During the last decade, more and more companies in our country have tried to obtain European funds in order to develop, but certain conditions must be met: operating in Romania, not being insolvent, not having public debts, not having benefited from public or European funds in the last three years, having official profit in the last fiscal year and maintaining the same field of activity for at least three years.

Besides these requirements, the online presence completes the efficiency of a growing business. Given this context, the Romanian company EXE Software talks about some useful things that businesses should keep in mind when adhering to obtaining European funds.

“In 2020, amid the pandemic, we developed an online platform that brings a new business concept to the Romanian market, for a start-up that has obtained European funding. Things have evolved so that at the moment we are in various stages of negotiating for several projects that can be carried out due to European funds – from real estate market platforms to an education platform for a Greek institute.

In my experience, when it comes to companies that want to develop IT projects using European funding, the most important step is to choose an experienced IT service provider who will deliver all the functionalities according to the initial specification, because if the project does not comply with the initial plan, the commission that checks the resulting software may decide to withdraw the funding “, says Cristian Gavrilă, Account Manager EXE Software.

In choosing the right service provider for software development, a crucial criterion is its expertise in developing similar projects, which must be proven by a portfolio of previously developed apps. The technologies used for development must be current and future-proof, to allow scalability if necessary. Ideally, the company chosen can provide the full range of services required in the development process, from business analysis and consulting to QA testing and technical support post-implementation of the application.

One of the most frequent requests companies have when it comes to developing an online platform is related to the timeline of the project. However, since we talk about custom development, the duration is determined by the complexity of each project – based on observations made over time, trends show that the duration of a project ranges from three to four months and can last up to a year. Similarly, in terms of budget, costs start at several tens of thousands of euros and can go up to several hundred thousand euros.