Raluca Rusu, CEO of R Systems, Europe: Our core focus is to drive value for our customers through technology wherever they are in the digital transformation journey

In the speeding era of digitalization and technology immersion at all levels of economy and society, the digital solutions providers and developers and well as their customers search for the best ways to drive the digital transformation journey further and with the best outcomes.

We talked to Raluca Rusu, the CEO of global technology and analytics services company R Systems, Europe,  about the business’ growth expectations this year and the enablers of digital transformation in their industry. 

Businesses’ success will depend on the ability to use data and advanced analytics, AI, and automation

Currently we’re serving clients through 16 delivery centers across the globe so we are doing business in a very diverse environment with a variety of growth drivers across the industry sectors where we operate: telecom, retail, banking, insurance, healthcare and public sector, working with both big enterprises and SMEs.

It is now common knowledge that COVID has accelerated digitalization and technology changes in most businesses, with 3-5 year plans now compressed into 6-12 months implementations, but established companies have experienced disruption pressures over the last decade. New standards have been set in customer interactions requiring seamless online experiences, while business models and service delivery have been disrupted by technologies like AI, big data, and the IoT.

Going forward, businesses’ success will depend on the ability to use data and advanced analytics, AI, and automation at scale to drive new sources of growth and change the broader economics of the business. And this is where we can help our customers. We Speak Digital; our mission is to accelerate digital leadership for our clients.

The trend of business and process automation through technology started a few years ago and has been accelerated tremendously throughout the last year. It has also been one of our main drivers of growth.

Our core focus is to drive value for our customers through technology wherever they are in the digital transformation journey

Whether we strive to make production deployment faster and more reliable for our clients, or we enable them to shorten their timelines and ultimately improve overall quality, we put digitalization at the service of our clients. Our core focus is to drive value for our customers through technology wherever they are in the digital transformation journey. Looking for automation solutions or the latest technologies to be incorporated in their products, all clients are in search for new business models and new ways to increase operational efficiency.

In the 5G domain clients are looking to increase efficiency in operating their 5G networks and to capitalize applications, data insights and ultimately improve customer experience. In the digital area, companies are trying to digitalize their internal processes and therefore increase efficiency, reduce costs and grow revenue.

Our customers in the digital business have experienced exponential growth which has also fueled our business and accelerated our projects.

We’ve developed and extended our suite of 5G automation solutions for end-to-end testing (R Systems TOP Testing Suite) and network performance (R Systems NESA) based on cloud-native automated platform that empowers telecom operators to successfully tackle the 5G network challenges.

Our digital portfolio supports both cloud migration services to public and private clouds, as well as cloud native solutions incorporating the latest intelligent automation, robotic processing, ML/AI and data analytics technologies. In the current context, our secure digital workspace solution, powered by Microsoft Azure technology, has enabled local organizations and public institutions to smoothly implement remote work for their employees while providing service continuity at the highest  quality and security levels s. Our Intelligent Document Processing solution has also supported the digitalization initiatives in prominent public sector, energy, banking organizations, driving efficiency and improved customer experiences through paperless processes and online interaction.

“We help our clients to capitalize on the opportunities brought about by the digital environment. We are focused on long term partnerships to help them increase their operational efficiency, business agility, customer satisfaction and power of innovation through solutions based on cloud computing, robotic and intelligent automation, ML/AI,” says Cosmin Tudor, Digital Practice Lead of R Systems, Europe.

As a conclusion, we expect growth to be more diverse than ever as businesses need to catch up to the new digital reality.

The shift to online. Work culture. Hiring programs

2020 has been a test for all organizations and I’m proud of our results. We have successfully transitioned to working from home, in all aspects of the business from recruitment to delivery.

We’ve built on top of a culture of trust, professional competence and responsibility for the results of our work. Regardless of where we work from, we strive to remain true to our professionalism, work as a team, respect & support each other, deliver according to our promises and constantly learn and innovate.

We even shifted online in rolling out external programs such as our Programming Academy and we did that across our offices in 4 countries. “In 2021 not only have we continued the online program but have extended the initiative for even more seats and new technologies. We’re opening 60 internship positions across our offices and in addition to our regular QA automation, Java, C and telecom tech tracks, we also initiated a dedicated Cloud Academy. We are very happy that all our Cloud Academy trainees have set on a successful career path as full-time members of the team,” says Bogdan Tudan, COO of R Systems, Europe.

Going forward, the future is hybrid. We support  autonomy and delegation in our culture, and we are working on a model to facilitate flexibility and efficiency for our teams, so they will be able to decide where they need to work from,while always delivering at the best quality standards.

The manager role is to create a resilient organizational culture based on team cohesion

I strongly believe that the manager is the one articulating the mission of the team, , making a coherent plan, selecting the right people for each task, assuring training, mentoring and coaching, constantly taking into consideration the context and the long-term vision, moving flexibly between tactical and strategic considerations..

While now we are more dispersed than ever, our team is also growing at a fast pace in Romania, as well as across our European locations. Almost a third of our team was hired during the last year  through our online recruitment process. The new teammates were integrated directly into the work-from-home schedule and it’s been a successful process due to our increased focus on coaching and mentorship sessions, and closer attention from our managers at all levels. This period has tested and proven our managers’ ability to transcend proximity and direct interaction to ensure the cohesion of the team – this is an important skill to exercise for the future models of work.

It is interesting that right now, when we think about the future of work, that future might be months away.

During these times of change, I think that curiosity is the most important feature of leadership. And probably the most difficult to maintain. So one advice I give to myself as often as I can is to focus on unbiased questions, with the genuine scope of learning and understanding, while creating the space that allows problem solving.

We need to actively listen to our corporate zeitgeist and stay relevant to any challenges and opportunities. Once you listen and act accordingly, positive results always come.

About R Systems | “We Speak Digital”

R Systems is a global technology and analytics services company. We help our clients achieve speed-to-market, overcome digital barriers, and create business value with our specialized service offerings and consultative business approach. We speak the language of business as fluently as we do the language of technology. In other words, we speak digital. Our goal: accelerate our clients’ digital leadership.

Headquartered in EI Dorado Hills, CA, R Systems operates 16 delivery centers around the world. With a global workforce of 3,000+ employees in 25 offices we apply our deep expertise in servicing our 1,000+ customers in the telecom, healthcare, technology, banking, manufacturing, and semiconductor industries.

For more data on the company, visit: the www.rsystems.com