In less than a year, the “science city” Skolkovo in the Moscow Region that is now working in virtual mode has brought together researchers and entrepreneurs from a hundred Russian and foreign companies. Each of these companies is involved in research and development in one of the five priority domains: IT, energy efficiency, biomedicine, nuclear and space technologies.
Agent Plus from Astrakhan became the hundredth company officially registered as a resident of Skolkovo – the Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley. The company designs software for people whose jobs require permanent mobility. State-of-the-art technology will help people working in different fields – from sales representatives to doctors, told Sergei Gudyrin, executive director of Agent Plus, in an interview with the Voice of Russia.
“Our software is designed for smartphones and tablet PCs. A person who spends most of his work day outside his office will use all the data stored in the device and add new information.”
According to a study by the American Association of Home Based Businesses, around 40% of employees on the US labour market work outside the office. The number of “remote” employees in Russian is growing at such a rate that lawmakers have decided to make corresponding changes to the Labour Code. Mobility is one of the attributes of today’s labour market, Sergei Gudyrin reminds us. This requires capabilities for online data exchange among certain groups of employees.
“On mature markets, around one third of employees do not have a permanent workplace. They move from place to place to do their job. Sectors that have been using our products for many years have now become 20-30% more efficient. People in Russia are always saying that the country is lagging behind in terms of labour efficiency. Our products offer a chance to change this situation. In our opinion, helping people work more efficiently is a great benefit,” says Sergei Gudyrin.
Software products developed by Agent Plus experts are popular not only in Russia. Over the past seven years, the company has been working in all the CIS states and it is still expanding its presence. “We already have corporate clients in South Africa, Israel and Turkey. Right now, we are trying to negotiate contracts in the US, Canada and Germany,” explains a representative of the hundredth Skolkovo resident.