site.btaHigh-Tech Sector Must Be at Core of New Brand Bulgaria Strategy, Industry Associations Agree

The participants in a discussion organized here on Thursday by the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies (BASSCOM), representing three business associations, concurred on the message that the high-tech sector should be at the core of the new Brand Bulgaria strategy.

Newly elected BASSCOM Management Board Chairman Krum Hadjigeorgiev, BASSCOM Advisory Board member George Brashnarov, Association for Innovation, Business Excellence, Services, and Technology (AIBEST) Management Board Chairman Ilia Krastev and Bulgarian Employers' Association Innovative Technologies (BRAIT) Chairman Dobroslav Dimitrov took part in the event.

Hadjigeorgiev was adamant that the IT sector brand in Bulgaria is and should be an increasingly visible part of Brand Bulgaria as a country. "One of the challenges to get a bit more serious and more vocal was that somewhere someone is doing something for the brand Bulgaria and we haven't heard it," said the BASSCOM head, recommending that the whole ecosystem should speak in one voice. In his opinion, the Bulgarian high-tech sphere is there but needs to be updated, including the brand messages. 

Dimitrov said that on the basis of numerous meetings held over the last year and a half, he concluded that not everyone in Bulgaria is aware that the country is a good place to have a career, to live and to raise children. It is these messages that should be zealously defended, and these should also be the messages that the country should be sending out, he recommended. According to the BRAIT Chair, the IT technology sector in Bulgaria is not just developed - it is time to build on this message by claiming that the sector is world class.

He recommended that the term "IT" should be discarded and replaced by "high technology".   

Dimitrov also declared himself against arrogance in the industry, whose representatives should behave responsibly and with leadership, so that their behaviour matches the importance that high technologies have for the Bulgarian economy.  

In order to perceive the high-tech sector as an essential part of Brand Bulgaria, Krastev recommended that efforts should be directed first towards changing the internal environment, and then, externally. He argued that this is necessitated by the fact that society itself lacks an understanding of the importance of the IT sector for the Bulgarian economy. He also sees a lack of strategic conversation about the development of the industry.

The AIBEST Chairman identifies a persistent problem in the fact that people in Bulgaria continue to talk about information technology as a vertical industry: in his opinion, its structure is in fact horizontal, as high technologies are present in every economic sphere. 

"The time to wait for someone to do something is over because what we are doing now, other countries are doing it faster, with more resources and, very often, with better quality," Krastev concluded. He linked the integration of the country's high-tech face with the national brand Bulgaria to the requirement that this symbiosis corresponds to the real degree of digitization of the administration and its services. 

Brashnarov argued that the high-tech sector is characterized by low self-esteem. According to him, the lack of boldness does not suit a sector that claims to be mature. The BASSCOM Advisory Board member recommended that all words and phrases suggesting that Bulgaria is a cheap destination, such as "cost", "price", etc., should be scrapped and replaced by "quality" and "deadline", he stressed. 

Bulgarian High-Tech Sector: Strengths and Weaknesses

During Wednesday's forum, BASSCOM Management Board member Marina Shideroff presented the results of a study of the Association within its latest Business Tree Initiative, showing the strengths and weaknesses of the Bulgarian high-tech sector.

"The study is still active and new data continue to come in. It involves both company founders and senior management," Shideroff explained before summing up the findings. 

Based on the results processed so far, the strengths of the IT sector in Bulgaria have been grouped into nine categories: highly skilled personnel; competitive costs; high quality of life; favourable business environment; strategic geographical location; excellent value for money; strong system of technical education; innovative attitude and niche expertise in cyber security, financial technology and artificial intelligence. 

On the other hand, the weaknesses are: a small and limited size of the labour market; lack of international recognition and credibility of the industry; political instability and red-tape hurdles; difficulty in competing with larger global IT hubs; heavy reliance on outsourcing at the expense of innovation and product development; insufficient government support; a fragmented business environment; deficits in the education system; a need to develop infrastructure and to locate investment; and a limited capacity to attract large-scale projects and clients.