Ciklum welcomes everyone interested in IT to participate in pan-Ukrainian informal educational and networking gathering of IT specialists.
SEB |
SEB Pension Relies on Near- & Off-Shore IT Resources SEB Pension wants to be the online leader 
A good external IT consultant can cost up to 15-18,000 EUR a month, and if you use three to six external consultants, eventually it will add up. SEB Pension is working towards using this money on own offshore resources instead. If you add management focus and good cultural integration you can get 20 new international employees offshore and/or nearshore for the previous budget spent on local consultants. SEB Pension is realizing this goal, and when speaking about offshoring, SEB Pension is two years ahead of other Danish companies of the kind. Among the IT departments' 51 employees you will find Serbs, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Indians, Pakistanis, Danes and Swedes. SEB Pension aims to attract the right people to Denmark and at the same time have development centers in, for instance, Vietnam. "It is crucial that they "think" SEB Pension. We see them as long-term resources and not just as Java specialists," says Jakob Nielsen, System Manager from SEB Pension. "This is why we spend a lot of time getting things right and communicating this logic thoroughly to our old employees in-house and the new ones abroad."
SEB Pension competes with giants such as Danica, Nykredit, PFA and ATP and as such, it is highly ambitious to be best online. But the goal is indeed to be the best in the "pension" category on the Internet, and therefore SEB Pension wants to change the image that it is difficult to understand one's pension plan. If one is to understand the tricky rules of one's pension there is a need to develop a number of new programs, - and this is where the IT department and its resources come in. The access to competences and the dependence on people are among the strategic "troubles" that IT departments face – including those within the pension industry. 
"I work together with Ciklum because through their development centers in Ukraine they have the experience in finding and maintaining good nearshore IT resources. However, every time I am personally down there to interview future employees, because you cannot just "order" people. Managerial focus is necessary at all times; and that is why we have to spend time finding and educating these employees," states Jakob Nielsen. "In the offshore area you have the pure factory model where you go and shop for your development projects, and then there is a broader model, in which you work on influencing new employees by using your company's culture. We are very clearly in the second category as we wish to retain the people that get to know us so well and who work for SEB Pension," argues the System Manager. SEB Pension needs resources in mainframe, .Net and Java/J2EE. India, Ukraine and Vietnam are the current "hunting grounds" for SEB Pension. Among the obstacles is the strict Danish foreign policy that hinders the incorporation of foreigners in the Danish organization. "It affects the department that we have so many different nationalities within. We spend time discussing religion and culture, which is really a positive thing in a global context. We see it as strength to get that diversity into the organization. We become a better place to work, and of course, we do need to get the development projects done," says Mr. Nielsen. As opposed to new Danish employees, a Ukrainian worker is very visible, and at SEB Pension they have had to work on the local employees' acceptance of the offshore strategy. Some employees feared becoming redundant because of the cheaper Ukrainians and Pakistanis. About SEB SEB (Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken) was founded in Stockholm in 1856 by the Wallenberg family. Today SEB is one of the largest banks and pension groups in Northern Europe with five million customers and 20,000 employees in more than 20 countries. SEB runs one of Sweden's largest banks and one of the largest pension companies with a million of customers. In Denmark SEB has 800 employees and runs – apart from pension – banking, capital management, stock trading and credit cards. About SEB Pension Denmark's fourth largest pension company, SEB Pension, wants to make a pension to be easily understood, administrated, and adapted to individual needs and expectations. The company focuses on qualified consultation of 300,000 customers, which includes private customers, self-employed persons and employees that are included in corporate agreements. 300 employees sit partly at the headquarters in Copenhagen and partly in offices all over the country. The name of the company used to be Codan Pension which in 2004 became part of the SEB Group. Reference date: January 2010
|
