PART 2: PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
This time, let’s talk about Codete’s goals for 2023. Which countries do they plan to visit? And what will the international IT market look like, according to Artur, Karol, and Greg? Check it out by reading the 2nd part of the “Growth at Codete” interview.
Dominika: Can you reveal a few of your plans for 2023?
Artur: Among the company’s goals, we have been implementing OKRs [Objectives and Key Results – author’s note] as well as maintaining or increasing our revenue and the pace of development.
Grzegorz (Greg): We have a purpose of becoming a regional leader in providing certain services all the time. We keep adding other Salesforce and cloud areas to the list, we keep developing our competencies, and the profile of our client is constantly evolving, so we’re trying our best to fit in.
Internally, we’re planning to continue expanding the company’s structure and carry on with the recruitment process in south Europe – in Bulgaria and Romania.
It’s clearly visible that finding a client is becoming more and more challenging, so in 2023, there will be a lot of emphasis put on this aspect, too.
Karol: Our conferences (business, sales, EB, and recruitment as well) are very ambitious, so the calendars for the next 12 months are bursting at the seams. Visiting our current clients in German-speaking countries, Scandinavia, Israel, and soon, the United Kingdom.
Karol and Artur: There’s DLD in Tel Aviv ahead of us [DLD TLV 2023 conference – author's note], we’ve visited Zurich and plenty of other places recently. Now it’s time for the conferences to re-open in a stationary form after the pandemic, so there will be no shortage of opportunities to hear about us. [laughter]
Karol: In 2019, it was me who presented at the conferences, but throughout these few years, it changed, and now we have many people who are perfect for the role at Codete. That’s why we want to broaden the subject pool and increase the number of speakers from the company. We also plan to talk not only about AI [artificial intelligence – author’s note] but other interesting topics, too.
Dominika: Do you have any predictions for the shape of the IT market in 2023? Maybe you suspect in which direction it will develop in the next 12 months?
Grzegorz (Greg): Right now, we’re talking a lot about the crisis, recession, and changes. We have been through rough times before, so we know how to handle this one. The market analysis shows that some sectors stand out during the crisis, like online sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to the diversification of our clients in terms of the industry, geographical location, and size, we can quickly react to changes taking place in the market and adjust our strategy accordingly to the current situation.
We’re looking at 2023 with a great dose of optimism because we can see the potential in a couple of industries. We’re planning to shift considerable strength to marketing and sales activities. In the first quarter of the year, we’d like to build a client base that will let us work smoother in the future.
Getting new senior-level employees is another step so that we can add to our pool of talent.
The synergy with Exadel and reaching out to the clients that were difficult for us to reach before, as well as gaining new contacts – are our goals for this year too. We’re still waiting for the official performance results from 2022, but we already know that they’re better than it was assumed. That helps us believe that in 2023 we’ll beat the record as well. [laughter] In short, we’re focused on further development.
Karol: To me, it's more like trying to read tea leaves. [laughter] I’m wondering if this crisis that is on everyone’s lips now won’t “blow out” soon and spread to other sectors. But in this case, it’s difficult to predict anything.
Artur: In my opinion, in the next few months, the IT market will change a bit regarding technological aspects. The emphasis will be on different areas than now – for example, cloud solutions. If talking about the employee market, I think that we’ll see stabilization there. The amount of work will decrease compared to the time right after the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. That’s why in 2023, it will be crucial to provide Codeters with as many interesting projects and challenges as possible and to add these new achievements to their portfolio.
Dominika: How about trends in your fields of activity? Can you already say something about what will be hot and crucial for the IT companies' development in the upcoming year?
Grzegorz (Greg): HealthTech and BioTech are clear trends for 2023, and from my point of view, CyberTech will also be trending, precisely speaking – the safety issues. Their significance was shown by both the war in Ukraine and the constantly growing amount of data, together with AI development. Sometimes we can see that artificial intelligence “invades” some areas where it begins to shock us. At the same time, we are more and more courageous to use its capabilities, and it will probably not change, at least soon.
Karol: If talking about my predictions for 2023, data science is at the forefront of development. Many companies have changed their approach to data and have started automating their processes after the pandemic. It has all positively influenced the meaning of cyber security.
Artur: In this less stable time, many decision makers will look for a chance to reduce costs and gain alternative sources of income. In my opinion, for many companies, these changes will mean digitalization. I also think that all the stuff related to cloud solutions and their financial or performance optimization will be critical in these next 12 months, too. It’s worth monitoring all the industries that keep growing now, like energy or finance, and stepping aside from those that will most probably slow down in the next few months, like e-commerce.
Another case is sustainability, which will definitely still be promoted by many companies in 2023. It results from a couple of factors: energetic transformation – a change in the way countries approach the topic of electricity usage, as well as the increase in the value of the coefficients on the impact of the energy footprint on company valuations. This is evident in the US stock exchange, where social responsibility plays a key role.
Karol: Until now, we’ve been living in the front-end world where JS [JS = JavaScript – author’s note] ruled, and today there’s time for the transformation of basic web applications into much more complex customer-oriented apps. I reckon that the Java Script trend will last for some time, it will keep growing steadily, and at the same time, areas related to data security, infrastructure, management, and optimization will be strengthened.
Dominika: Which technologies and areas have, according to you, the greatest chance for development in 2023?
Karol: Working in the HealthTech industry, I can see that the solutions there are as if from another era, years back, so they definitely need to be upgraded. Almost everything is to be changed, starting from the cloud, through the way of data storage, to transformation from desktop to web versions of the tools in use. I think that there will also be growth in the MLOps area [machine learning operations – author’s note], so the combination of infrastructure with machine learning, artificial intelligence.
Read the first part of the interview with Codete's management board here:
