In an exclusive interview with Telecom Review during the 18th edition of the Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit, Rafał Lenczewski, CEO of Pretius, shared his insights on the challenges and opportunities in developing enterprise software solutions, particularly for the telecommunications, media, and finance sectors.
Since 2006, Pretius has delivered bespoke software solutions for the telco, media, and finance industries. What are the most significant challenges in developing enterprise applications for these sectors, and how are you overcoming them?
Delivering bespoke software solutions for enterprises is challenging. Over the years, we have identified key areas that might cause problems.
First, the major significant challenge is frequent changes in business requirements—that’s quite obvious because we live in a fast-changing world, so we need to be ready to adapt to these changes.
The second challenge is the pace of change; our customers can’t afford a long development process, so we need to deliver quickly.
Another issue is complexity. Our systems are usually quite complex, and this complexity presents itself in different forms, such as sophisticated business processes, complex IT architecture, an IT landscape, high-security standards, or strict regulations like GDPR. We need to cover all these issues in our solutions.
Another pain point is legacy systems. Large enterprises have a long history and several systems they utilize for daily operations. Some of them are legacy systems, and we need to manage them appropriately.
So, how do you overcome all these challenges? First and foremost, by ensuring close cooperation with our customers and a deep understanding of their needs and business. We need this to deliver a solution that meets their needs and expectations.
Secondly, we need to be flexible and customize our working style to fit our customers’ working style. We should follow an agile mindset to be ready for upcoming changes and adapt to them.
And, of course, technology is important because choosing the right technology for our customers’ real problems helps them; it can speed up the development process—and that’s how we work at Pretius.
It’s not only about coding; it’s also about using product platforms that can standardize and optimize the software development process so that customers can benefit from these features and focus on delivering real value to their customers.
With many years of experience building enterprise applications across various industries, what are the key trends in software development that businesses need to prepare for in the next few years?
As the CEO of a software development company, I recognize a few key trends shaping how enterprise applications should be built in the future.
The first trend is low-code and no-code development. These platforms are game changers because they can accelerate the development process, reduce the overall cost of development, and improve the software development process by introducing standardization and governance. I’m talking about things like ready-made components, AI adoption, security standards, etc.
It’s also important that we collaborate with our customers using these platforms as a co-creation model so we can share our knowledge and expertise while enabling our customers’ internal teams (often non-technical personnel) to actively participate in the development process. Together, we can build the final solutions.
Another trend that is also very important is something that everyone is talking about now – Generative AI (GenAI) and AI. They form integral parts of software development, and we need to adopt these technologies to deliver our business solutions. Given they touch almost every aspect of business, such as streamlining business processes, enhancing user experience, or improving the decision-making process, GenAI and AI help address all these issues; however, to utilize AI and GenAI, we need data. Thus, another trend that is also on my roadmap is data management.
Large enterprises generate a massive amount of data. We need to ensure that we process this data properly so that we can make better decisions based on it.
Cloud-native development is another trend, which is also very important because, again, this platform provides a level of standardization and can reduce the cost of development by using, for example, native components to optimize the process. It can also speed up the process and provide features like scalability for our resources.
The last thing that I would like to mention is something that we can’t (or shouldn’t) call a ‘trend’ but, nevertheless, is very important—standardization and security. We need to integrate security patterns into our software because security plays a vital role in our world.
Building long-term client relationships is a cornerstone of Pretius’s business model. What strategies have been the most effective in ensuring client satisfaction and fostering trust, particularly in a fast-evolving technology landscape?
Building long-term relationships with our customers has always been a cornerstone for Pretius. So, how do we achieve this? I think it’s all about trust. You can’t build a rapport without gaining trust; fortunately, we have an 18-year proven track record. We can show our customers our broad expertise, previous experience, and previous projects, so it’s quite easy to prove that we are capable of implementing the projects they want to share with us.
Secondly, when we get a new customer, we usually try to start with something relatively small, such as a small project or MVP, because it demonstrates how we work and how we can deliver real value very quickly to our customers. After this first project, they usually decide to continue cooperating with us, and they want to give us another projects or provide other services, and that’s the strategy that works for us. For instance, our first customer – Play (a leading Polish telecommunication operator), with whom we started cooperating in 2006, is still with us.
However, trust is just one factor; there are other areas that we need to address. Close cooperation, a deep understanding of our customer needs and business, and a proper attitude—being flexible and ready to adapt to changes—are all important.
We also value clear, professional, and transparent communication because it fosters mutual trust between us and our customers and allows us to focus on work. We are committed to delivering high-quality and complex services as, by leveraging these services, we can cover the whole software development cycle from the very beginning through the design, development, production launch, and maintenance. This means that our customers can outsource the whole project to Pretius, and we can take care of complex projects. They also avoid dealing with several software development companies, so they appreciate that. Moreover, technology is equally important, and the convergence of technology and software development that sets us apart.
We have demonstrated that we are not only attached to, or set on, one technology but can provide a variety of technologies to solve our customers’ problems. Consequently, they have started to recognize our company as not a typical software development company that codes the solution but as a partner/advisor in the IT world. This is our primary goal—to be a company recognized as an IT partner that can combine business and technology to provide real value.
