Digitalization is not a thing of the future, it is needed now

On November 11th Nemetschek Bulgaria’s Chief Executive Officer and member of BASSCOM’s advisory board George Brashnarov was kindly invited as a panelist in one of the very few conferences this year: BalREc – Investments and Real Estate Market 2020.

Brashnarov participated in the A2 panel with a main theme of discussion Bulgaria as an outsourcing and nearshoring destination. In his typical outspoken and well-argued manner, he stated Bulgaria is not simply an outsourcing destination and hasn’t been one for some time now.

“I believe that although Bulgaria started as an outsource and low-cost destination some 20 years ago, things have changed quite a bit. For years now we offer added value services and not at the lowest price. We currently face lack of qualified IT specialists but that is hardly anything new. Things have been this way for 15 years and we have somehow managed to educate the number of specialists we needed. It really is each company’s duty to see that their junior ITs become senior ones. These days there are about 30-35 thousand software developers in Bulgaria. Pretty much matching the number of IT professionals in Romania. Having in mind that Romania is 3 times the size and the population of Bulgaria, the density of IT specialists per capita here is good, one of the best in Europe.”

“It’s a good sign to see foreign investors who came to Bulgaria for the low-cost IT labor being discouraged and moving away. That’s a very natural process,” Brashnarov explained.

Inevitably, panel discussion touched on the theme of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis it has brought along. Brashnarov went for a more optimistic view of the current state of affairs.

“This pandemic poses short-term inconveniences but also mid- and long-term opportunities. It showed a lot of people the digitalization is not “a nice thing that would happen sometime in the future” but something that should start right now. It’s still very surface-level – people think digitalization is using Microsoft Teams or Zoom. But they will soon find out how important it is for their business processes and for the optimization.”

Check a full recording of the discussion in the video below (in Bulgarian).

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