The world is full of success stories about people who have managed to become leaders in their industries. We are fascinated by their ambition and natural ability to rise from almost nothing. Their stories will always be an inspiration to move forward no matter what the obstacles are.
Each year, renowned professionals have stepped on the main stage of Techsylvania to spark ideas and passions among our tech community, by using their most fierce weapons: their knowledge and expertise.
In 2021, Techsylvania brings it all to the next level, focusing on exploring today — how to spot and create opportunities in a not-so-favorable environment, in order to innovate tomorrow. Techsylvania brings you closer to the lessons learned by the grand visionaries of the tech industry.
With longstanding experience in global wholesale, METRO.digital develops customized IT services and products worldwide for all METRO countries. Located in Germany and Romania, the METRO.digital employees are working continuously on one goal: digitalizing the wholesale industry. Let’s see how the wholesaling industry made it through the last year and how big the technology and investments plans are for the future, through the lens of Adrian Postelnicu — METRO.digital Managing Director.
1) What technologies and innovations do you envision becoming a part of our lives in the near future? How would you describe your company’s approach to innovation and what are some of the technology solutions you’ve found most suitable for your industry?
Our lives changed dramatically in the past 18 months and very likely will be changing in the long run. We see more and more people adapting to new ways of interaction — remote, virtual — however with the natural need of face-to-face contact. Therefore, I would estimate that everything around the technologies that enable us, as human beings, to collaborate & to keep connected will see a continuous improvement and most likely innovation. The frontrunners in this space have a complex problem to solve: how to enable multi-sensorial, meaningful, human interaction in a virtual world? I am really curious to see what they come up with for both personal and business space. We scaled many of these technologies during the pandemic, and we are continuously looking for new coming innovations.
In METRO.digital, the goal is to embed innovation in our everyday work. We give the space to our teams to show us what is possible with technology today. They have the autonomy to test, fail fast, and experiment with new, innovative technologies, and, finally, if the respective technology is indeed feasible for solving our business problem or leveraging the new business opportunity, we’ll use it. Besides this, we are engaging in internal innovation programs; we’ve run several of them where teams worked and pitched their ideas, and they could see them go live in the METRO ecosystem. At the same time, we are very attentive to the outside world, the start-up ecosystem, and we are eager to leverage potential opportunities.
As for our industry — omnichannel wholesale — we must leverage at maximum the mobile technologies — a lot of what we do happens on the field, next to our customers, in the stores and warehouses, and even on the move if we think about our delivery business model.
A second focus point is automation — for business processes efficiency & effectiveness (e.g. RPA); we have a lot of repetitive processes that require qualitative inputs to produce relevant output, and this is definitely something that technology could do better, thus giving our people to focus on the creative part of their job and the customers.
And, definitely, data technologies; we are aiming at the democratization of data, augmented analytics leveraging AI/ML technologies that become more and more accessible also to non-experts; every business user requires data, but why shouldn’t they be enabled to have fast, trusted and usable insights in real-time, when & where they need it.
All of this we enable by leveraging the Tech Product Management mindset, methods & ways of working. We have empowered cross-functional product teams that explore the business problems from different perspectives: business value & viability, optimal user experience, and technical feasibility. They work together with the customers & users to build solutions guided by clear objectives & key results, measuring the outcome and learning with each iteration.
2) As you are a software company, how do you perceive the Romanian tech hub ecosystem in recent years, through the lens of your company?
I see growth, from at least two perspectives: 1) more and more companies recognize the value-added that Romanian talent has to offer and decide to expand their operations in Romania, and, even more important, they take the bold step of giving the accountability to their teams in Romania; it is not so much anymore an extended workbench model or outsourcing hub, only; and 2) entrepreneurship & start-ups in tech are flourishing — more people take the risk of starting the tough journey of their own business armed with an idea and the motivation to succeed.
However, I am also seeing that the fight for people is reaching new levels. And the inflow of specialists is not keeping up with the market needs. In this context, companies enter the salaries fighting game, which risks becoming unsustainable in the long run. We are competing against other near-shore or off-shore markets, which also have very talented people, they can ensure a proper inflow of specialists and at more competitive costs. We must keep this in mind.
Technology-wise we can observe a considerable appetite for everything new. It is becoming common to leverage AI/ML nowadays or introduce automation of business processes through RPA and several attempts to use blockchain to solve current business problems. For example, we, in METRO.digital use or explore all of those.
3) METRO.digital is a pioneer in launching “work from home forever” innovative concept, SMARTWORKING. We want to hear more about the technologies you’re using and how they changed in recent years.
Indeed, we actually implemented the work from home years before the pandemic hit. We identified it as a practical and feasible solution to some very well-grounded problems, like commuting time for our people. And we had to do it smartly, of course. We learned a lot from those times, and when the pandemic hit, we were really well prepared, and we had no fear of scaling it up to 100%. We knew what to do and simply did it!
The basic principle behind this is that we give flexibility and freedom of choice. And our values provide guidance. Our teams are empowered to decide based on their given context. One size does not fit all; therefore, we do not impose limitations. They take ownership in a very pragmatic way. They respect all the individual specific needs, the team needs, and customer needs; they do all of this with a high level of passion & engagement.
Tech-wise it is simple — our people are tech natives. They leverage cloud technologies that enable asynchronous work, for example; ideas do not come when we decide to have a workshop from 9 to 5 on a Tuesday; it can come at any time. Therefore, they interact by using technology, each at their own pace and focusing on the specific place where they can contribute the most. Communication tools are essential. We moved away from emails, and we use them rather exceptionally these days. Ideation tools have become the new norm — they allow brainstorming and brain-writing fast and transparent to the complete team; hence no contribution is missed or forgotten. Information sharing tools & technologies complement all of this. We encourage the communities of practice to share their experiences interactively based on the social media principles. This makes it fun and boosts the desire to contribute. We are all used to “Like” -ing or “Comment” -ing something, sharing thoughts or ideas via social media, whereas we all know that getting in front of people and doing the same is a different story, not as easy.
Our people see the benefits of working from home, our customers and us, as a company, see them also. At the same time, we offer the needed office infrastructure to come together in face-to-face interactions whenever it makes sense. We respect the cognitive diversity of our people and show them flexibility and freedom of choice smartly and inclusively.