Sinergija 22, a key regional IT and business conference, closed with its traditional Business Day, which brought together decision-makers from all industries, government officials, and mangers of major Serbian and South-Eastern European companies.
Sinergija’s Business Day was a welcome opportunity to present success stories of large companies that have undergone or are yet to complete transformations that help them enhance their business processes whilst saving time and money and benefiting from simpler, more innovative, agile, and resilient solutions.
Aware that digitalisation was an inevitable part of the road to strengthening global and local economies, the participants expressed their conviction that between this event and Sinergija 23, more organisations would embrace digital operations as the only guarantee of long-term growth and development.
The day’s sessions opened with a keynote address from Milan Gospić, Country Manager at Microsoft Serbia, and Dejan Cvetković, Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft Serbia and a founder of the Microsoft Development Centre Serbia. The Business Day opening ceremony was attended by Christopher R. Hill, US Ambassador to Serbia, Branko Ružić, Minister of Education, and Professor Dr Mihailo Jovanović, Minister of Information and Telecommunications.
Minister Jovanović said that the results of Serbia’s digitalisation had exceeded the expectations of even the greatest optimists, and that the ICT industry was a key driver of the country’s growth and prosperity, having made the largest net contribution to exports at over 2.6 billion euros, a 40 percent increase on 2021, with exports expected to reach up to 10 billion euros by 2030.
‘The Big Vision panel has given us the unique opportunity to see how a variety of industries and market players have transformed, including companies such as Coca Cola HBC, Schneider Electric, Nelt Group, and BlackRock, all of them using Microsoft Cloud technologies. We have tried to showcase these companies’ experiences to give useful inputs to small and medium-sized firms that are yet to begin their digitalisation. All entities, from the public sector to family businesses, must embrace digitalisation because it is the only road to long-term growth and development for us as a society. It was a pleasure to again be part of Sinergija and announce that next year our company will mark its twentieth anniversary in Serbia’, said Milan Gospić, Country Manager at Microsoft Serbia.
Dejan Cvetković, Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft Development Centre Serbia, emphasised Serbia had taken its place on the global technology map nearly 18 years ago, when Microsoft Development Centre Serbia was founded.
The 2022 Serbian population census, performed by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, was one successful digitalisation case presented during the Business Day event. Digital technology greatly facilitated and accelerated the census.
A panel devoted to the retail industry heard how global circumstances over the past two years had brought about new consumer needs, requiring rapid adaptation by retailers and modern solutions, such as online stores, cloud infrastructure, advanced analytical tools, and omnichannel sales. The participants agreed that e-commerce was only set to grow and that the entire industry had to seek new business models to enable it to become a major driver of growth for the Serbian economy.
