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bne May 2020 Companies & Markets I 31
scale and with higher profitability,” said Ido Susan, CEO and co-founder, DriveNets.
Looking past the crisis
The Romanian authorities should gradually lift the general lockdown that has blocked activity in several business sectors, in order to allow economy to restart, while of course focusing on the health crisis, argued Stanciu in the interview with Ziarul Financiar.
He added that, in order to prepare the post-crisis recovery, the sectors worst hit by the crisis should be identified and properly supported. Also, looking ahead, he advocated for supporting the sectors that can grow locally and can also expand abroad. Everything that is related to the digital economy – software, productivity tools, online commerce – all these sectors can grow a lot, he argued. Tourism and agriculture are other sectors that hold potential for growth he added.
"I think we should gradually replace this lockdown with measures to restart the economy. The priority should be the
health crisis, but it must be seen very carefully what measures should be taken and where should be relaxed, in what areas, so that things restart,” said Stanciu.
The IT industry can be the starting point for a revival of the economy, by digitising processes or projects from other sectors affected by the crisis, where digitisation plays an important role, said Daniel Ilinca, CEO Softbinator Technologies,
a company specialised in blockchain R&D and artificial intelligence, in an interview with Economica.net.
But he warned that the biggest problem will be human resources.
"To succeed, it takes people. If before the crisis tech companies had problems finding specialists, now, as the pressure on digitisation increases, the need for good people in IT will be even greater. It remains to be seen if the methods to recruit used so far will work or we need to diversify them, reinvent the wheel," commented Ilinca.
Russia’s X5 Retail Group rolls out self- checkout (SCO) machines at its stores to help with social distancing
bne IntelliNews
X5 Retail Group, a leading Russian food retailer that operates the Pyaterochka, Perekrestok and Karusel retail chains, has begun installing self-checkout (SCO) machines developed in-house at Pyaterochka proximity
stores across all of its geographies to help with Russia’s social distancing efforts, the company said in a statement on April 10.
“Through mass implementation of self-service technologies, X5 seeks to minimise contact between customers and store personnel. With 1,435 self-checkouts already installed at 369 stores, the plan for 2020 is to have a total of 12,000 units operating,” X5 said in an emailed statement.
The SCO system is the first hardware and software product to have been developed entirely in-house by X5’s innovation lab. Compared to similar self-service systems, X5’s machines cost four times less to mass-produce while offering superior functionality, the company claims. Five Russian enterprises are engaged in the assembly process, which creates additional jobs for the local population.
Following pilot testing in August and September 2019, the SCO rollout was given the go-ahead. Thanks to bulk purchases of components, the cost of SCOs was brought down by
a further 25%.
Technical support and maintenance are fully integrated into the stores’ existing IT system, which makes these devices five times less expensive to operate compared to those of competitors, X5 said. In a poll of 32,000 customers, the machines received an average rating of 4.8 out of 5.
The current coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis is turning out
to be a boon for e-commerce and technological advantages associated with retail in Russia. E-commerce was already growing at ten times the pace of the real economy and already accounts for about 4.5% of Russia’s RUB33tn ($444bn)
retail business, but the crisis is now catalysing the switch to e-commerce, express delivery and related advances.
“Through mass implementation of self-service technologies,
X5 seeks to minimise contact between customers and store personnel”
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