December the 20th, 2022 - The Croatian Infosit software company is celebrating twenty years of doing business, and planning to tackle the demanding European Union (EU) market next.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the very first more complex software from the Croatian Infosit company was launched from the living room of the founder Goran Mrvos in Varvari near Porec in Istria, and now, they're rightfully celebrate two decades of doing very successful business.

The Croatian Infosit software company started functionong 20 years ago with just two employees, and today it has 25 experts creating, as they say, robust platforms that are at the centre of the integration of complex tools that drive online sales and marketing of medium and larger tourism and hotel companies, as well as national associations.

"I'd say that the fact that we already did significant work in the first wave of digitisation was important for our positioning as a long-term partner in the digital transformation. We were constantly learning and improving our competences, processes and work methods. While building an agile organisation, we went through several important stages of development,'' recalled the founder and director of Infosit, Goran Mrvos.

As his company celebrates a very successful twenty years, Mrvos announced that Infosit plans to increase its focus on its strengths, one of which is the digital transformation of tourist organisations, as a niche in which, as he claims, they have a lot of knowledge and experience.

"In addition to our presence on the markets of Croatia and Slovenia, we're planning to enter the markets of other European Union (EU) countries, either independently or with strategic partners. We are strengthening our existing teams and forming new ones that will take care of the deliveries, and master the work on the international market, thereby strengthening our position as a leader in the IT4hospitality niche even more,'' revealed Goran Mrvos.

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July the 29th, 2022 - The brand new Serengeti Split office has opened its doors and has been hiring local IT experts, a move which will hopefully further contribute to people remaining in Croatia and people from Dalmatia becoming employed in something other than tourism.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, after having opened offices in Zagreb, Bjelovar, Varaždin and neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as development centres over in Kenya and Serbia, the new Serengeti Split office has opened, where it sees great potential for further establishing the IT profession, developing innovative projects and attracting young experts from across the region; Cooperation with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Shipbuilding in Split is also planned through internships and scholarships.

Serengeti, one of the fastest growing Croatian software development companies, will start working at their new location on August the 1st, 2022, in their brand new office on the Riva in the very heart of the City of Split. Since its foundation back in 2007, Serengeti has grown organically in terms of revenue, number of employees and level of expertise, and is now one of the fastest growing Croatian IT companies for software development, with an average annual revenue growth rate of around 35%.

Serengeti's expansion further down towards the south of Croatia is motivated by the increasing volume of work in general, as well as work on projects for the global market, and it has all been planned since the beginning of this year. Serengeti recognised Split as one of the most promising Croatian cities with great potential for even stronger technological development. In addition, Serengeti wishes to motivate local young experts, software engineers, to stay here in Croatia. There are already seven developers working within the Split team, and by the end of the year they will employ a minimum of eight more people. Two and a half million kuna is planned for the salaries of these 15 employees this year alone.

As far as the further growth of the number of employees is concerned, cooperation with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Shipbuilding in Split is also planned in the form of professional internships, scholarships and employment of interns, as mentioned previously.

"We already have seven employees working in Split and they fit perfectly into our way of working. Since Split and the region where it is located are strong in terms of engineering personnel and there are excellent technical faculties there, we believe that we'll be able to significantly expand our engineering team and offer people work on large international projects. The new Serengeti Split office is an important pillar in our future development plans, which largely depends on the ability to attract and retain quality engineering staff," says Goran Kalanj, president of the board and founder of Serengeti.

Serengeti's developers in Split are currently working on the development of a tourist application (app) for one of the leading Croatian tourism companies, and in cooperation with colleagues from other offices, they'll also work on projects for other markets. With an already established position within the European Union (EU), Serengeti has been present on the American, Scandinavian and Israeli markets since last year, which is why this company is constantly growing in terms of the number of employees.

Thanks to challenging projects, expertise and experience from both domestic and global markets, investment in development and the family atmosphere that reigns in all Serengeti offices, the company is recognised as a desirable employer and will have more than 200 satisfied employees at all of its current locations by the end of the year.

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June the 27th, 2022 - The Osijek company Barrage is set to open yet another office, this time in Nasice, and employ even more workers. The move being made by this software company will surely help ongoing Eastern Croatian demography issues.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, the Osijek company Barrage, founded a mere six years ago, should open an office in Nasice by September this year, in addition to their exisitng office in the City of Osijek.

This company has been growing both in terms of revenue and number of employees since its establishment. Back in 2016 they started out with 5 million kuna in revenue and ended in 20 million kuna in consolidated revenue, as well as 8 million kuna earned in 2021. They decided open their office in a small Slavonian town of only 14,000 residents because they noticed that this is a city where they have the talent they need.

Plans in Nasice

"Through the Croatian Association of Linux Users (HULK), which has a long tradition, they showed interest in software and we estimated that no other place in the area has the potential we need," explained Luka Striskovic, the director of Legal Affairs and Human Resources within the Osijek company Barrage.

Six engineers have already been employed by the company, and a total of ten should be working there by the end of the year. Work on the landscaping should be completed soon, but with the move of engineers currently working from home, they will wait until the end of summer, ie September.

This company is engaged in a wide range of software activities, which makes them specific here on the domestic market; as they deal with the development of custom software systems, the development of data centers and digital products, and it's a fact that by the end of this year they plan to increase their number of employees from the current 108 to 150.

The increase in the number of workers should come as no surprise given the number of projects the Osijek company Barrage is currently working on and developing, especially given the fact that this is a company that generates 99 percent of its revenue on foreign markets.

One of the projects is the development of the digital product Travelspot for business travel management. The other is Roango, a platform specialising in hiring professionals in the ICT sector. Both of these platforms were created during the coronavirus crisis and during lockdown, in response to the problems they themselves faced.

While they predict that this year, Barrage's business results will be better than last year’s, they're still looking at 2023 with a healthy dose of caution.

A less than certain 2023...

“We need to be moderately optimistic because the current phase of financial planning comes down more to prophecies than it does to stable planning. Looking at the global economy, there's definitely a difficult time ahead of us,'' pointed out the director of legal affairs and human resources of the company, whose philosophy is that healthy local patriotism can result in something big.

"We believe that a lot can be done here in Slavonia. In many areas, such as industry and agriculture, Slavonia has been struggling for years. We're ready to change all that by enabling people to get a job here at home and not have to head elsewhere,'' concluded Striskovic, noting that their upcoming office in Nasice is the first step towards that.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated Made in Croatia section.

September the 2nd, 2021 - The Osijek software company Mono isn't a new player on the ever blossoming ''field'' of Croatian software developers and companies, in fact it has been a market leader in the field of eCTD software for some time now.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Suzana Varosanec writes, for years, the Osijek software company Mono has been one of the market leaders in the field of eCTD software, a standard used in the pharmaceutical industry when submitting information to regulatory agencies. Back in pandemic dominated 2020, they still excelled, managing to generate a massive 39.6 million kuna in revenue, while profit after tax amounted to 18.8 million kuna and accounted for 47 percent of their revenue.

This autumn, they plan to move into a new office building in their home base of Osijek, and according to the management team, Mono is "a strong company for the development of complex software systems with an emphasis placed on its own products that use advanced technologies."

When looking at other Croatian companies which did well despite the dire economic circumstances of 2020, the most successful long-term enterprise in 2020 is Zagreb's Spectra Media, while the most successful new enterprise is Sedam arhitektura, also based in the City of Zagreb.

The first gas company (Prvo plinarstvo drustvo) is the most successful enterprise in terms of total revenue in 2020, Zagrebacka banka the most successful bank, and Rimac Automobili is, rather unsurprisingly, the fastest growing company in 2020.

PPK Valpovo is the winner of the Golden Balance for 2020 in agriculture, forestry and fishing, Radlovac from Orahovica in mining and quarrying, HS Produkt from Karlovac in manufacturing, HEP is the winner for electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supplies, Zagreb's Spectra Media (aforementioned) for water supply; wastewater disposal, waste management and environmental remediation, and the Velika Gorica-based company Lapor for construction.

For wholesale and retail trade; the repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, the winner is Zagreb's Peek & Cloppenburg, for transport and storage, Rijeka's Jadranska vrata, and for providing accommodation and food preparation and serving, Global Food Zagreb (which runs the wildly popular McDonald's restaurants).

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Swiss Twint, a mobile payment application (app) developed by a Zagreb-based software company, has made a strong impression in the EU.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 10th of September, 2019, Zagreb's Q Software, according to Deloitte, is the third fastest growing high-tech company in Central Europe and among the twenty fastest growing in the whole of Europe, and they're now expecting new jobs thanks to a new type of roaming.

Following the introduction of mobile roaming in telecommunications imposed by the European Commission (EC), Swiss banks have now initiated the next major business alignment in the EU - voluntary mobile roaming.

Twint, a Swiss competitor to Apple Pay and Google Pay, which is beating them in the country thanks to major Swiss banks, such as UBS and Credit Suisse, and has more than one million users, gathered its competitors in the EU and founded the European Mobile Payment Systems Association (EMPA).

The aim of Twint, which is being developed by Zagreb's Q Software company right here in Croatia, is for mobile payment systems to support one another and offer a predictable level of service, as with mobile services in the EU. Filip Ljubić, co-founder and CEO of Q Software, says they have had a strategic partnership with Twint for several years now.

The Zagreb company, from here in Croatia, is in fact leading the entire development of the Twint application, and until recently it was its largest client. "Any expansion or success of them, as a rule, means new jobs for Q, but what exactly this initiative will bring to us, we'll have to wait to see more of because this is only an emerging initiative," says Ljubić.

Twint has brought together companies from Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, including Sweden's Swish, at EMPSA. It is one of Europe's most successful mobile payment platforms, launched seven years ago by six major banks in Sweden in cooperation with the national clearing system Bankigrot and the Central Bank of Sweden.

Today, it has more than six million users and is also known for its QR payment method, the same QR code that should become standard in fiscal accounts here in Croatia over the next two to three years. The German Bluecode, which also joined EMPSA in Germany and Austria, has already contracted cooperation with about a hundred banks, and now the first partner from Southern Europe to join the initiative, who sees this as an opportunity because of tourists - this is Portugal's SIBS.

In total, EMPSA represents 25 million mobile payment users, who already use the services of 350 banks and can pay at more than one million points of sale. Q Software in Zagreb points out, however, that despite its size, Twint is no longer their largest client.

They have a lot of work in the fintech industry and are in intense talks about working with Swiss UBS. A new big opportunity opened up for them in the United Kingdom because of their pension reforms there.

"Our biggest fintech client is 'Smart', which is currently perhaps one of the fastest growing fintech companies in the City of London and whose president is the former mayor of London. We have a team of about ten different experts who are part of Smart," concluded Filip Ljubić.

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