adorsys: Building & Securing Financial Ecosystems
INNOVATION Magazine
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INNOVATION Magazine talks to Andrew John Zeller , Managing Director International & Co-CEO DACH, and Florian Ramsbeck , International Sourcing Coordinator at adorsys , about the company’s plans for global expansion post-pandemic.
adorsys provides products and services for the financial services space and has become one of the go-to companies for businesses looking for digital payment and component solutions. Andrew explains, “Our focus is on technology and building systems for our clients. In general, we like to think of ourselves as building and securing financial ecosystems. My primary role is to come up with smart ideas and help guide the company where to go next, as well as make valuable connections. As a people person, I love this side of my job.”
Florian Ramsbeck, International Sourcing Coordinator at adorsys, joined the company in December last year in a bid to support adorsys scale on an international level. Florian says, “I have a well-established network of partners for nearshore operations in Eastern Europe, as well as offshore partners in India and Manila. The idea behind hiring me was to help adorsys grow by finding talent on-site and partners in the nearshore and offshore business. I’ve spent 10 years working in Switzerland and Romania, where I built up a nearshore centre with 40 people. So, I know my way around running and partnering with nearshore centres.
Andrew says that in terms of operations, adorsys is primarily focused on digital and financial models and architecting for scale. He continues, “We work for most of the major banks, adding huge data-intensive applications, whilst trying to remain retail banking and payments domain-focused. I think that from an operations point of view, that is what really distinguishes us from our competitors. At the same time, we also make sure the customer does not have to overspend, which is a huge concern in our industry. IT departments have been running into problems over the past couple of years, so we help them to understand their situation, offering solutions that will match their budgetary possibilities.”
Another unique selling point relates to adorsys’ size in combination with its service portfolio. Florian adds, “We are one of the few providers that can offer nearshore and offshore services by being a rather small company of between 120 and 150 employees. This combination makes us attractive to other SME, which can talk to us at eye level and also benefit from near/offshore rates, requesting only a small team or single person. Big corporates are usually not interested in supporting requests with such a small volume.”
Founded in 2006, adorsys has a mantra of 'loving your technology,' which stems from the belief system of one of its founders, Francis Pouatcha. Andrew enthuses, “We hire people who love technology. Each time we use a system, there will be a team of people who come up with innovative ideas on how to improve it. We always invest in our own R&D to ensure people have time to transform these systems in answer to a need in the market. We make sure we are not doing technology for technology’s sake. We are very focused on what we are doing, and our people enjoy adding their skills to existing systems, or even overhauling them completely.”
The organisation of adorsys is loosely based on a tribal structure, where a tribe fully supports a single project, but all the units are democratic and can decide how they do things and who they hire. Andrew says, “The result is that we have people working together who like working together. We have had a wonderful response from this model, so it will form the basis for our growth. Happy people is what we need for the future!”
On the technology side, adorsys has different technology roles responsible for monitoring which software or applications are in the process of scaling up, and which are likely to become obsolete. Florian adds, “The people occupying these functions really are on top of their technology. They have a good overview of what is stable and can therefore be very beneficial to our clients.” adorsys prides itself on staying in close contact with its clients throughout the lifecycle of a project and beyond. Andrew enthuses, “By talking to our clients, we learn so much about what is relevant to them and where their needs and pain points lie, so we are able to match the technology to their challenges. We figure out the best solution for them, then revert to the client with our advice. In most cases, we can then move forward. Our clients like the fact that we feed ideas into their organisation, and we live off the feedback that we get from that process.”
There are several prominent projects that adorsys is working on currently. Andrew says, “We are building a completely new payments platform for a client based in the DACH region. For the last one and a half years, we have been transforming their entire business model, as well as defining their cloud journey on an AWS platform. It will be a very competitive platform for our client in the payments market in this region.
“We are also working on an API gateway project for a retail bank to allow them to access their clients’ accounts and score them for retail products. We are looking at the API gateways and building access components to the various banks, payment providers and fintechs, making sure that all the necessary data are retrieved, securely stored, and deleted after a period of time. One of the major challenges for Eastern European banks is ensuring that they are GDPR compliant. It is a fun project because we get to use all these exciting, new technologies, without having to focus on legacy systems, which are often more dominant in our projects.”
In Ireland, adorsys is concentrating on its international activities and selling into the London market. Andrew explains, “We are primarily supplying talent into this market, which is new for us. We are also setting up a partner centre for all our international security operations out of Ireland and into the rest of Europe.”
Florian says the company recently had a request from a customer for a CRM project, for which adorsys was able to leverage its strong network of partners. He continues, “The partner network enables us to provide the right people with the right skillset to enrich projects we are running alongside our main products and services in our portfolio.”
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So, how was adorsys impacted by the recent Covid-19 pandemic? Andrew answers, “The first few weeks saw clients postponing and cancelling projects, which we had to endure. It took us approximately a month to accept and adjust. We needed to make sure our clients could get the help they needed, so we changed the way we offered our services. Until then, we were on-premises because that is what the client wanted. Even though adorsys has always been a remote company, our clients were not used to this, so we had to ensure they had processes in place to manage a remote team.”
Andrew says if you want to maintain high energy levels, you have to ensure your people are entertained. This is especially important when managing remote workers. He elaborates, “We helped our clients to make sure people working remotely had some fun. It is often very simple, you don’t have to make it all work, no play. Something I personally love is ‘Beer Friday’. At the end of the week, we would sit down and have some virtual drinks together, allowing people to have a social connection back to the company. Once possible, we encouraged people to meet for a drink to talk about the current situation of a project and figure out the appropriate next steps. We also sent food packages to people so they could have dinner with their families, helping to keep them entertained. Life is not all about work; you need social contact, you need to know who you are working with, and if possible, you need to enjoy who you work with!”
"Life is not all about work; you need social contact, you need to know who you are working with, and if possible, you need to enjoy who you work with!”
After the pandemic, adorsys’ profitability was even stronger than before. However, they are still treading carefully as the industry has entered a phase of entropy. Andrew explains, “Unfortunately, nobody can predict the future. Companies are re-prioritising and there is uncertainty in the market. One of the reasons why Florian has come on board is to assist us with leveraging growth via various international markets.”
Florian is very pleased to be heading up this task. The path for future growth will also see adorsys leverage its ecosystem of trusted partners. Florian outlines three different types of partners:
As for the future of adorsys, Andrew is also excited by the company’s plans for South Africa. He adds, “We are actively growing our partner network and offices in South Africa. Perhaps even bigger than that, we are establishing a business unit purely focused on cybersecurity. We have seen so much demand from our clients to add a focused product on how to enhance their cybersecurity. The new business unit will be managed out of Dublin, but we will be working right across Europe with all of our clients.”
Florian’s previous role was in the cybersecurity space, so he is equally excited by this latest move. He concludes, “The new business unit is something I am very keen to support by leveraging my network and making it happen.”
Exciting times ahead!
For further information on adorsys, visit www.adorsys.com
This article was originally published in the October 2022 issue of Digital Innovation , Europe’s go-to digital technology magazine.
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