Innovations are the most important cells in Synergy’s “organism” enabling the company to secure its place under the “sun” of the technological world. At Synergy, techno-humans are free to offer, test and implement technological innovations. This opportunity is created due to the architecture of the organization and due to the fact that all decisions are made by senior specialists of Synergy. Employees say that here they have technological freedoms, great opportunities for creativity and self-development.

The demand to be innovative

Armen Mkrtchyan, Director of Innovations at Synergy, says that many new technologies are growing like mushrooms, so there is a need to focus on them and put into practice. He says it is like a life cycle.

“Through these technologies, we optimize our work so that people can do a lot of work with less time and resources. To be highly professional, you need to always use the latest technologies (web component/custom component, microfrondend, blockchain), otherwise you will not keep up with the world and will not be up-to-date,” says Armen Mkrtchyan.

Armen Mkrtchyan

Photo: Mediamax

He notes that they often use technologies that have not yet been widely used in the world, such as graalvm/native build.

Hayk Martirosyan, Chief Technology Officer at Synergy, who is responsible for the entire process of developing and introducing technical solutions in the company, says that every change brings new opportunities, and they have a responsibility to keep up with the world.

“In a company like ours, where there are a lot of interconnected products, these frequent changes generally make the process harder, because a change in one product can lead to a chain reaction. Fortunately, we have accepted this challenge long ago and manage to relatively easy ensure technological advancement. The other important aspect is the expansion. The newly emerged opportunities require the use of innovative architecture. If 10 years ago monolithic architecture was relevant, today micro services are more relevant. We have been using that architecture for quite a long time, and it allows us to use different languages. This in some way is a symbiosis of programming languages enabling us to easily apply innovations,” says Hayk Martirosyan.

Hayk Martirosyan

Photo: Mediamax

He says due to the microservice architecture, teams are free to choose technology, the language they want to use. For example, the main “backend” language is Java, but we have teams that use rust, nodeJS, python.

Hayk notes that the fresh technology also solves security issues: the more the product is in demand, the more it is in the center of attention, so it is important to provide updates from a safety point of view.

Artush Ghandilyan

 

Artush Ghandilyan, Software Engineering Director at Synergy, works on products for justice systems and says that if new technologies, programming languages and engineering tools are not used, the system simply becomes useless.

David Grigoryan, Engineering Director at Synergy, adds that both the quality of the platform – Synergy Intelligent Data Manager – and the innovations invested in it are very important for the company.

Davit Grigoryan

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He says innovative technology should not be an end in itself. “Of course, we like to learn new things, but we also need to understand their proper value it will provide to our business. For instance, when developing solutions to the tasks we face, we decided to use blockchain, which will provide new functionality for our platform. Another advanced technology that we have decided to introduce is “serverless functions” or, otherwise defined as, “function as a service”, which will lead to the development of opportunities that we will allow us to easily apply new technologies in the future.

Other advantages of innovation

Artush Ghandilyan says that whenever they develop a new solution, they try to be a few steps forward, as its application takes time and in case of delay they may fall behind.

As to being involved in that process as an employee, he notes that when developing and introducing any new technology, they first of all learn.

“We gain new knowledge, it is progress for us, and it in itself leads to an increase of the hormones of happiness. And if you are the one who gave birth to new ideas, it is in some way a challenge in terms of bringing this idea to life, putting it into practice. We are experimenting with technologies that may not be ready for use at the moment, but if we do not think about them today, it may be too late.”

Artush Ghandilyan

Photo: Mediamax

For example, in developing countries, “digital” court systems have been developed enabling even court hearings to be conducted online. Now that the Web3, the Meta-universe (metaverse), are developing, we are also thinking about creating virtual reality courts. In the future, there may be a country that will not have physical courts.

Stages of Innovation

Everyone at Synergy can come up with innovative ideas, and the management team is always ready to listen to those ideas and help bring the best to life. There is no hard and fast procedure, but there are stages an idea must go through.

Hayk Martirosyan says that any experienced and talented specialist at Synergy has a great influence as he/she is highly valued by the company and can easily deliver any offer. The value of the idea is already being assessed jointly. Due to the flexibility of the system, any problem, even seeming very complicated at first glance, finds its solution.

Armen Mkrtchyan

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“Or it happens that new technologies come out, which the team evaluates as effective and starts discussing, studying, testing. After overcoming the incubation period, the real application phase begins,” explains Armen Mkrtchyan.

Hackathon

To keep the innovative mind of the employees always awake, various programs and events are organized at Synergy, one of which was the recent hackathon. Synergy voice assistant, smart home systems, platform for intensive communication of employees – these are some of the technological solutions that the teams have implemented in 24 hours.

Photo: Mediamax

The team that created the digital map of Synergy DNA took the first place in the competition, the second place was taken by the p2p mechanism-based parallel data entry system, and the third place was taken by the team that created the voice assistant.

“During the hackathon, people present their innovative ideas, which are put to a vote, gather “followers”, then are developed and implemented in 24 hours. The next day the jury decides the winners. The thrust is that people plan and implement their idea within 24 hours, which is very nice,” says Armen Mkrtchyan.

Hayk Martirosyan

Photo: Mediamax

“Very strong teamwork is carried out during the hackathon. We usually form teams the members of which have not worked together before or have had little contact. This also results in establishing interesting contacts. These 24 hours pass very excitedly with people fighting for the victory of their ideas. But at the same time they help each other. For example, our team introduced and developed the idea of Synergy voice assistant. We can ask this assistant if there is a free parking space in the company’s parking lot or which negotiation room is free and ask to book it, etc.,” says Hayk Martirosyan.

One of the ideas presented at the hackathon will address the formation of a new culture in the company. Artush Ghandilyan says that it will try to stimulate different employees of the company who do not communicate to get to know each other. The algorithm selects random people and suggests a topic that can be talked about, for example, during a coffee break.

Hayk Martirosyan, in his turn, adds that the innovativeness of the company is interconnected with the innovativeness of the employees, which means that they must continuously develop and the company must support this development process.

Marie Tarian

Photos: Emin Aristakesyan