Around 60,000 employees of IT outsourcing and consulting firms in Ukraine produce almost a half of $5 billion industry's value. Ukraine, though, does not always market all competitive advantages of its tech specialists.
During the Business Sweden forum held in Kyiv on June 16, the representatives of software development and IT consulting firm Sigma Software tried to prove the relatively higher value of Ukrainian IT specialists compared to the cheaper tech labor force of Asian countries.
Among Eastern European countries, Ukraine occupies the first place in tech labor market volume. According to the Brainbench rating of 2013 Ukraine turned out to be the third in the number of certified master-level IT specialists among 50 countries, the biggest tech talent suppliers in the world, after India and the U.S.
“IT services export can drive the economy of Ukraine. The government needs to see the increasing share of IT services in the general Ukraine’s export volume,” says Valery Krasovsky, chief executive officer at Sigma Software.
In 2005 the market volume of IT outsourcing sector reached less than $300 million, but within eight years it grew to $2 billion. The number of employees employed in the whole IT industry went from 14,000 in 2007 to 40,000 in 2012. The forecast is that 150,000 will be employed by tech companies in Ukraine by 2018.
Granted that tech specialists get more than 10 times higher salaries than Ukrainians with jobs in traditional industries, tech professions can be easily popularized. The more people come to work for IT companies, the more orders the companies can process.
While it is possible to find cheaper tech specialists in countries like India or Vietnam, customers rather choose to place orders within Ukrainian companies, as Ukrainians are more creative, says Krasovsky.
Vaino Vaher, the Swedish software engineer and entrepreneur, who visited Ukraine for the first time by coming to Business Sweden forum, has had experience working with both Indian and Ukrainian tech specialists. He says it is wrong to only mention the price of Ukrainian tech specialists within the competition terms.
While Indians are sure cheaper to employ, they are located in much further time zone from Sweden, which slows down the communication processes. Also Swedish female product managers might have problem talking to Indian tech specialists, while the last ones, due to their cultural standards, are not accustomed to the higher social status of women. They are also not independent decision-makers and need a lot of micromanagement, which is hard to do distantly.
“Talking to Ukrainians is like talking to Swedish. You have less cultural differences with us,” says Vaher. “So when you talk about advantages (of Ukrainian tech specialists), talk about that, push that point.”
Hugo Pettersson, the managed services sales manager at Sigma IT & Management IT consulting services provider in Sweden, confirms that the business relationship synergy of Ukrainians and Swedish is the best. “Ukrainians focus on a project from A to Z. With Indians you have to get into lots of details.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.
