BUSINESS

One of the Greatest Telecommunication Companies Worldwide Dan Smith, U.S. citizen, resident of the Czech Republic, father of two daughters and one son, and the husband of an amazing Czech lady. Born and raised in northern Virginia, majored in Finance at the College of William and Mary (Class of ‘93). Ladder climbing saw several positions and responsibility changes during a first career in banking in the U.S. The last, almost decade has been with OKIN BPS where Dan now strategizes as the President and CEO of OKIN BPS during its largest and most interesting time of locality and product expansion.

Dan, can you introduce OKIN BPS and what is its added value for a customer in a globalized market? OKIN BPS provides business born out of telecommunications and IT environments. We are an international business partner creating and optimizing business processes and digital transformation, including complex project management services and technical multilingual customer support. Fifteen years of experience in our chosen field combining people, processes and the machinery of digital labor is different than “just outsourcing”. Our partnerships with companies like IoT. nxt, RunMyProcess, Citrix, MRI Software, and others enables us to position their software in a cool, forward-thinking partnership for the betterment of the business world, not bland, white-labelled margin-building expenses combined with old-school IT ways that mess up our clients’ environments. We still understand that people make the difference, so our credo is: Process First, Transformation After. Why did you expand to the US and what does this mean for OKIN BPS

development considering localization in this market? Our push to the U.S. was positioned in marketing, sales, and adding environments to our portfolio of client offers. Already we are seeing truly international efforts to solve our clients’ issues. We are combining the best of minds from the local offices with those more remote offices, local hands and minds combined with “back-office” support, even in a few cases remote “front-office”from our position here to serve their position there. The ability to jump into different and dynamic markets has already changed our company, quite frankly to a greater extent than even we had believed before making the transition. Fifteen years ago, “the west” (note: OKIN BPS’ longest-run clients – one of the largest telecommunication companies in the world) invested in OKIN BPS which brought them the desired results for their business and less cost to get their work done. Now that investment has expanded, compounded, and reseeded not only back into the west with our move to San Antonio, but amazingly we now see ourselves investing further. It is an amazing story of true-grit capitalism. What do you see as the economic potential of our region and what is the vision for development from the perspective of your company? I see great potential in the people. I see hinderance from government to achieve what the promise of that ability can bring. Education is ripe for such magnificent disruption, labor policies are set in pre-VelvetRevolution mentalities, courts rule according to their perception of “the stronger party” as opposed to blindly hearing arguments and discerning right from wrong. These issues exist elsewhere for sure, but that would be my

hope: that a change could be made to push the country to stand out, especially from their overly bland European counterparts with similar conflicting business bureaucracies. The people and abilities here already do, the crazy-low unemployment rates literally magnify that. The difference that we can all reflect upon even with such an environment at hand is that global “salary arbitrage” is a dying, if not already dead, business model for outsourcing. This matters concerning skills, abilities, and the more natural reach of a populations‘ resilience, willingness to learn, engagement with the work, and proper reflection of the ever- and rapidly-changing world that we have become. I often reflect that the people of this region somehow have “in their DNA” such an outlook. I think it is likely born of the industrial nature of the region. The miner and manufacturing labor skills of previous generations have translated their work ethic into the current generations. Problem-solving in today’s business world comes with the same urgency as facing issues several hundreds of meters below the surface in a mine or facing the blast furnace. The people here make problemsolving their trademark. Thank you for the interview.

Text: redakce Foto: archiv OKIN BSP, a.s. www.okinbsp.com

POSITIV 4/2019 ǀ 21