Tek Experts: On Clouds to Lagos

Tek Experts is an international provider of outsourcing services and software solutions for businesses. The company was established in 2010. It opened its first office in Sofia and is already operating in China, Malta, the US, Costa Rica, Vietnam and Nigeria. “The company is developing extremely fast in Bulgaria. We have introduced a number of new services here and have been expanding ever since we started operations in 2010. Our plans for the future are ambitious and exciting” says Lachezar Lozanov, manager of the company for Bulgaria and Malta.

The outsourcing sector is undoubtedly interesting, but I noticed Tek Experts when I read that the company was opening a customer service centre in Lagos, Nigeria. I looked it up and found that the name also appeared in international and US media, including as an example of a corporate culture that kept the balance between the private life and the career of its employees. That is why I asked Lachezar Lozanov to tell me more about Tek Experts.

“Tek Experts is partnering with the world’s leading IT companies that look for an expert assistance on a global level - both in technical support and in software development and professional services. At the very beginning, we barely had 20 employees, and now, we are more than 500 only in Bulgaria. Our ambition is to hire another 600 people by the end of 2018. Currently, we have more than 3,000 employees around the world,” Lachezar Lozanov says. He explains that the company started its world expansion from Sofia, because Bulgaria has long traditions in the development of talents in the field of exact sciences, which allows it to create a platform for fast growth all over the world.

Like many IT outsourcing companies, this company does not have any Bulgarian clients, but this could change in the future. Tek Experts started its expansion focusing on technical support, then, it expanded its activity to include professional services in the field of quote to cash products based on cloud technologies, and “all that because of the local expertise.” “As technology advances, the expectations of clients are rising and they are looking for more in-depth expertise that we are ready to provide namely because of the professionals in Bulgaria,” Lozanov adds.

We also talked about the development of the outsourcing business in Bulgaria with the Tek Experts’ manager. He believes that because of the experience gained, the good technical and language knowledge, Bulgaria will continue to be a preferred destination for the provision of IT services. “Since we set foot in Bulgaria, our business changed a lot. Our company and the scope of the services we provide have expanded significantly - this is also true for the number of our clients. As technology advances, the industry is changing, AI (Artificial Intelligence) is penetrating more and more, technical support as a service is being automated, which in the future will influence companies that provide basic technical support - e.g. call centres. “What has bigger impact on companies like ours are the ever increasing demands of our clients - it is no longer a matter of having only a technical expertise, but also of building relationships with clients, of showing empathy, understanding and treating clients well. Machines cannot substitute these skills and we are not competing with technology. We are experts in the field of technology with skills and experience, which cannot be replaced by machines or robots,” he says.

Earlier this year, Tek Experts found its first customer service centre in Lagos, Nigeria. Yaniv Natan, founder of Tec Experts, defined Nigeria as “another location with big technological expertise in the same time zone that possesses all the characteristics and potential that are typical for Sofia.” Lozanov added that the goal is of a larger scale: “to find and develop talents and in this case to improve the skills and the experience of local IT specialists.” More than 300 employees have been trained and can now offer quality customer service all around the world.

Lachezar Lozanov points out that outsourcing companies must be ready to reconsider their role and the services they provide so that they can respond to the changing environment. “The ability to learn and change quickly will be crucial, if companies want to stay relevant to the market dynamics” he shares. That is why he advises entrepreneurs who look for opportunities on international markets to get to know the local market well with its peculiarities and needs in order to be competitive.

The market requires also a change in corporate culture. The American TV Fox21News aired a material on one employee of the company who is a mother of 8 children. She managed to go back to work thanks to the more flexible employment conditions. Tek Experts implements the Follow-the-Sun model and operates round the clock with its customer support being carried out by team work from different time zones so that there is no need of night or long shifts. This is probably the way that people, not machines and robots, manage the “cloud” that makes the digital world human. How far will it go is a matter of technology.