Office generates profit - From furniture distributor, Delight grews into regional leader in office space equipping (PHOTO)

Officefurniture is not what it used to be. A desk is no longer just a plate with fourlegs. Design of office space became a science and art in order to make theemployees feel better and to contribute to better quality of their own and company’slife through their productivity. In global economy, based on knowledge andexperience, investing in staff welfare is a long-term interest of business.

For morethan a decade Delight hasbeen operating in distribution of office furniture. They learnt from the best.They are a distributor of Steelcase, a leading world producer of officefurniture whose history started in 1912 in Michigan.

Theyadopted the idea of Steelcase, that through understanding the habits of people theyensure office premises become a tool for better, faster and more efficient workand used it in their own business, brothers Miroslav and Marko Tanazovic ,partners at Delight, say at the beginning of the conversation.

Youngerbrother, Marko, in charge for marketing and sales, has been with the company asof the beginning while the older one, Miroslav who manages finances and administrationjoined the team later.

It was veryhard at the beginning, our collocutors said but every year they made progress.

- We areproud of our 14-year market presence as well as the start of business when thefirst clients were , the World Bank, Cisco Systems, IBM, etc. –Miroslav says.

Today, Delightgrew into a company specialized in equipping, design and planning of officeinteriors as well as in final construction works. In their companies in Serbia,Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro, they hire 50 people.

- Businessin the region provides us flexibility of better coordination of resources andoption of optimizing operational business costs. If business in one country atone moment is on decrease, it is better in the other country and therefore as acompany we do not depend on a single market and we can have more stable business– Miroslav explains.

MiroslavTanazevic

The mostimportant partners Delight distributes are Steelcase in office furniture field,Interface for floor coevrs and Deko in walls.

Referencelist of Delight is pretty long. The company participated in almost all largerprojects of office space equipping in the region.

- We workedwith KPMG, Ernst&Young,PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, IT companies such as Microsoft, HP, Oracle, IBM, CiscoSystems, SAP, Nordeus, PS Tech, Asseco, pharmaceuticals Pfizer, Sanofi Aventis,GSK, Actavis, Abbott Laboratories, Takeda. We equipped two biggest call centersin Serbia, NCR and Sitel,a number of banks, financial institutions, insurance companies and intenationalcompanies – Miroslav says.

Marko Tanazevic

They almostnever participate in local public procurement processes because unfortunately,the only criterion is the lowest process,not the product quality or company reliability.

Businessphilosophy

- Theinterest of us, as owners, is not a short term dividend but that the company isstable, that every department is professional at its part of work, constantlyimproving service quality with an objective of the long-term clients’ and staffsatisfaction – Marko says and adds the company cannot make progress if they donot have an idea, vision, courage, readiness to take risk.

On the otherhand, as he explains, process and resources management, risks and finance,clear and structured business processes management as well as operationsprovides essential balance for successful and stable business.

Thereforethey opted for implementation of different information systems and standards inbusiness.

In linewith the implementation of all mentioned information systems and processes andprocedures described in details, ISO standard implementation is underway, ourcollocutors say.

Plans

- In orderto fully cover the region, we are planning to set up firms and open salessaloons in Pristina and Tirana – Miroslav says.

Through itscompany in Macedonia, in Tirana they have already participated in equipping officespace of a few international companies such as Philip Morris and Shell.

Miroslav hopesthat the part of business referring to final works in construction will intensify.

Apart fromthat, being led by the strategy of conquering new market segments of the mostsignificant partner, Steelcase, Delight is planning the implementation of Steelcasehealth programs for medical institutions and hospitals as well as solutions foreducational centers from Steelcase Education Solutions program.

TheTanazevic brothers are announcing the entrance of Delight at the real estatemarkt.

- We are planningto set up a new real estate development company which will focus onconstruction of residential and office buildings of high construction level in residentialparts of the city and central city municipalities. At the moment, construction of such a facilityhas been in progress in Senjak and more information is available at www.delightinvestment.com.

M.K.

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