There is a company in Ukraine that not only created a tool for administering computer clubs –
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Vladimir Onoprienko – Head of Revenue at Enestech Software
gg:Can you explain for those who are not at all in the subject, what is Senet?
Vladimir Onoprienko:Senet – it is a complex ecosystem.We enable clubs to organize and manage their gaming business. Because the computer club – it is not just a network of computers connected to the Internet. This is an opportunity to provide players with good hardware and stable internet so that they can play new games and use various applications. That is, a club in the classical sense – a place where interested people gather and play. Senet provides the opportunity to manage this business. On the one hand, the owners and administrators of the club have the opportunity to administer the establishment conveniently for themselves. On the other hand, players receive a comfortable environment in which they can, in addition to playing, also gain access to services related to their stay at the club. They can order tea, coffee, something to eat, immediately reserve a computer and make remote payment.
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Some of the features that are available to players in clubs with the Senet ecosystem: 1) Shop; 2) Reservation; 3) Loyalty program (Illustrations: Senet)
gg:And why did you choose the name Senet?
Vladimir Onoprienko:The name comes from an ancient Egyptian game,which existed more than two thousand years ago. It was a strategy board game where you had to move pieces around the board. Senet is translated from ancient Egyptian as “transition”. The rules of the game have not been preserved, but it was something similar to chess. There is even some philosophy in this, since we are creating an industry because there are no rules yet. Thanks to the qualities of our product, we not only satisfy market demand, but deeply understand how the gaming industry is developing and what opportunities there are in it, setting up individual services.
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Senet – ancient Egyptian game (Photo: otagomuseum)
gg:If we talk about the essence of business – there is such a fashionable word Copilot. Can you be called Copilot for a business that operates clubs?
Vladimir Onoprienko:Yes, you can.We do not adapt to the business process of the club owner. Rather, we provide a tool to ensure that this process is flexible, consistent with the requirements and tactics of the club, and on the other hand, we provide more opportunities to increase the club's business.
That is, this is a synergy between the wishes of the players– club visitors, with their expectations for service and comfort, and improvement of the business process of the club itself in terms of workload, use of resources and marketing opportunities to promote the club’s services.
Therefore, using Senet, if you start withtop management, the owner of the club has the opportunity to improve the business of the club: make it more stable, more predictable, reduce risks and attract players to spend more time in the club using various tools, such as special offers or communication opportunities.
I can safely say that we are creating this industry
gg:In 2022, you left the Russian and Belarusian markets, but stepped up your global expansion. Based on the results of the year, did you manage to compensate for the loss of more than 1,300 clients from the invading country?
Vladimir Onoprienko:The conscious step of ceasing activities incountries that are involved in this war, had a strong influence on the development of our business. Now I can say that we have restored the growth rates that we had. The market in Russia was large, and above all, we lost momentum in development. But we managed to restore this thanks to a global development strategy in the international market and in the post-Soviet countries (with the exception of Russia and Belarus)
gg:How has the landscape of the Ukrainian market changed? Did you lose something on it or, conversely, did you attract new customers? And what is the structure of clients in Ukraine by geography?
Vladimir Onoprienko:Business in Ukraine is going through difficult times,related to general mood and redistribution of expenses. People prefer spending on the army instead of entertainment, and gaming – This is just entertainment. Therefore, we have seen a decrease in club activity, but have not seen sudden closures as during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are still negative consequences.
gg:What is the structure of clients in Ukraine by geography?
Vladimir Onoprienko:What’s nice for me is that computer clubs are popular not only in large cities of Ukraine. There are good clubs with their own audience in small towns.
But the leaders are Odessa, Kyiv, Kharkov and Dnipro
Regarding the tariff scale for Ukraine, we did not change it, we could not do otherwise.
gg:Speaking of tariffs. You have three tariff plans – what's the difference between them?
Vladimir Onoprienko:Business model Senet – SaaS (software as aservice). We sell subscriptions. We have three subscription templates – basic, business and premium. Of course, the latter gives the client the greatest benefit, and we always explain what exactly the client will get from the premium version. If we talk about the basic subscription – it is limited in functionality, so we try to convey to the client that business and premium – the most favorable rates. But we will leave the basic tariff in those countries that are less solvent.
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Three Senet tariff plans (Illustration: Senet)
gg:What are the plans for the global market in 2023?
Vladimir Onoprienko:There are large and interesting markets for us inmany countries, and we are building a strategy for working with each of them separately. In this context, the key markets for us are the strategic markets of North and South America, in particular Brazil, and we are also currently forming a strategy for Europe. A separate key market for us is Vietnam and Southeast Asia. For Vietnam, we have already developed a work strategy, but for Malaysia and Indonesia we are just starting to work on tools for entering these markets.
gg:Why was Vietnam chosen?
Vladimir Onoprienko:We have clear data on the size of the market and itsdevelopment prospects for individual countries such as Vietnam, China and South Korea. These are markets with a high degree of business organization and an extremely large number of registered gaming clubs, but the markets of South Korea and China are very closed, regulated and highly competitive, and mistakes are very expensive there. Despite this, we are preparing to enter these markets, but the decision to take active steps was made to postpone. Therefore, all efforts were focused on Vietnam, where there are more than 15 thousand cubic meters and a fairly competitive environment. We feel that with existing Product-market fit (when a product or service fully satisfies the needs and requirements of the market in which it is located, and receives sufficient demand and profit – editor's note), we can lay claim to the position of technology leader in this country.
We are still in the market entry stage, buthave already signed a cooperation agreement with the largest franchise in Vietnam – These are more than 700 clubs, and we are gradually, step by step, transferring these clubs to SENET.
Also we want there to be a presencetechnical support personnel. This is exactly the key success factor for this market. We have technical specialists who can assist the owner of the club or its administrator offline. In general, Vietnam is a testing ground for innovations for us, where we can observe what kind of business development effect we can get.
gg:How is the decision to launch in a new region generally made? What precedes this and under what conditions does a representative office open?
Vladimir Onoprienko:The process and logic behind the decision to entera separate market proceeds as follows: first of all, we evaluate the potential of the market, using information from all available sources. We estimate the number of clubs using public statistics and study the business economics of individual countries. Because the price for one hour of playing in a club in the US will be 9 times higher than in Vietnam.
Taking this into account, we estimate the monetarypotential of a particular market, take into account the number of clubs, the number of computers in these clubs, estimate the number of competitors, analyze lead generation (search and attraction of potential clients – editor's note). After all this, we analyze whether this market is worth concentrating our attention on.
As for lead generation.One of the key factors of market prospects – this is the cost of its lead generation. We understand that no matter how much we invest, no matter how active we are, individual limited markets, for example Uzbekistan or Armenia, will not give us the economic effect that we can expect from Brazil or Vietnam.
Next comes the evaluation of Product-market fit: to what extent the solutions and services that we provide correspond to the internal processes of our potential customers.
In conclusion, I will add that sometimes there are local competitors that we do not see at first sight, and we must be prepared for this. But this applies to any business.
gg:It would also be interesting to know what is the largest institution in terms of the number of PCs that serves Senet? What country is it located in?
Vladimir Onoprienko:Here it is necessary to return to Vietnam again.
We all imagine that there is only jungle, but even in the jungle I always had a 5G connection there
Everything the Vietnamese do – they makeFine. And there is the biggest club there, one of the franchises with which we signed an agreement – the club has 250 computers. They also plan to open an eSport arena for 400 PCs.
gg:What new things have you implemented in the last year?
Vladimir Onoprienko:A program was implemented in the directiondevelopment of a diskless solution. There are two types of gaming club architecture: traditional – in which the club is a network of interconnected personal computers with full configuration, and diskless – all data from individual computers is stored on the server, and a new player who sits down at the computer receives a disk image, and at the end of the session this data is closed. Let me give you Kazakhstan as an example: if we had introduced a diskless system there earlier, our position in this country would have been twice as strong.
And a diskless system – this is the next onegeneration in the development of the gaming club architecture, which makes it possible to administer very clearly and eliminates the prospect of violating network settings or hacker attacks. That is, this solution makes it possible to efficiently organize the work process in large clubs where there are 20-30-50 or 100-200 computers.
There is a solution for this – Senet Boot. This is our diskless solution for customers, which is now the leader among similar products in the markets of Kazakhstan and the USA.
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How a diskless solution and Senet Boot works (Illustration: Senet)
gg:How long does it take to reload everything?
Vladimir Onoprienko:The session closes in a matter of seconds, Senet reboots the machine and pulls up a fresh image. And let me clarify that this is not cloud gaming – this technology works on regular gaming PCs.
In general, we in the team are proud of this development.SENET Boot is not a simple module, we wrote it, developed it, and now we are configuring it. We are also introducing automatic updates when new drivers or something else appear, so the club administrator does not need to run around and install everything himself. Now it's all being tested, and at the same time we have acquired some attributes for high competition.
gg:Your site says you can manage consoles. But how does it happen? You can't install third party software there.
Vladimir Onoprienko:There are two options:first – traditional, when a special controller is connected to the TV, Enestech’s own development, which simply turns the TV on or off. This era is already over. And there is a new option – We have created a separate application for AndroidTV, Samsung, and are registering with LG. This will enable club owners to manage TVs from Senet administrative panels.
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Senet Controller to control the TV to which the console is connected (Screenshot: Senet)
gg:That is, you can’t turn off the conditional PlayStation through the panel?
Vladimir Onoprienko:Unfortunately no. The console is always on, and only its display (TV) is controlled.
gg:How else can Senet be used besides controlling PCs and TVs?
Vladimir Onoprienko:Some countries, for example in Africa, say:“Give us the ability to simply turn computers on and off”. But we want to build a comfortable environment for the player with the help of Senet, because we have modules that you can administer, order drinks, food, you can immediately book a PC, and in the future, perhaps this will be how we sell mice and keyboards.
Now we are still testing the organization of tournaments so that players can communicate with each other, compete, have their own rating and receive bonuses
gg:SENET automatically generates financial reports and collects analytics about visitor activity. How did you implement it?
Vladimir Onoprienko:Have we have accumulated a fairly large baseknowledge about how business processes in the club should be built correctly: what monitoring control points and performance indicators should be the basis for making business decisions. This allows us to understand which trends are being used on a daily or weekly basis. We offer this to the client as a separate service, and there was no AI here. Our solution is built on an understanding of a well-organized process, control points and indicators. It consists of individual reports and economic charts of the club.
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Some of the features that are available to owners of clubs with the Senet ecosystem: 1) Financial control; 2) Detailed statistics; 3) Access levels; 4) Cash register (Illustrations: Senet)
gg:Last year the company opened two newdirections – universities and airports. Do you see prospects for creating similar locations in Ukraine? What is needed for this – sponsors or government assistance?
Vladimir Onoprienko:Здесь надо погрузиться в этот вертикальный рынок, because it's not just a client typology. Higher education institutions and, in general, educational institutions are a typical example of a vertical market in which a separately built business process may differ from the general practice. And we see quite a lot of potential in this, because, for example, there is a classical understanding of the library, where you can’t talk, but there is an understanding of the modern library as a place of access to knowledge in all its forms. And given the world practice of organizing the educational process and full digitalization and the possibility of administering information as a resource through a PC, this is a fairly large and very attractive sector for us.
We especially look at esports. A lot of educational institutions in Europe, the USA and Canada are actively moving in the development of this direction. Esports is even taught as a discipline.
And in this I see an extraordinary prospect for development in Ukraine
This should be given attention, and it should beglobal government program. And when we win the war against Russia, we will return to this issue. We have the resources and understanding of the industry, and we are ready to engage government agencies to improve this development. In Ukraine, there are a lot of highly qualified enthusiasts with professional education who can move all this, and we are ready to help.
gg:Your team prides itself on being customer-focused and reviewed 765 customer proposals last year. What were these proposals (what exactly did they concern) and what did you implement?
Vladimir Onoprienko:One of the requests that we liked isthe ability to accumulate bonus points that can be used to purchase gaming time. This is the case when the request “I would like this” adds a new product to the service that enhances its competitiveness. And the owner can thereby attract more players to his club.
Demonstration of the capabilities of the Senet ecosystem
gg:And finally, do you currently have vacancies and what kind of specialists with what experience and skills are you looking for?
Vladimir Onoprienko:We always have vacancies (all vacanciesavailable at this link.) We are looking for sales professionals, especially international sales, with knowledge of English. We also always need specialists in Python and “back-end”.