover and market share. In addition, now we have developed a strategy, financial planning and structured processes in our company,” said Oleg Polovink, CEO Integrity Vision LLC.
As a result of the support from EU4Business and the EBRD, Integrity Vision boosted its net profit by 146%, and employment by 152%, getting the company ready to seize new international market opportunities.
EBRD Advice for Small Businesses
The EBRD Advice for Small Businesses programme, funded in the Eastern Partnership countries by the EU under its EU4Business initiative, aims to promote good management in the SME sector by providing assistance to individual enterprises, helping them to grow their businesses. It supports SMEs to make structural changes and develop new business skills, helping them to thrive and compete in market economies. The programme also enables SMEs to access local consulting services on a cost-sharing basis by providing grants of up to €10,000.