Stefano Bodrato, former Corporate Vice President European Institutions at Bull S.A., is the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CRI (Computer Resources International) Luxembourg S.A., an IT services and consultancy company based in Luxembourg since 1981.

Stefano Bodrato assumed full management of the company on 14 October 2011. This change in management is part of a merger which took place in July 2011, when CRI (Luxembourg) S.A. was legally integrated into a new group of companies: the CRI group. The CRI group is an independent technological holding based in Luxembourg. The CRI group of IT companies has 350 employees, an annual turnover of 45 million euros and operates in the Belux and six south-eastern European countries: Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Romania. It serves market-leading telecom customers, such as Vodafone, Orange and Deutsche Telecom, and delivers business solutions to key players in the financial sector. The CRI group is also engaged in important strategic cooperation with universities and technological foundations.

Mr Bodrato, who also holds various advisory posts both for governmental bodies in Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria and Romania and for other private enterprises, will lead CRI into a new era of business operations. CRI (Luxembourg) S.A. has successfully been offering IT and business solutions in the Belux for the past 30 years, under the direction of Hassan Khalili-Araghi and mainly to public institutions. Now the aim is to conquer the Belux private market. ‘We intend to make CRI a key player in the Belux public and private markets’, explains the new CEO. ‘We are actually opening a CRI office in Brussels at the end of December 2011, because our customers need us to be present locally. This will be very beneficial for our customer relationships and we are very excited about it.’

The integration of the company into the CRI group was a strategic move which will allow CRI (Luxembourg) S.A. to expand and intensify its operations more easily. The new company strategy can be pushed forward even faster. ‘We expect 30% more profit compared to the profit line the company used to have during its 30 years of operations. In fact, by 2014, we want to more than double the size of the company and make 20 million euros per year – CRI alone, without the group’, says Mr Bodrato.

The new company strategy foresees new and future technologies to be at the centre of attention. ‘This will be accompanied by a massive recruitment campaign, which we intend to launch soon’, the new CEO reveals. ‘In addition, a new IT Recruitment Officer has started to operate in November, to find more people who are right for the company, and a new Pre-Sales Director is already targeting new customers.’

The newly appointed Pre-Sales Director, who started operating in October 2011, is Anna Asimakopoulou. She is a high-profile sales person, politician and lawyer who brings her knowledge, experience and best practice to the company, having worked not only in Europe but also in Asia, Australia, Latin America and the United States.

Partnerships with major global players are being signed and intensified at this very moment. For example, CRI is about to sign a contract with Huawei in China, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure provider. CRI will set up a laboratory for enterprise data solutions in Luxembourg. ‘We have also become partners with Engineering SpA, the largest software company in Italy and are looking forward to expanding our worldwide partnerships, particularly in the United Kingdom and Belgium’, Mr Bodrato explains.

For 2012, the main point of the company’s strategy is ensuring business and making your business happen – which is also CRI’s new slogan. ‘From now on, we want to attract at least three new large customers per year. We want to be always a step ahead in technology. We want to stay close to our customers, something that CRI has always done, and accompany the growth of our customers by helping them with the right technologies. We want to be partners, not suppliers. For this we need the right people on the right projects – and we will have them’, assures Mr Bodrato.