We talk to Wojciech Paczkowski, Software Development Deputy Director at All for One Poland, about what Enterprise Software House is and what value it can bring to Polish companies.
You have been working for years in the company that in Poland is mainly associated with SAP systems. How did the idea of Enterprise Software House originate in All for One Poland?
Custom software development is nothing new for us, we have been doing it for many years. At the beginning, it was primarily creating SAP standard extensions for customers. For more than a decade, we have been developing our own cloud products, such as BeeOffice, an employee self-service portal, or the ECM platform for process digitization.
As a result, we have built teams of developers specializing in technologies such as Node.js, React, Java or .NET. We currently have more than 100 developers and testers on board. Let’s add DevOps, architects and dozens of consultants working in ABAP. That is quite a big software house… That’s why this year we decided to consolidate these competencies under the name Enterprise Software House.
But there are already a lot of software houses in Poland. Why do we need another one?
We believe we can offer a unique value to our customers. This value is a combination of the competencies of a typical software house that develops tailor-made software, with the ability to operate in the environment of large enterprises.
In the enterprise world, building a great application for a company is not enough. When a client is an international corporation with a complex IT environment, a lot of additional contexts must be taken into account. Security, a complex system of authorizations, compliance issues, integration with other pieces of the corporate IT puzzle, and finally organizational challenges… In the end, the delivered software must also be easy to maintain, not just to the end of the hypercare phase.
I will add one more trivial thing. Most large companies in the world use SAP systems – as an ERP, HR platform and more. So when we talk about the implementation or development of an important company application, sooner or later the topic of its integration with SAP systems comes up.
We know all this as a company that has learned the ropes of implementing SAP systems and creating cloud products.
We believe that we can offer our clients a unique value – combining the competencies of a typical software house with the ability to operate in the environment of large enterprises
From what you say, Enterprise Software House is an offer primarily for international corporations. What about companies in Poland?
What matters is not the location of the company, but the scale of the needs regarding systems. It’s natural, of course, for a global corporation to have a lot of software built for its needs. But we also have large-scale companies in Poland, where backoffice and frontoffice applications are literally the foundation of development. Companies such as Allegro, Żabka or mBank are the most obvious examples.
It also happens that Polish branches play first fiddle in software development for corporate needs. And not only as dedicated IT Shared Service Centers, but also informally, so to speak, participating in IT development projects for global needs.
So what kind of clients do you already work for?
Firstly, international corporations – manufacturing, trading and service companies. Secondly – Polish branches of these corporations as well as companies with Polish capital. There is also a third group of customers, which is also a part of the enterprise world – business software manufacturers, whom we help develop their products.
Does Enterprise Software House deliver solutions, projects or teams?
Good question… We work in the model that the client expects. Of course, the most effective solution is to provide an entire, well-coordinated team. But sometimes we start with one expert, and over time the client decides to outsource the entire project to us. What is more, we have clients for whom we use different approaches in parallel, depending on the project.
It also happens that a large part of the requirements is already covered by one of our proprietary products or its module. Then we have the opportunity to propose such a solution as the foundation of the target product.
Digitization, automation, artificial intelligence… What does Enterprise Software House at All for One Poland say about this?
We not only say it, but we also do it. We have already completed dozens of process digitization projects in the last several months. We rely on different technologies because the technological contexts of our clients are diverse. It can be, for example, our ECM platform used for digitizing employee files and handling HR processes. Sometimes we recommend implementing automation using bots – one of the RPA (Robotic Process Automation) technologies.
As for Artificial Intelligence, after the first practical experience with implementations for customers, we decided to launch the AI Business Lab initiative. This is a proposal for those companies that want to test with us the use of artificial intelligence to optimize specific business scenarios. We have open research projects, for example, for automating service request management, working time planning and reporting with SAP using a chatbot. We invite all interested parties to test the solutions.
Interviewed by Grzegorz Grupiński, All for One Poland