How did a Romanian company manage to climb the international top of Microsoft solution providers? By devising an application able to manage the entire activity of a large industrial group, a system aimed at both PC aces and beginners.
Omnis Group was the winner of the Retail Headquarters Applications section of Microsoft European Retail Application Developers Awards 2001, held in Amsterdam.
The contest is annually organised for application developers on Microsoft platform in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Two of the 120 attendants were the Romanian software companies Softwin and Bit Software.
After the selection, the number of competitors from Eastern Europe decreased to five, among which three companies from Romania.
The finalists were subsequently nominated and, from the 36 companies of the entire targeted region that remained in the competition, only one was coming from Eastern Europe: Omnis Group. Its file comprised the product the company is so proud of: the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution ISIS, which had been implemented at Tofan Group in Romania.
In this section, the Romanian company competed with two Icelandic rivals. Though the solution devised for Tofan is an exceptional one, as experts have confirmed, “we were almost sure we wouldn’t win,” aerban Ghenea, Omnis Group general manager, told Ziarul Financiar.
The contest’s final was held on March 14, and the jury comprised 12 representatives of the most important IT companies in the world.
Omnis Group is the first Romanian software company established with entirely domestic capital. At the beginning, in February 1990, it was named the Association of database experts, as the legislation for establishing a private company was quite unclear at that time.
“This company was established with the exclusive goal of introducing state-of-the-art technology in Romania, combined with the exceptional local intellectual resources,” Ghinea recollects.
One of the firsts projects the company devised together with Geneva University and Canton Hospital is still valid. The project was launched in 1990 and comprised the development of applications aimed at expert processing and interpretation of genetic engineering images.
The company also created ERP ISIS solution for the management of Tofan Group’s activity in its production units from Danubiana, Silvania, Victoria Floresti, Rotras, which have more than 10,000 employees.
Moreover, the system includes an application allowing Tofan to manage the distribution of its products throughout the country. Another application centralises the company’s distribution and production.