Swept up day in and day out in the entrepreneurial environment, you sometimes need to stop, reflect, rethink the pillars of your business that help you be where you are. FivePlus Solutions is a company like many others, it has its trials and tribulations, it goes through challenges, it has proud accomplishments, but most importantly: it has friends.
Alin Niță, Managing Director.

Does 14 years mean a lot or a little to FivePlus and its founders?

Alin Niță: It depends on the perspective you have, how you look at this age and what you set out to do with your business and your life.

In the entrepreneurial environment with each passing year, each challenge, each stage of business development, you become more experienced, more seasoned. The life of a business contains many ingredients and to grow you need a continuous and balanced combination of the right people, people to grow, leadership, work processes that are fine-tuned and continually adapted, focus on bigger projects as well as smaller ones, projects that bring recurring cashflow, projects of the heart.

When you have to simultaneously pursue financial stability, have the right collaborators, open new doors for projects, be efficient and more, all with a handful of people, it takes more time to get it all done.

Looking around and at many statistics, I’d say it’s a nice “age”. When I look at the plans we have on the list, we still need time to lean into them.

It helps that there are 3 of us shareholders and we share the management tasks. Iulian and Florian are equally committed to the company’s growth.

What are the most important lessons learned during these years?

Alin Niță: People, partners, employees.

To avoid toxic people who steal your energy.

To value people, partners, employees, directing them to the skill area where they feel comfortable and can give more. We are different personalities, different characters, we may have the same goal, but we think differently about how we get there.

In every employee there is a “marshal’s baton”. They need to be challenged, created the right environment to create, come up with ideas and grow. We practically grow together.

It is not enough to have a valuable idea.It gets lost in the other routine activities if it is not accompanied by concrete action, a work plan, a proper execution, a follow-up of progress as in any project.

Every element on the chain of a work process is important. Each with its impact. It is important and necessary to identify internal business processes, to know the inputs and outputs of each sub-process, what skills and activities are needed, whether it is sales, application development or in the financial area. It would also be important to define indicators and measure results.

You can’t predict all the external factors of the company or predict every activity in detail. It requires a lot of research, analysis, accessing the right networking circles. You can however have some contingency plans B in mind.

From “ideal” to “real” there are always differences. I’ve learned that it’s healthy to look up, to have a controlled dose of risk, to remain confident. For me, the journey matters more than the outcome itself.

Can you list some of your proudest achievements?

Alin Niță: One of our inclinations from the beginning has been to develop projects that cover as wide a range of niches as possible and can be resold. You work once and enjoy the subsequent resale. Even when we worked on custom projects, an eye was also cast on generalising them. This approach had and has its pluses and minuses. On the first DocPlus solution we invested approx. 3 years to bring it to a comfortable level of maturity. In other applications we had to double or more the effort invested to generalise them.

In retrospect, I am glad that these decisions were taken, even if expectations were not always at the desired level. Over time, they have attracted other projects and generated new ideas and partnerships.

We have thus created and launched several brands in the market, applications that with a little effort can be implemented quickly:

MagazinPlus – a marketplace for local communities,

Avizier Digital – a medium for disseminating information,

ePlaceEvent – a form of booking places at events,

Registratura electronică – a document management of input-output, several other projects that have a higher degree of replicability.

There have been and are service-oriented projects such as

 

OptimizarePlus – for activities such as SEO,

emSphere – for pay per click campaigns (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Waze etc.),

BusinessUp – for the development of e-commerce websites and shops.

Every project has a story behind it, and stories strengthen a brand and captivate you.

What are the market targets at the moment?

Alin Niță: We have competences oriented towards 2 directions: the first is related to the development of applications for automating internal processes, creating an internal collaborative environment, solutions for increasing people’s productivity. The second one… we have been growing for over 12 years, the online marketing agency. Here we cover many of the activities specific to the online environment, from creating websites to creating and managing promotional campaigns.

We have plans to develop both directions and they really complement each other nicely, we address solutions both within the organisation to bring added efficiency, but also to the outside where opportunities come from.

Our customers value this company know-how and we grow practically together.

What are the challenges of FivePlus today?

Alin Niță: Let’s dose the effort to run the projects we are involved in so that we have time for the creative area, to maintain and even increase a level of internal efficiency, to promote new solutions in the market and to leverage commercial and strategic partnerships. Against the existing background of the economic market, the health and availability of people in the company, uncertainties, the low mental level of those with whom you interact, cash flow, payment of salaries and taxes, any decision must be supported with a lot of analytical sense and less emotion.

May I ask where you see yourself in the next few years?

Alin Niță: These times don’t give you many alternatives to think long-term. Beyond wrapping it up with optimism, it’s a fragile situation where life puts you in different positions to think and act.

I am confident that what has been built so far is a foundation for the period ahead. I have faith in our potential and that of every person on the team that is putting their shoulder to the wheel to look to the future. I have faith in our partners and customers and in the idea that together we are stronger. I trust that through our skills and solutions we help more companies grow. At least they give me confidence that we are talking about a future.

A final thought?

Alin Niță: By the way, with many customers and partners we have gone beyond the status of supplier-beneficiary, we have become closer and when you hit hard you see the true power of relationships. I want to thank them in this way as well. We have learnt and are continually learning from each other.

The team is the mirror of internal leadership. It’s not perfect, we have many flaws, by far there is much to learn and apply. We strive to make it a priority in the life of the company and every employee proud that we are or have been a team.

I’ve made big mistakes and small mistakes. I’ve made bad decisions and good decisions. From every action I put something more in both the experience box and the erosion box. So far I have come out on top (FivePlus 😊). I wouldn’t change the past!!!

I want more balance between business and family life. That PLUS from FivePlus to be one that adds to every action we do, every project, every person we interact with.

In conclusion, I would like to thank Cătălin Grosu, producer of Forum IT, for this interview and for taking me back in time.