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