When one talks about the EU’s grants and subsidies for Croatia, the saying “Time is money” has never been more applicable. Croatia is awaiting exuberant amounts of money for its digital transformation, and when Croatia withdrawals its funds, Croatia needs to be decisive, agile, confident, tactical and mindful of the time constraints for obtaining their funds. One solution that could help Croatia in effectively using its funds is FIYU.
To soften the economic and social consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic and ultimately create a more robust and agile European economy, on the 19th of February, 2021, the EU has established the NEXT Generation EU fund. The fund’s main goal is to prepare the EU for the green and digital transitions and gives all EU members states the flexibility to specify the areas in which they would like to invest. After submitting their Recovery and Resilience plans, countries will have access to the recovery and resilience facility (RRF). From this mechanism, state members, through their own recovery and resilience plans, will be able to use EU grants and subsidies to finance necessary reforms and connecting investments which will expedite the post pandemic economic recovery.
One Billion Euros for the Digital transition in Croatia
Croatia will have at its disposal, from the RRF framework, grants and bursaries amounting to 6.3 billion euros. In addition to this, Croatia will also have access to loans in the amount of 3.6 billion euros. When the 24.5 billion euros from the NEXT Generation EU financial instrument and an additional 5.3 billion euros from the multiannual financial framework are dispensed to Croatia, which will hopefully be withdrawn by 2023, Croatia will have in the next 10 years (with the greatest amount paid out in the first 5 years), a combined 30 billion euros in European funds. The precondition for using these funds is drafting a national recovery and resilience plan for the years 2021-2026 (NRRP) which is in line with the goals of the RRF and is submitted to the European Commission by July of 2021.
The digital transition is key for strengthening the EU’s social and economic recovery, and the most notable document that will become the framework for dispensing these funds is the NRRP 2021-2026, which will enact 76 legal reforms and 146 investments. Some of the investments will concentrate on the digital transformation of the public sector and society. From the 6.3 billion euros, 20.4%, or 1.28 billion euros, of the funds will be directly invested into the EU’s digital transformation.
The EU funds that will be obtained will be mainly intended for democratizing work, increasing economic resilience and competitiveness, and reducing expenses incurred down the road for a further digital transformation. Though, one cannot come to this conclusion so easily- as mentioned above, Croatia needs to be decisive, agile, confident, tactical and mindful of the time constraints for obtaining the funds. However, we have witnessed, to many times before, projects which receive EU funds, grants and subsidies in cooperation with other companies, but unfortunately the projects bare very little fruit.
There are many reasons for such failures. Croatia, since joining the EU in 2013, has been consistently ranked amongst one of the worst countries specifically for its ineffective withdrawal and application of EU funds. Some of the key reasons are the lack of EU funds experts in the public and private sectors, the lack of knowledge about obtaining funds which effects applicants’ proper preparation of EU funds applications. Time is money and Croatia has sadly wasted both since EU accession.
A Digital platform that guarantees success in obtaining funding
Now here comes a solution that solves the equation. The digital platform FIYU can help Croatia more effectively digitally transform. Our dedicated team of consultants and experts who manage the development of FIYU are now at the disposal of companies who, with our mediation, can successfully apply for EU funds from the NRRP mechanism. Our product will help enhance any company’s competitiveness and make them sustainable on the market.
One important thing FIYU does when applying for EU funds is helping users obtain the correct information at the right time. In this day and age, with so much content being produced with inadequate and inaccurate information, it is very important to cypher through content to come to quick accurate conclusions. We had all of this in mind when we started to strategically participate in NRRP projects. We wanted to create a turnkey solution so that all of our clients had direct communication with one key account manager so that on-time information can be relayed to them and consequently helps clients fill out all the necessary documentation to apply for funds. After our they receive their EU funds, our clients can rest assured as they choose a well-established and reliable company partner with more than 300 projects behind them. FIYU has know-how from the experience Serengeti boasts as a nearshoring and offshoring company. FIYU has a full code rapid application development platform (RAD) which contains numerous technical and business benefits for companies who are determined to expedite obtaining funds.
FIYU saved a client two years of R&D
FIYU was launched in April of last year, and works as a Full code Rapid Application Development platform (RAD). RAD adapted platforms are databases of software development, and even hardware components throughout the past, and their biggest advantages is the expedition of processes in building applications. This is due to RADs using proven methods, approaches and components to build the best possible solution. As one software expert with over 18 years of experience said- every project, application or type of software during their career was always met with the same growing pains and common development issues. Our client said that around 90% of projects that they worked on, one of these common development issues would appear. They have always imagined a platform that would, at its core, address these issues so that they could avoid them all together. Now, more than any time in history, we live in a time when a good idea can disrupt the status quo on the market and revolutionize how we do something. Coming to an idea is not the hard part, but realizing an idea in an adequate way so that it is presentable and ready for distribution is the hardest hurdle for any business.
The ability to expedite a product’s market launch and capitulate ideas with an application made on the FIYU platform was the guiding light with which we led when we presented FIYU to the world. Judging by the case study that we delivered to our client, a respectable logistics company with international pedigree, it was concluded that FIYU saved them 80% of their time that would have usually been spent on developing their own software solution. This is an equivalent of 2 years of software development. This data more than clearly shows the benefits of FIYU’s application for projects financed by the National Resilience and Recovery Plan. Time is money. Your money today will not be worth the same in 2 years’ time. This is why it is important for companies to successfully and efficiently take out EU funds for their projects and be able to launch their product as quickly with minimal hurdles.
Benefits and user experience
Many companies that have a niche doing software development and have inhouse software developers. For many others this is a luxury in this day and age. However, the volume of work in handling internal problems, without too many tasks in the development domain, is big enough on its own. That is one part of the problem considering that many companies use unresponsive and unintuitive software solutions, some of which are over 20-30 years old. These legacy code systems are very hard to maintain and update. Finding a young and experienced software team who can tackle updating and maintaining these systems would be a feat for any HR department.
FIYU as an advanced and multifaceted RAD platform, which has different subscription models based on your needs, can be integrated as an addon to your company’s Platform as a Service (Paas) system. It enables partner companies and clients one important thing- to do core business in their own domain. The technical part of the job is outsourced to an experienced team of software architects, engineers, Dev ops experts and business analysts. That all results in a faster product market launch of a Minimal viable product that has a proof of concept, and of course, doing all this while reducing R&D costs for you.
Implementing predefined models, High-quality code and the newest technology in the beginning fazes of developing an application will help solve the most common bugs and problems and will down the road solve any future headaches that you would normally have to face. By not focusing on common problems, your software team can focus on other tasks and issues at hand. Using FIYU ensures that your final product avoids scope creep and helps to avoid starting the product journey over again. One other big benefit of using FIYU is freedom. Serengeti as a vendor, allows you to use the FIYU team whenever you need them- there is always technical and business support included. The user experience and intime feedback relaying to the FIYU team is a very important feature which we thoroughly thought about while creating FIYU.
Save time, money and your employees’ sanity
Other than the mentioned case study which stated that FIYU can save users up to 80% of time in developing their application, it also helps reduce the amount of money and other resources spent on a quality development team. This ultimately gives developers ease of mind in choosing the right approach, methods and programming language to create their solutions. We know all to well that not choosing the right approach, method or programming language can lead to low employee morale and developer burnout when needing to start the project over again. Burnout and mental health are being talked about more in the business world and especially in the computer programming world. Making work more efficient and setting your employees up for success is an additional benefit of FIYU.
If your developers are in the beginning fazes of developing your application: speed, adaptability, and interoperability of the used components are key factors in which FIYU can help. FIYU’s scalability, is its greatest advantage when comparing it to other RAD platforms. With time, it is only natural that your company will have further ambitions and will want to scale upwards. With minimal adjustments, FIYU is can grow with your company so that you can focus on competing on the market.
Additionally, we are witnessing the fast transition of startups, whose core business is outside of the IT sector, that can rival big traditional enterprises in a matter of a few years. Every experienced decision maker/CTO is aware of the fact that it is a big job to understand which direction to take when developing an application. The process alone is a gigantic task which requires time, patience, persistent focus, good synergy between the members of a team of professionals, and ultimately it requires a lot of financial capital. You can save on all of these factors by choosing a quality partner who can categorize and present the best-case studies and user experience testimonials from known international clients in western Europe and the U.S.A.
FIYU is globally applicable
FIYU, Serengeti’s innovative solution, is a complete product ready for use on the global market. As a renown IT company who is one of the leaders in digitalization, this is a platform that is based on the best developer practices so that small to medium enterprises can become more efficient, especially in the beginning fazes of their projects. After two years of developing FIYU, there has been a great deal of work done over this platform and this year over 20 of our clients will be implementing FIYU.
