How we made the project “Boosting local traditional industries with IT capacities”

Since April to July 2021, TechUkraine, in partnership with APPAU – Association of Industrial Automation of Ukraine, International Association of Culture & Creativity, Ukrainian Culture Fund and with the financial support of the European Union and German government and implemented by the German federal company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH was working on the project “Boosting local traditional industries with IT capacities” which aims to increase the competitiveness of machine building and creative industries via their digitalization with the help of Ukrainian IT companies.

Why did we choose this topic? 

Being insiders of the tech sphere, interested in creative industries, and having partners in machinery, we understood that there is a lack of communication between industries. Still, it could become the blue ocean of potential cooperation in Ukraine that nobody dove in before. So we described the mission of the project as:

  • To make the needs of the industries in focus visible and understandable for the IT sector to foster collaboration;
  • To promote the idea and possibilities of digitalization within traditional industries;
  • To help industries unite and mature, bringing best IT practices there.

On the other hand, IT sector also needs a developed local market to test new ideas and find first paying customers inside the country – to experiment and find the right product-to-market fit and have more starting funds to conquer international markets. 

Key goals

To achieve these goals, we started with developing the map of the project:

  • create an overview of 2 industries and their stakeholders – Machine Building & Creative industries of Ukraine on TechUkraine.org portal as a platform;
  • showcase the success stories of the collaboration of IT and Machine Building & Creative industries in Ukraine and globally;
  • find and publish on the portal the challenges and IT needs within 2 industries (based on the industries surveys);
  • organize matchmaking between IT, Creative Industries, and Machine Building representatives to solve the existing challenges, boost the efficiency of the business, and help them scale up globally.

Team

To make it possible, we gathered the team that consisted of the following members:

  1. Nataly Veremeeva – Director of TechUkraine, support and collaboration with key partners, matchmaking events organization
  2. Inna Stelmakh – Creative advisor of TechUkraine, ex-portal Lead, in charge of developing and design of the Industry Chapters on the portal and all visual materials of the project, matchmaking events organization
  3. Iryna Supruniuk – communication manager of TechUkraine, in charge of all content creation (overviews, articles, news), partners and media relations, social media management, etc
  4. Maksym Bugriy – analyst of the project, in charge of gathering, monitoring, and analysis of relevant information about the sectors, partners, and database of the spheres, etc
Inna Stelmakh
Maksym Bugriy
Iryna Supruniuk
Nataly Veremeeva

The power of partnership

In the beginning, we started with communication with potential partners: 

  • APPAU – Association of Industrial Automation of Ukraine, 
  • International Association of Culture & Creativity, 
  • Ukrainian Culture Fund. 

All of them were open for cooperation and support – we greatly appreciate the huge input made by them: Alexander Yurchak (APPAU), Anastasia Pavlova (UCF), Pavlo Bilodid (Culture & Creativity)! Thanks to them, we received access to quality audiences in creative industries and machinery interested in further digitalizing the projects. 

Alexander Yurchak
Anastasia Pavlova
Pavlo Bilodid

Deliverables and results

  • Designs and pages structure

Inna Stelmakh formulated the concept of the pages. The design was created in line with TechUkraine branding guidelines, and its twist was designed especially for Industry Chapter. 

In cooperation with Iryna and Maksym, who created the content part of the pages, Inna supervised the creation of the pages that was done by our old and respected partner – Sigma Software Group:

Every Chapter consists of: 

1) Description of the Industry, 

2) Highlights in numbers 

3) Industry sectors, 

4) Definition of the current state, 

5) Future of the Industry, 

6) News about successful collaborations, 

7) Success stories of collaborations between industry players and IT sector, 

8) Challenges of the industry

  • Challenges

We know that local industries aim to work quickly and efficiently with IT companies. So developing the challenges page, we have compiled the challenges that the Industries were facing in 2021.

We gathered 55 challenges: 18 by machine building, 37 by creative industries.

How does the page work?

  • Use the Industry, Cities and Challenges filter to find the most relevant challenge.
  • Fill in the registration form on the current Call page
  • Expect a letter from TechUkraine with the next steps.

The process of gathering the challenges:

The challenges of companies and organizations in creative industries and machine building were collected based on agreed methods of 

  1. scouting through partnerships with umbrella associations, 
  2. target research efforts by the Project Team, and 
  3. targeted advertising in social media.

Of those, the most effective were the partnerships with Ukrainian Cultural Foundation – on creative industries and APPAU – on machine building. For challenges on machine building, the Project Team relied on background knowledge that the organization had from the development of the Export Strategy of Ukraine. To record the challenges, the Team designed the poll to identify the issues that target companies had, the desired ways to address them, and the envisaged results. In addition, in four cases of Creative Industries, the Team conducted in-depth phone interviews.

While in the case of Machine Building, most candidates for the challenges were consulted based on the recommendations of APPAU and its regional clusters: thus, the partner organizations already had basic knowledge about the challenges of target companies. After the polling and expert interviews, shortlisted candidate companies were asked again to narrow down their challenges in the Registration Forms for the event – providing brief introductions for IT companies during the breakout sessions in separate virtual “rooms” at the events.

Also, we discussed partnership opportunities with media to boost the coverage of the project and agreed to share our materials via the following media resources: 

  • Success stories/showcases

One of the critical parts of the project was to tell success stories of the existing synergy between industries, to showcase the examples which could inspire others to start to digitalize the business and open new opportunities.

Iryna and Maksym created a shortlist of the companies and projects that could be the most successful and exciting to describe and promote. Iryna sent the e-mails to all of the companies we chose, and most of them (95%) were ready to join the project and helped with details of implementing tech solutions in their work. It was a pleasure to start with such fantastic companies as Ajax and their project for Norwegian Bergen city and digital cinema Docuspace by documentary festival Docudays – they represented the power of new technologies and the variety of potential integrations.

So, we wrote 16 success stories of cooperations between traditional industries and IT representatives:

Also, Iryna wrote 24 news of the highlighted and benchmarking companies of industries that are now much more visible for a local and global audiences: 

  • Social media

We have published our news and success stories on FB and LinkedIn pages and got a splash of reactions from local and international followers. The general amount of project related posts across channels are – 80 posts:

  • Facebook – 40
  • Linkedin – 40

We promoted the articles on Facebook and our total reach is up to 1 000 000. More details of boosting:

  • Creative industries & IT articles: FB – 619K, Linkedin – 2600 reach
  • Machinery & IT articles: FB – 351K, Linkedin – 2360 reach
  • Challenges page promo – 12K
  • Matchmaking event machine promo – 16K
  • Matchmaking event creative promo – 8K

We saw the growth of the TechUkraine page’s audience during April-June: FB +100 (followers, likes), Linkedin +450

We also used our Mailchimp newsletter: total audience – 1686 (growth over 150), newsletters – 529 open rates (36%)

  • Feedback from the ecosystem

We received a lot of uplifting feedback from different stakeholders during the project – companies, founders, users, embassies, media, etc. We are glad that we have started to uncover the blind spot of cooperation between IT, machinery, and creative industries, highlighting the most prominent but still unknown cases for a broad audience, showing the effective and successful stories and options of synergy in sometimes surprising ways.

Matchmaking

On 17-18 of June, TechUkraine team held two working meetings in the framework of implementing the project “Boosting local traditional industries with IT capacities,” where business representatives from machine building/creative industries and IT exchanged experiences and established business connections in tete-a-tete conversations. We aimed to establish communication between representatives of IT, creative industries, and machine building to address the identified challenges.

The organization of events, as well as the whole project, became possible with the assistance of the project “Utilization and Implementation of the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine in the field of trade / EU4Business: SME Competitiveness and Internationalisation”, funded by the European Union and the German government and implemented by the German federal company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. Both meetings were organized in partnership with the Association of Industrial Automation Enterprises of Ukraine (APPAU), the International Association of Culture and Creativity, and the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.

58 companies registered for the two events, and 24 companies took part. As a result of the matchmaking events, potential partnerships were formed: 29 for creative industries and IT, and 26 for machine building and IT.  Representatives of industries noted that the new format of interaction, although somewhat unusual, is very effective for networking and further cooperation.

We asked the participants to share their experiences and next steps after the event and got some inspiring insights. The feedback complements the hypothesis that became the fact that the creation of bridges between industries and the establishment of comfortable communication between representatives of IT, creative industries, and mechanical engineering is demanded by all sides. This type and format of communication was new for all; however, results showed its efficiency and growth potential. So the strategic goals are to address existing industry challenges, increase business efficiency and promote access to global markets.

Take a look at the case studies by participants:

Case study 1: KinoTabor

Vladimir Nagorny, producer of KinoTabor initiative: “Thanks to the TechUkraine’s matchmaking event, our cinema-theatre startup managed to get acquainted with two companies in the IT field, discuss prospects for cooperation, and find new opportunities. 

Most importantly, we came up with ideas that would not have come to our minds without this networking. 

Thanks to the mediation of TechUkraine, we believe that our horizons have expanded, and our opportunities have increased.”

Case study 2: Ukrainian Down Syndrome Organization

Yuliya Dmytrenko, manager of educational and cultural projects of Ukrainian Down Syndrome Organization: “We want to thank you for organizing such helpful matchmaking. As representatives of the social sphere implementing projects in various fields, including cultural, finding potential partners is quite tricky.

Thanks to your event, we talked and found common ground with companies such as:

1) Coreteca in their experience of creating online platforms.

2) Solution Mentors in their experience of creating document management software.

3) Daria Sedykh with her experience in software and technical specifications and calculations for digital projects.

4) IT-Enterprise in the area of creating databases.

So far, we have talked to some of them after the matchmaking and plan to return later for a more in-depth discussion of potential cooperation.”

Case Study 3: Corporation “FED”

Sergii Sokolov, CIO&CDTO at Joint-Stock Company “Corporation “FED: “After the events related to the communication of mechanical engineering with IT, we found 3 companies whose services are interesting to us. We received catalogs of companies and held bilateral meetings in which we discussed possible options for cooperation. 

At the moment, the disposition is such that these firms understand our requirements for building an integrated IT system; we know the niches for which these firms work. When planning the implementation of strategic IT tasks, these firms will likely be involved in work performance (at least – receiving a commercial and technical proposal for participation in the competition). 

Thank you for organizing these events!”

Case Study 4: EcoTest

Ms Oksana SKORYK Business Development Manager, PE “SPPE “Sparing-Vist Center” – EcoTest:  “Our company PE “SPPE “Sparing-Vist Center” is looking for the development company for our devices’ project management software. We wanted to find an IT company to cooperate with our enterprise as an engineering company for our hardware-software projects. Besides, we are looking for companies that can create a web page for the new direction of our business.

As a result of the matchmaking event, we found potential partners for all of the mentioned projects. Now, we continue communication with 3 IT companies: Coreteka, Solution Mentors Inc. and Gigacloud. And we will engage for our projects more companies from the list of participants as soon as we create clear technical requirements for our tasks and find at least partial grant financing for our projects mentioned above.

Such events are very useful, and we hope that TechUkraine will continue to hold the practice of matchmaking events.”

Case Study 5: Carbon Residence

Many thanks for organizing and conducting matchmaking

During the event, we managed to get acquainted with three companies and with one of them formulated the task for the website that we need to promote the project.

We identified the most successful CRM system for us, selected a template for filling the site but disagreed on the price.

It was decided to return to the issue of cooperation later when we have the required amount for creating the website.

Thanks to TechUkraine for the event initiative; we will be grateful for information on future projects.

Case Study 6: Alba film

The initiative to create a match-up IT and creative industry organized by the TechUkraine team is exciting. Very well organized and well thought out.

It is helpful for cross-sectoral interaction. Another thing is that within those participants who took part in the initiative, this interaction had a very limited service nature; it is not in the joint production of a creative product. Current interaction has the potential at the level of service interaction, companies in the creative industry need a site, IT company creates a site. But most of us already have portals.

The assembly point is interesting in another aspect, at least for me. We have an educational laboratory for professionals, and we produce a professionally creative product, write scripts, direct them and produce. 

Where in IT can we cross? Obviously, this is the gaming industry. In the gaming industry, the creative team is often self-taught. At the same time, Alba film provides educational workshops, and it could interact as a contractor to create games in tandem, covering the creative component. The IT company could cover the technical part to be similar to the creative cooperation – co-creation.

I would take part in such a meeting with great interest.

Case Studies 7: Dakh Theatre – GOGOLFEST

The event was productive for our team, as we could meet many representatives of the IT sector for potential cooperation in cultural projects.

The event helped us understand the challenges facing the cultural sector in terms of modern technology and what solutions could be found.

Also, special thanks to Iryna Supruniuk for the article How experimental Dakh theatre embodied the art in digital space about the projects of GogolFest, the Center for Contemporary Art “DAKH” and the Laboratory for digital solutions “GF_LSD.” The article accumulated basic information about the implemented projects in English, which eventually helped us during the presentation at the Edinburgh Festival.

We hope for further cooperation and the opportunity to implement joint events.

Vlad Troitskyi – Director of the Dakh Theatre, President of NGO international multidisciplinary festival GOGOLFEST 

Andrii Palatnyi – project manager of Dakh Theatre, festival curator and international network lead of  GOGOLFEST 

Key insights:

  • A quality first-hand experience by true pioneers of the spheres (Ajax, 3DLook, Freckled Sky, IT-Enterprise), 
  • Vast number of efficient projects and successful companies validate the hypothesis of growing trend and demand on the tech in machinery and creative industries in all its colossal variety
  • Creating stories like Dakh was a true exploration into the field. The story demonstrates the new vision on the public reflection, perception of the cultural products by implementing tech solutions
  • Creating stories about IT is one thing, creating live cases of using IT in real sectors is another, we saw increased interest and a lot of reposts, some of the stories we have described, created extra opportunities for the companies we were not foreseeing.   
  • Companies do need to get help in organizing matchmaking sessions, and despite the long-term orientation of this activity, it is bound to bring results over time  

Key conclusions

  • We believe there is a huge need for this type of activity from the market. In our ideal scenario we would like to continue the work started and further enforce the team by more content creators and promotion experts (literary editor, video production, targetologist).
  • We believe the focus should be more on stories itself and running matchmaking events, with no big focus on gathering challenges, since the companies are usually in their early stage of formulating their needs in IT and the biggest value is promotion and connecting companies and people.   
  • We believe we should create more success stories and cases and promote the best cases of tech-friendly companies from creative industries and machine building worldwide. This gives a giant boost to companies.
  • There is a strong need in a consultants team, that would work with companies of creative and machine-building sectors and help them formulate their business requirements and translate them into technical one. The matchmaking part would be greatly improved with this extra work done.  
  • Provided we could recommend best matches to get grants from supporting organizations, it will further boost the interest in digitalization among more traditional businesses.
  • International cooperation and events, showing local companies true potential of the IT sector in the industries in focus can bring new ideas of how to use the power of IT to increase profits and global competitiveness.  

Thank European Union and Germany for making the project come true and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH for supporting.

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