After a difficult 2022, we enter the next year with hope. What awaits us in the next year of digitalisation? What should Polish companies prepare for? And why are people the most important in digital transformation? This is discussed in an interview with Anna Tarach-Pawlicka, CEO of PrivMX Poland.
BrandsIT: The rather difficult year of 2022 is behind us, with many challenges ahead for business due to inflation, war, rising costs and an uncertain economy. But the last page of the calendar does not end the problems that companies will have to deal with in 2023. Are Polish companies ready for another challenging year?
Anna Tarach-Pawlicka, PrivMX: Indeed, it promises to be another challenging year. Companies will continue to look for savings, but on the other hand – they will also face decisions regarding further investments. Every company is well aware that in order to grow and increase market competitiveness, it is necessary to implement new solutions. It is best to focus now on automating the processes that follow these investments – such actions in the long-term plan bring savings and process improvements.
Covid-19 events to date have required rapid adaptation to changing conditions. Companies therefore have experience in flexibly and quickly implementing change in their organisations – most of them were forced to rapidly accelerate digitisation. It is worth emphasising that digitalisation itself is just the use of technology to increase efficiency and better organise processes. Real digital transformation, on the other hand, involves not only the introduction of new technologies, but above all involves human resources. It is technologies together with people that create a real digital transformation – one that takes a company to a new business level.
According to technology practice leaders from McKinsey, due to geopolitical and economic uncertainty, in terms of technological evolution we will enter a phase of caution in 2023. Business leaders will be forced to look for ways to do more with less, find value where their real competencies and innovations overlap, and invest in those technologies that reach a tipping point.
Some companies will perhaps remodel the scope of their business – like Philips, which has not only created a new idea of HOW the company works, but also WHAT it does to create new value in the digital age.
“It is worth emphasising that digitalisation itself is only about using technology to increase efficiency and better organise processes. Real digital transformation, on the other hand, involves not only the introduction of new technologies, but above all involves human resources.”
Anna Tarach-Pawlicka
BrandsIT: The challenges companies face require support, including IT solutions. Will Polish companies be willing to invest in technology this year?
A.T.P.: According to the European Investment Bank’s 2022 Investment Survey for Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, innovation is a priority for the next three years. 27% of companies in the region are planning to invest precisely in innovation – this is more than in the entire EU (24%) or the USA (21%). Moreover, 22% of Polish companies have allocated the largest share of their investments to technological innovation.
Companies understand that investment in IT solutions is necessary – not only for innovation, but also to optimise and reduce costs, for example by automating processes. This is why subscription models for business applications are so popular: they are a very convenient, financially unencumbered solution that allows real day-to-day savings.
A well-planned investment in the right technology means saving the time employees spend searching for documents, better and more efficient communication, fewer errors and mistakes, better organisation of work. In a word, maximising efficiency with the same human resources.
Equally important is maximising the value from one’s data, i.e. capturing, organising and analysing the information held in such a way that it allows for continuous development. In this context, all AI solutions will become extremely helpful.
BrandsIT: So what will companies bet on this year? What will they be investing in?
A.T.P.: I think 3 areas will be key:
– cloud – migrating data to cloud solutions allows for reduced costs and better scalability of any business, it also changes the approach to security;
– data and analytics (D&A) is increasingly seen as a key enabler to deal with current business challenges, as well as a way to take advantage of future opportunities. D&A leaders need to support their organisation with trusted, high-quality data to enable decision-making at every level, from management to operations;
– Data analytics with AI support.
BrandsIT: What are Polish companies most afraid of when it comes to digitalisation?
A.T.P.: Failure. An investment that fails and does not deliver tangible benefits. That is why it is so important to take a broader view of digital transformation and ensure that all employees in the company are aware of what change is and the risks it entails.
BrandsIT: What is the recipe for this?
A.T.P.: Looking at the organisation from the top. Planning how we want to be perceived in the market and what goal the company wants to achieve. Involving employees in creating the strategy. Communicating transparently and communicating the next steps of change, dispelling doubts and guesswork so that employees become the driving force for change and remain open-minded. It is people who are most important in digital transformation.
BrandsIT: PrivMX develops software to support remote working. What inconveniences associated with remote working does your product help to solve?
A.T.P.: When working remotely, in distributed teams, there is often a problem precisely with transparent communication, with the transparency and efficiency of collaboration, with employee involvement and with the appropriate security of shared and stored data.
PrivMX Fusion brilliantly supports all these areas. It includes tools for consistent and efficient collaboration, tightly integrated in a single application. It introduces security for internal communication, video conferencing, data exchange and storage through end-to-end encryption. Provides privacy and intellectual property protection without burdening users with complex procedures. It also reduces the risks associated with the leakage of confidential commercial, legal or business strategy information.
In the context of digital transformation, PrivMX Fusion supports teams in 2 of their most difficult challenges:
– It improves communication when implementing new technology solutions and introducing employees to new processes. In addition to supporting transparent communication, it helps to keep the whole team properly engaged.
– Gives real savings in the time employees typically spend searching for documents and fixing errors resulting from poor communication. The fact that key files, conversations, tasks, deadlines and all the most important information can be found in one place is a real differentiator that our clients also take note of.
BrandsIT: Do you think Polish companies are aware of the importance of privacy and cyber security?
A.T.P.: This awareness is growing all the time. Once again, I will go back to the “covid” time when, due to working from home, there was sometimes a lack of vigilance on the part of employees and the number of cyber attacks increased significantly. Such incidents have raised people’s awareness about data security. Recent social and political events have also raised thoughts about who is in possession of our data and how they can process it.
People are always the weakest link – their haste, their lack of vigilance, their simple mistakes. That is why business owners should equip their employees with the right software to offset the risk of human error, but also to ensure the right balance and focus on tasks, to take the burden of administrative work off the substantive staff, such as engineers or specialists in key areas.
BrandsIT: You have been on the market for quite a short time, and the period of PrivMX’s existence coincides with the most difficult period in Polish business. How do you develop business in such conditions?
A.T.P.: PrivMX Fusion is not the only product provided by our company Simplito – the software appeared on the market in 2020, while the roots of the product and earlier realisations of the encrypted communication concept go back a few years earlier. The team consists of people who have been co-founding the company since 2008 – people with a lot of knowledge, exceptional coding skills and experience in encryption technology.
“In 2022, we have established our position and set out new paths that we will follow in the near future.”
Anna Tarach-Pawlicka
BrandsIT: How did PrivMX end the year? What was achieved?
A.T.P.: This has been an exceptional year for us. We made an important decision to realise our potential and, on the basis of the technology used to design PrivMX Fusion, build a comprehensive platform for developers – a universal ecosystem that will allow us to create applications and communication solutions for any industry, precisely using end-to-end encryption.
This year, we acquired many new users from all over the world and our software won the Polish Innovation Award 2022. It can be said that we have established our position and set out new paths that we will follow in the near future.
BrandsIT: What are your development plans?
A.T.P.: We also looked at our organisation from the top and tried to look broadly at our area of operation. We have analysed our advantages, our past experience, the knowledge and expertise of the entire team and the value we want to deliver to our potential customers.
We are currently working on a platform that will allow us to use end-to-end encryption technology across multiple areas, products and processes. Privacy has always been an important value for us, so we are using our competence, know-how and experience to create the PrivMX ecosystem. On the basis of the technology we provide, it will be possible to create dedicated solutions using end-to-end encryption in a wide range of industries – from financial, legal, healthcare and all sectors that care about data protection.
Anna Tarach-Pawlicka
She has been involved in the IT industry for 14 years. As a consultant, she analysed the business needs of clients and selected the right applications to manage and automate their business processes. Currently, as CEO of PrivMX Polska Sp z o.o., she is responsible for sales, marketing and development of PrivMX Fusion software. As Product Manager at Simplito Sp. z o.o., she is co-responsible for the preparation and introduction of new products of the PrivMX ecosystem.
Graduate of the Faculty of Economics and Management at Nicolaus Copernicus University, postgraduate studies in Financial Management and Marketing (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń) and the Lean Leader Academy (WSB in Toruń). A proponent of agility, self-management and continuous improvement.
