Everything that proved effective during this crisis will stay with us

CNews: Have you noticed changes in customer demand for your company's solutions? Have any new requests emerged that you had not encountered before?

Artem Oganesyan: I believe that, for a technology company, anticipating changes in demand largely means planning how to incorporate advanced technologies into its solutions. Of course, customer requirements change, but those changes follow the development and adoption of advanced solutions in artificial intelligence, blockchain-related technologies, APIs, UI/UX design, and other areas. This is one of the key advantages of a company that develops automated systems. We start working with a technology several years before it is used in a commercial product. This approach is hardly feasible with in-house development or, at the very least, requires a substantial increase in spending on the company's own IT department.

As for the changes themselves, we should note the transformation in how projects are carried out. Increasingly, they are the result of close cooperation among numerous technology companies involved in the process, customers' own IT specialists, developers of integrated systems, and many other participants. This is a consequence of breaking the functions being automated into smaller units and moving to a microservices architecture. We began this process quite some time ago and are fully prepared for this development.

CNews: What trends in mobile development would you highlight?

Artem Oganesyan: Speaking specifically about mobile applications, I think so-called Instant Applications have considerable potential for growth. These are applications that do not require installation but still provide access to a mobile device's capabilities. Google is currently developing this area quite actively. I believe other developers will soon offer their own implementations of this concept.

Another interesting approach is modular mobile applications. The idea is that you can select the functional modules of the application you install on your phone and work only with those modules. This has long been used in desktop systems, and the excessive number of features in mobile applications has made the approach both justified and effective for smartphones as well. It also removes the need to split a corporate application into, for example, separate remote banking applications for business and individual customers. The customer simply selects the necessary modules during installation.

If you are not engaging with artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence will engage with you.

Artem Oganesyan

For our customers, this approach is attractive because it effectively allows them to offer their own customers additional functional modules later on. Features such as loyalty programs, built-in stores, and similar services can be organized into these modules.

CNews: How much demand is there for the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, in mobile solutions?

Artem Oganesyan: Advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, and others, are increasingly being used in enterprise platforms. Mobile solutions primarily serve as a means of accessing or interacting with those platforms, which naturally requires them to be updated and adapted. The range of processes that use artificial intelligence grows every year. These include generating offers and various chatbots, and the list keeps expanding. To paraphrase a well-known saying: "If you are not engaging with artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence will engage with you." In my view, long-term corporate strategies for the digital development of a business simply cannot do without pursuing these areas anymore.

CNews: People have long been saying that the world around us is becoming increasingly "mobile." How do you see this in your customers' businesses?

Artem Oganesyan: Our customers' businesses, like the world as a whole, are becoming more mobile. At least, that is true of customers who have formulated and developed their IT strategies. We see that companies investing specifically in mobility achieve impressive results. Naturally, we are happy to help them with all the extensive expertise we have in this field.

CNews: What was 2019 like for R-Style Softlab in terms of developing mobile systems? Which technological solutions received particular attention?

Artem Oganesyan: Last year, we completed many interesting, large-scale projects at some of the biggest companies in the Russian financial sector. These included a thorough reengineering of the remote banking system for individual customers at Russian Agricultural Bank, the implementation of a remote banking system for business customers, and a number of successful projects at banks in the CIS and at insurance companies.

This was made possible largely by choosing the right strategy for developing our technology platform. It allows us to make the most of existing functionality to automate different business processes while maintaining a high degree of customization through settings available to business users.

A microservices architecture and the use of agile methodologies in projects enable us to automate business processes across a wide range of industries using our company's solutions. The clearest example is our successful project to automate the operations of RSHB Life Insurance. This project covered the entire sales and customer service cycle. Its results confirmed that we are ready to offer our products not only to banks, which have traditionally been our strongest area of expertise, but also to companies in other industries.

CNews: How do you think the recent events surrounding COVID-19 will affect IT and your business?

Artem Oganesyan: As far as our company's production process is concerned, I believe we have not only maintained our pace but increased it, and we have taken a fresh look at the opportunities for optimization that remote work offers. It is no secret that remote development has long been widely used, but the current crisis has quite literally forced everyone to make it truly effective. I cannot say that moving to this way of working has had any negative effect; quite the opposite.

As for customer demand, it has certainly grown. First, events unfolded very quickly and required a corresponding response from virtually everyone involved in automation. Second, there was an urgent need to automate processes that had previously operated in their usual way.

A microservices architecture and the use of agile methodologies in projects enable us to automate business processes across a wide range of industries using our company's solutions.

Artem Oganesyan

I am certain that business as a whole will learn many lessons from this crisis, and some business processes really will never be the same again. Nevertheless, I do not think these will be dramatic changes. Everything that proved effective during the crisis will stay with us, while businesses that depend heavily on direct contact with customers or require employees to be physically present will recover using their previous way of working.

CNews: Please share your plans for the future.

Artem Oganesyan: R-Style Softlab has been automating business processes for more than 25 years. Over that time, our portfolio has come to include a full range of systems covering every stage of enterprise automation. Historically, our main sector has been finance, primarily the automation of banking operations, but in recent years the company has been moving into other areas. Our solutions have proved flexible enough to meet the latest business requirements, so today we are ready to offer universal mechanisms, platforms, and solutions for a broad range of industries and activities.

At present, 24 of our solutions are already listed in the Russian Software Register. We will continue to develop and strengthen the position of domestically developed software. We expect to broaden the applications of our products over the next few years. As a company with extensive experience and a team of excellent professionals, we have everything we need to do this, and the government is keen to support this development. That is why I am confident we will succeed.