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