In the interview with Valery Medvedev, CEO of Digitecture

In a time when digitalization is having an ever greater influence on companies of all sizes, access to modern IT solutions is crucial. Digitecture.eu has made it its mission to facilitate this for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Unique IT products optimize their processes and ensure top-level customer service. Valery Medvedev, CEO of Digitecture, is an expert in this field. For four years, he has been improving and implementing management and analysis systems across various industries – from beauty salons to real estate professionals. With implementation experience from over 100 projects, he is able to build competent sales departments even in the most unusual business niches.

This internationally active, dedicated specialist can quickly adapt to the conditions of the respective market, which helps to functionally integrate even complex technologies into his customers' applications and systems or to effectively integrate them anew. In the interview, he provides insights into the Digitecture mission as well as the importance of digital transformation for SMEs. We also discuss how IT solutions can currently improve business workflows and help companies grow economically.

DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Mr. Medvedev, could you first give us an overview of what exactly Digitecture.eu offers small and medium-sized enterprises and how you differ from other providers?

Valery Medvedev: Our team of professionals from all over the world specializes in developing tools for business analysis. In particular, spreadsheets for different types of accounting. Our catalog contains more than 30 solutions that can be adapted to any task. We prefer Google Spreadsheets, a modern, advanced tool that far surpasses the usual Excel in its capabilities. However, we can easily adapt any of our solutions to the standard Excel format. Since we work on projects globally, we choose solutions that are understandable for the customer. We have worked with almost all business sectors, so we have solutions for financial accounting, inventory management, payroll accounting, and even for the automatic completion of a commercial offer. And every day, we develop and implement new tools so that company managers can identify weaknesses based on concrete data rather than assumptions.

DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Targeted operational digitalization is now the factor for long-term competitiveness. How does Digitecture specifically support companies in optimizing their processes and bringing customer support to top form?

Valery Medvedev: We begin our work with a thorough analysis of a company's processes. This cannot be done in a minute. You need a clear understanding of operational weaknesses. Many of our customers had their documents in complete disarray. For example, one company had no sales department at all, and inquiries were simply handled by an employee who was good at managing documents but knew nothing about sales. Very often, we find that important customer data, inventory, and even accounting data are in absolute chaos. Each process has its own file or spreadsheet, leading to total confusion and preventing the company from growing. We structure these processes. For example, we create guidelines for the sales department, assist with scripts, and automate routine tasks. Imagine that with our tools, a single employee can handle a process instead of three, without compromising quality. Just think of the savings in annual salaries alone.

DIGITAL FUTUREmag: You mentioned that you develop unique tools for competent analysis. Could you explain in more detail how they work and how these features help SMEs make the best strategic decisions?

Valery Medvedev: Take, for example, our popular spreadsheet template for financial accounting. It covers a range of basic accounting needs, and all this data is stored in one place. You enter your figures for a month, and the spreadsheet automatically calculates account balances, all payments to business partners, cash flow statements, and profit-and-loss accounts. This means you don’t have to calculate these metrics from different sources. You can view all important data online at any time. By the way, this is a major advantage. Imagine you’ve just entered new data, the system has calculated it, and an employee on the other side of the city opens the spreadsheet and sees all changes in real time. You no longer need to constantly send files back and forth. Everything is clear and simple. And this is how all our tools work, tailored to the specific area they were designed for. The result: multiple people can access a single spreadsheet simultaneously.

DIGITAL FUTUREmag: A key part of your offering includes web services, chatbots, and CRM systems. Are there best practices that clearly demonstrate the added value these solutions provide to users?

Valery Medvedev: Let me first explain what CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, generally is. It is a system that partially takes over the work of your employees. When set up correctly, it receives inquiries from various sources: websites, calls, ads, social media, letters. In other words, you don’t have to manually compile inquiries from all these sources, but can view them all in one place. You can assign these tasks: for example, “Call Mr. Y at 3:00 PM.” Or record a status like “Ms. Z has been contacted and has received an offer.” You can see all information about the customer, their contact details, and order details summarized in one application. With CRM, you can set up the automatic sending of messages with specific content, such as “Thank you for contacting us,” “When is the best time to reach you?”, “Were you satisfied with your order?” and much more. In addition, you can even listen to and understand the dialogues of your managers to see who among them is really working hard and who is not. When we talk about chatbots, I’d like to give you a specific example from our practice: We developed a chatbot for recruitment, connected it to a recruitment website where resumes are uploaded, and integrated it with a CRM system. When an application is received, the bot sends a welcome message asking the applicant to answer a few questions. If the person contacted does not provide feedback, this indicates no interest—without further information sent to the HR department. If the person responds to the bot, the responsible employee receives the application and conducts an interview with them. Can you imagine how much routine work the bot takes off your hands?! Because you no longer have to review all incoming applications, but only targeted ones. This simplifies the work many times over. And there are many such solutions.

DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Your implementation expertise for administrative and analysis systems in various industries is impressive. What do you think are the biggest challenges for SMEs when introducing current technologies, and how can they successfully overcome them?

Valery Medvedev: The primary issue is the fear of the new. Often, managers worry that they won’t be able to handle it. Or the opposite: managers demand modernization, but company leaders reject it, believing the new system won’t work properly and will bring operations to a standstill. This objection isn’t hard to overcome. We simply demonstrate the tools’ capabilities by showing directly how a spreadsheet calculates data or how the CRM collects inquiries. Other concerns include poor implementation experiences—when people try to build a calculation system themselves or hire unqualified specialists. In both cases, enormous resources are wasted with no result. And of course, the entrepreneur assumes the solution is ineffective and just marketing. But when we look at projects where participants with no experience or understanding of analytics tried to integrate such systems, we see it’s easier to build everything from scratch than to fix what’s already there. If a spreadsheet or CRM is implemented competently, it’s not hard to understand. Plus, we always provide comprehensive training and detailed guides. Another issue is choosing the wrong tool. Sometimes a CRM is implemented right away, when a smart spreadsheet would suffice. Or they pick an unsuitable spreadsheet—a prefabricated solution that doesn’t match operational needs. That complicates business processes.

DIGITAL FUTUREmag: You work on international projects. Where exactly do the needs and challenges of SMEs differ across countries, and how do you adapt your solutions accordingly?

Valery Medvedev: Economic mindsets really vary. I’ve noticed that in Europe, there’s less willingness to adopt something innovative. People rely more on familiar—even outdated—tools. That means we have to explain the benefits in detail, walk through every aspect, and conduct product presentations. America is more progressive in this regard. Projects here may even be more interesting and complex. As for adaptation, for Europe—especially Germany—we’ve converted some of the most popular Google spreadsheets into standard Excel to highlight the difference between a familiar application and a modern one. The work isn’t difficult, and it’s clearer for customers. They can see the familiar format, try it out, and make a decision. Overall, adapting to a country or industry isn’t critical. The most important thing is to listen to the customer, understand their tasks, pain points, or challenges, and find a solution.

DIGITAL FUTUREmag: To wrap up, we’d like to hear about Digitecture’s long-term vision and goals, and how you aim to shape the future of digitalization for SMEs.

Valery Medvedev: I would like the economy to be more actively involved in the digitalization process today. And I think we will make every effort to do so. We not only use ready-made systems but also develop new products from scratch. To answer your question about web development. And my task as managing director is primarily to bring together the best IT specialists so that we can set the pace of the market in the field of digitalization. Of course, I’m not trying to be number one here, but I don’t deny that in a few years, people will hear from us in a new way.

DIGITAL FUTUREmag: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us and for sharing valuable insights into your portfolio.