Meet Elena Marinova, President and Founder of Musala Soft, an impeccable businesswoman who strived exceptionally in order to thrive in the markets of ever evolving IT Sector. Through quoting- “Vision, empathy, passion and courage. The rest is management skills that can be trained,” she emphasizes on the traits required to prevail. Her unique ideologies and methodologies helped her to achieve many milestones in her pathway. She sees her company as a cause, yet not a destination but a journey. She claims that the influence the company is creating on its people, clients and society has no limits. She started Musala Soft together with her partner, Delyan Lilov, 20 years ago. He had previous experience in IT, while Elena was still enjoying part time jobs simultaneously completing her Masters in Strategic Management at Sofia University. Musala Soft professional team provides expertise and creativity in all elements of the software life cycle – IT consulting, analysis, design, development, testing, implementation, integration and maintenance. Its offices in Sofia, Ruse, Burgas, Bulgaria and Skopje, Macedonia follow the latest design and agile teamwork trends to ensure work environment and processes where achievements flourish in all elements of its service portfolio.
Innovative Solutions at one’s Door Step
She states that the company’s manifesto describes its solutions well: ‘We build future generation IT solutions for impactful organizations. We engage creativity and innovation to deliver quality and value for its clients. We believe in mutual respect, inspired teamwork and continuous development.’
“Fact is, we easily predict the future, because we create it with our clients,” says Elena. These clients are leading innovative multinational organizations which have the potential to change the world. Together with them and their R&D departments Musala Soft delivers technological solutions which are changing industries and lives on a global level. They make an impact combining technologies, innovation and people, transforming revolutionary ideas into everyday life. The company do this by upgrading and developing all of the elements in developing a software solution – IT consulting, analysis, design, development, testing, delivering, integration and maintenance. It combines creativity, years of expertise and knowledge how to deliver a service with high added value in geographically distributed teams.
A System for Knowledge-sharing
Musala Soft’s portfolio is built on attractive, innovative and scalable projects for impactful organizations. Elena and her team make sure that there is healthy competition within the company and facilitate a creative approach together with comfort in the working place, mentoring, understanding and mutual respect. The company maintains a culture of constant learning and self-perfection, invest in training, professional certification as well as career development programs. It has a flexible approach to evaluating employees and reviewing their remuneration based on the achievements and performances.
“We have a system for knowledge-sharing,” quotes Elena. In 2019, the company has held 150+ training initiatives with 2500+ participants and provided access to the leading platforms for online education for all its employees. This turned out to be a great asset for Musala Soft. “During the state of emergency brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic, we all moved to work from home, communication was absolutely key and training opportunities have been even better – we expanded our training activities adapting and replacing classical ones with online forms,” adds the President of Musala Soft.
Elena’s Life Achievements
Elena holds a number of rewards and recognitions but emphasizes on her achievements, by stating different aspects of her personal and professional life:
- Her 13 year old son, who is growing into a smart and good man.
- Her network of great people that she can rely on in every situation.
- The business’s success but also the social impact that Musala Soft has on the most talented IT kids around the world and IT professionals in the locations where it operates through its many educational activities. To name a few: the 20year old algorithmic programming contest CodeIT.bg, eJOI (European Junior Olympiad in Informatics) where Elena is one of the initiators, Meet the Masters professional seminars and many more.
Future through Elena’s eyes
In a world of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, humanoid robots, smart cars and homes, IT specialists are in a process of constant race with themselves. Elena states that solutions that the engineers create now, will take over their place tomorrow. Soon, everything that can be done without human interaction, will be done so. Further she states that Human activities will be replaced with “machine” ones and “thinking-analyzingpredicting” software. If a few months ago the natural resistance to change was slowing down these processes with legal, moral, ethical, cost or other considerations, during COVID-19 crisis, while the world seemed to slow down, technology actually speeded up. Life is merging with the AI and AR and everyday life is now a hyper automated multi-experience. “We have been looking for better digital security & safety and that was one of the big obstacles to moving online until a tiny virus forced businesses, education, governments to go all digital practically overnight. That overexposed our digital identities. What happened is both a breakthrough and a huge challenge to be addressed in the coming years,” says Elena.
An Advice to Rely on
Elena advices that one must work for a cause, while watching the numbers. “Numbers can bring short term satisfaction but not happiness. What will make you ultimately happy (or unhappy) is the people you work with and the impact you have,” she adds.