SILA Union at the Russian Industrialist Forum: bringing industry to a new level of digitalization
The industry is currently looking for workable solutions and effective tools, and this is exactly the focus set by the agenda of the XXIX International Forum—Exhibition "Russian Industrialist-2025", held in St. Petersburg. In three days, Expoforum brought together 14,000 executives and experts from 42 regions and 35 countries, hundreds of international delegations, more than 400 participating companies, and over 100 events were featured in the business program.
The main topics of the forum are technological leadership, import substitution, engineering personnel training, international cooperation and the development of industrial architecture. The forum included Russian-Chinese and Russian-Serbian conferences, Russia—Africa and Russia—Latin America dialogues, and the BRICS+ Municipal Forum, which expanded the international agenda.
Among the key venues is a plenary session with Denis Manturov, Alexander Shokhin, and the Governor of St. Petersburg. Alexandra Beglov, Chief Executive Officer AvtoVAZ, Skoltech and major industrial associations, as well as key discussions where industry leaders, including vendor SILA Union, figured out how to bring projects to a successful level.
"Digital swamps": an honest conversation about the details that are kept silent
Against the background of the large—scale program, one of the most applied discussions, Digital Swamps, stood out, dedicated to the real problems of IT projects in industry.
This is a rare platform where industry leaders — SILA Union, representatives of large industrial companies from the mechanical engineering, food industry, metallurgy, CBP sector and high-tech industries — openly discussed why digital initiatives in industry are stalling, missing deadlines and losing money.
The speakers discussed:
– how to properly assess the maturity of processes,
– why do IT projects lose speed already at the start,
– what destroys the communication between IT and production,
– why digitalization turns into chaos without a transparent enterprise architecture.
Special attention was paid to issues that usually remain behind the scenes.: how to bypass the technical legacy, how to involve employees who perceive digital solutions with distrust, how to distinguish the true effect from the "beautiful numbers" in reports, and how to determine the moment when the project really hit the ground.
During the discussion, the founder of SILA Union Elena Silkina shared the company's experience in building interaction between the IT function and business, project rescue tools and approaches that help enterprises increase process maturity. Elena emphasized that the BPM model is a working tool that allows you to avoid integration failures, reduce the cost of implementation and build a sustainable digital architecture.
As a result of the discussions, the experts agreed on one thing: "digital swamps" are inevitable, but successful navigation through them is possible only when the processes are transparent, the roles are clear, and IT and production act as a single team.
The final context
The discussion on IT projects at the forum became part of a large-scale dialogue about the future of industrial digitalization and its real challenges. Practical cases, honest conclusions and an open exchange of experience proved once again that a mature approach to processes is the key to making digital projects work.
The Russian Industrialist 2025 Forum has once again confirmed its status as a working tool for industrial development. Here, decisions are formed that determine the work of the industry for the year ahead: issues of state support, personnel policy, international supply chains and technological sovereignty.
Practicality, open exchange of experience, real-world cases, and honest conversation about systemic issues have made the forum a key point where industry, government, and IT companies develop common guidelines.
