— Our office in Tver has tripled over the past 3 years, about 500 people now work in it. To meet the growing needs of customers and ensure dynamic growth, we began to look where else we could open a technology center, we approached the choice of the city thoroughly, conducted a detailed study, identified about 30 criteria, formed in three blocks: human resources, business climate and accessibility region. Rostov scored the most points, — said Oleg Chernyshev, head of Accenture technology centers in Russia, during a press conference dedicated to the start of the Rostov branch.
A serious educational base has been formed in Rostov, there are several large universities that produce a large number of specialists in the IT sphere and related specialties. The study showed that the overwhelming majority of young IT specialists remain in the region, the outflow is low. The availability of office space and the international airport became a plus.
The business climate was also assessed positively. The presence of a sufficiently mature competitive environment and state support in the development of information technologies, strong IT companies, and a developed structure of IT communities played a role, Oleg Chernyshev noted:
— We have formed three finalists: Rostov-on-Don, Kazan, Samara. Since we had already carried out reconnaissance in force in Rostov, we had a team that we involved in separate projects, and decided to land in this city.
Accenture is a large international company operating in 120 countries around the world in more than 30 languages. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Ranked 59th in the rating of foreign companies with the best reputation in Russia in 2019, prepared by the Reputation Institute for Forbes. She came to Russia in 1992. The first technology center was opened in Tver in 2007. The company operates through the Moscow-based Accenture LLC, whose revenue in 2019, according to SPARK-Interfax, exceeded 6.7 billion rubles. (+ 13.7% by 2018), net profit — 786 million rubles. (-25%).
The office in Rostov will be involved in the implementation of large technology platforms such as Sap, Oracle, Microsoft, the creation of an IT architecture for applications, software testing, analytics for big data management, and infrastructure management support. They promise to expand the range of services. Now the staff recruited more than 70 people from Rostov, Taganrog and Volgodonsk.
«Accenture is not a consulting company that gives a report and says «thank you, goodbye». We help our clients at the stages of identifying and implementing initiatives, developing a strategy, changing business processes,» — said Vartan Dilanyan, CEO of Accenture in Russia and Kazakhstan.
Business is quite actively involved in serious innovative technological projects, but the demand for services among Rostov entrepreneurs is still difficult to assess, the center has just opened. Accenture also counts on the fact that in the southern region of Russia their services will be of particular interest to the agricultural sector and retail.
One of its main functions in the region Accenture sees the development of human resources, interaction with universities and schools. The plans include launching student practice and internship programs for young professionals, organizing educational programming courses for children and adolescents.
— Accenture is a very well-known company, probably one of the largest in the world, engaged in consulting and developing business strategies for various areas, especially the IT sphere, — says Maxim Bolotov, president of the Taganrog IT companies association BRAINHORN. — Her arrival in the Rostov region is an indicator, in my opinion, that the IT industry in the region has reached a certain level of maturity. I am aware of the plans of several more large companies that are going to come to Rostov. The growth rates shown by our region are increasingly attracting the attention of serious players. If you look at the annual research of the Russoft Association for 2019, you can see that the Rostov Region is in 7th place among the regions of Russia in terms of the level of development of the IT industry in the group of leaders. Taganrog ranks 3rd among cities in the country in terms of software export and 1st place per unit of population, given its size. Also in Taganrog, in my opinion, the highest density of IT companies in the country. According to the preliminary results of the 2020 study, the growth rate of revenue from IT services in the Rostov region is almost 40% higher than in Russia as a whole.
Source: gorodn.ru