Helmes

“Any fool can make things more complicated,” Kristi Pool paraphrases Einstein. “But it takes a touch of genius to make things simpler.” Kristi views simplification as one of her primary tasks when organizing sales in Estonia and working closely with a team of seven who create solutions for clients using Progress Software.

Helmes is the only company in Estonia authorized to sell Progress, and among the original solutions brought to her clients include using Progress Sonic ESB for the Bank of Estonia.

Another client is Baltic Ticket Holdings AS (Piletilevi, Bilesu Serviss and Bilietu Pasaulis), the Baltic region’s largest theatre & concert ticket vendor who sells not only through its offices, but sells tickets online and via SMS. “Our solution based on Progress OpenEdge allowed 45,000 tickets to the Metallica concert to be sold in only two hours. BTH has near 400 ticket salespoints over the Baltic and there are more than 3 000 events on the saleslist daily” Each sale is treated as an inquiry to the database, and the software must transport and route each inquiry. “The BTH BDM (business development manager) called it ‘the best system in Europe,’” Kristi proudly says of her team’s work.

Kristi believes that to be in the IT business you have to love change. “In some disciplines your knowledge may last ten years. In IT that’s not the case. You have to learn something every day.”