July the 25th, 2023 – The Zagreb software company Koios has been going from strength to strength, and after helping Croatia’s banks during the switch to the euro, they’re now taking on projects in the United Kingdom.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Suzana Varosanec writes, the ever-strengthening position of the Zagreb software company Koios on both the Croatian and within the immediate region is competitive. This is especially the case when we’re talking about the field of finance. Through specialisation in the financial sector, this enterprise has built a reputation as being among the leading consultants in the field.
They’re currently engaged in a very important project
“Our approach of educating all of our people as consultants contributes to our expertise and ability to provide high-quality services to our clients,” this is how the director of this fifteen-year-old Zagreb software company Stjepan Pavlek Posavec assesses the situation. He also revealed that this company is currently engaged in an important project, which could become worldwide.
It is part of a new development cycle, and it is related to cross-border business. Namely, the Zagreb software company Koios primarily specialises in business intelligence services and the development of application solutions for the financial sector on the NET platform. As such, it continuously invests in its people.
Koios was instrumental in Croatia’s Eurozone accession
This was additionally confirmed through the successful conversion to the euro, a particularly challenging project last year for all banks across the Republic of Croatia, because Koios cooperated with most of them and helped them make the transition as painless as possible.
However, due to this, they had to slow down their other projects a bit. Now that Croatia’s transition to the euro is complete, they are heating up once again this year, especially when it comes to projects on foreign markets. They expanded their business by entering the demanding market of one of Europe’s richest nationas – Great Britain, where the headquarters of the governing company Koios Consulting LTD has been seated for a long time.
London was a strategic decision
Opening an office in London was a strategic decision for the company, according the director of Koios, noting that the United Kingdom is one of the most attractive centres for locating the headquarters of international companies in Europe (even after Brexit). Doing business on the challenging British market has its own specifics and essential elements that should be taken into account.
“A high standard of quality and the provision of superior services are paramount when it comes to gaining a competitive advantage. It’s necessary to follow all of the latest trends and technologies in order to remain relevant and competitive, and it’s also important that we’re physically present on the market. That’s why we opened an office in London. Kudos to Zoom and other similar platforms, but this still can’t be compared to face-to-face contact,” explained Pavlek Posavec.
He added that they are also present across the pond on the market of the United States of America, but mostly through their partners at this stage. Thus, in 2022, the share of income from Great Britain in the total income of the Zagreb software company Koios stood at percent of the total, while a year before it stood at only one percent.
Britain is extremely competitive
The IT scene in the UK is very competitive, the competition is strong and client expectations are extremely high. However, it is precisely in this demanding environment, according to the director of Koios, that there are enormous opportunities and potential for growth to be had.
“The UK offers a wide range of IT markets, from the financial sector to technological innovation, and there is a strong demand for all kinds of high-quality IT services and solutions. This enormous potential gives us the opportunity to explore new market segments, expand our business and create value for our clients.
In addition, I’d like to note that London is ranked as the second startup ecosystem in the world, which is a great thing for us. The conditions in the business environment in the UK are very well developed: there is strong support for the technology sector and the regulatory framework is stable and predictable,” he noted.
Growth of 30%
When it comes to market development here in Croatia, he believes that positive trends are continually being observed. It involves the merger, consolidation and specialisation of companies, which is important for the further development of the industry, according to him. “We have an ambitious goal to expand our business to other areas, while maintaining our specialisation in the financial industry.”
Behind the Zagreb software company Koios lies a very important development lever in the form of the takeover of the company Beta Tau Beta, which brought significant expansion and the number of employees doubled. This then enabled them to expand the range of services they provide and better service to all of their clients.
The planning of the aforementioned acquisition was based on the fact that they were completely complementary to each other. Also, it should be emphasised that this merger resulted in a greater number of projects, and with it new technologies. This automatically provides more opportunities for the career development of employees who are organised into functional teams, depending on the projects they work on.
“Of our 95 employees, only five people don’t specifically work on projects – all the others are directly involved in projects for our clients. In addition, we achieved a significant increase in terms of our income. The combination of our professional knowledge, our expansion out into the international market and a larger number of employees enabled us to achieve a strong financial result”, said Pavlek Posavec.
Since the acquisition of Beta Tau Beta several years ago, the Zagreb software company Koios has been growing by 30 percent per year as a rule, and they’re currently the most active in the field of regulatory reporting.
The Central Reporting Banking System
“As we took over the maintenance of SIBS (Central Reporting Banking System) last year, our focus is for users to overcome this transition as easily as possible and for regulatory reporting to go through without any problems. We’re also quite busy with the migration of our users of the Jira platform to new deployments.
All Jira users have to choose a new solution and the deadlines are getting very close now, so we expect a lot of engagement by the end of the first quarter of next year. We’re also working on a blockchain project in Great Britain, which we hope will have a great impact on the entire business,” said this company’s director.
