*Article publié le 21 juillet 2020, en roumain. Ceci est la traduction en anglais de l'article original. Source : https://www.startupcafe.ro/afaceri/firme-it-investitii-tehnologie-imm.htm
Despite a strong IT sector and the good reputation of technology companies, Romania is still deficient compared to other EU Member States in adopting digitalization in the private and public sectors, according to the analysis of a Romanian IT company.
At the end of June, the European Commission published the 2020 edition of the Digital Economic and Society Index (DESI), an annual study that assesses Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU Member States in terms of digital competitiveness. Romania ranked 26th out of 28 among member states, a position obtained based on five key criteria – connectivity, human capital, use of internet services, integration of digital technology and digital public services.
“The results of the study, although alarming, do not come as a surprise for Romanian entrepreneurs in the field of technology. Most IT companies develop products for foreign markets or target multinationals that understand the added value of advanced technology solutions. It is a paradox that in Romania, which is famous for IT experts, most local SMEs are reserved in front of the digital transformation. The adoption of digitalization should be considered an investment and not an expense, and in some cases it is not even possible to talk about investment, because it is simply a matter of using digital services. It is true that the use of these services sometimes requires internal organizational transformations to adapt to automated processes, which can be considered investments. Our experience, gained from collaboration with companies of all sizes, has shown us that a company can recover in less than a year the investment in internal reorganization needed to use a digital invoicing platform, “said Liviu Apolozan, founder of DocProcess.
In the category of digital public services and the use of internet services, Romania ranked last in the EU. When integrating digital technology, which includes the adoption of digital solutions by local SMEs, Romania occupies the penultimate place. The study shows that only 23% of Romanian companies transmit information through electronic channels, compared to the EU average of 34%, and only 8% use social networks (the EU average is 25%). Starting with 2019, 11% of Romanian SMEs have migrated to online sales and only 5% of the total turnover was generated through e-commerce platforms, compared to the EU average of 11%. In addition, the study also shows that Romanian SMEs made the smallest investments in technology during 2019 among all EU member states.
The DESI study highlighted that Romania does not have a national strategy for digital transformation for enterprises and that specific measures are needed to support the digitalisation of SMEs and increase awareness of the importance and benefits of adopting digital technologies. The assessment was based on data from 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which once again highlighted the crucial importance of citizens’ digital skills and the digitization of the economy.
The biggest obstacle in the digitalization process in Romania remains the concern that the investment in digital transformation will not be recovered.
However, in 2019, DocProcess conducted a case study on one of its customers, Cora, a retail brand that operates supermarkets in Romania. The study showed that the retailer saved 150,000 euros in 18 months by migrating 93% of its suppliers to electronic invoicing. In addition to the amount saved, switching to electronic invoicing has resulted in 100% accurate invoices, reducing the routine burdens of finance department staff, faster payment to suppliers, real-time access to financial statement information, and more legal reporting. And a much faster process of VAT refund by the authorities.
DocProcess is a Romanian company founded in 2005, which develops cloud digitization solutions to streamline and automate commercial processes such as procurement, sales, logistics and financial-accounting.
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