Are the largest customers in Russia a big jackpot or a headache? AGIMA Experience



    A construction store (or a grocery, or a children's, or whatever) of a federal scale enters the market with an order - to develop a web project. The task can be technically interesting, terribly profitable, but many developers and agencies still doubt whether they are ready to take on this.

    The managers will present how they are gathering the tenth meeting of the week to discuss the background, the designers - how they collect the arguments that there is no need to “play” anything, and the developers - how they get from the past contractor a tagged project on Bitrix.

    But those companies that undertake this, become the largest players in the market - after their customers. AGIMA is one of them. Vitaly Doshchenko, sales director of the company, Kristina Lyaptseva, PR-director, and Yevgeny Lobanov, executive director, told us about their experiences - about tenders, competitions, the role of PR, compromises in the choice of technologies and much more.
    At My Circle, Agima received an average rating of 4.6 and an average recommendation of 93% of its employees, who rated career growth, relationships with colleagues, and communication with the company's top management as the highest.



    How did AGIMA come about?


    At the beginning of the two thousandths, the first digital order appeared in a small digital agency. AlfaStrakhovaniya managers asked to finalize the annual report in electronic form for the board of directors. Then, this only came into fashion, but has not yet become overgrown with general practices and standards.

    The agency did not know what kind of equipment would be at the presentation, what kind of permission it was necessary to adapt the project to. This was before the era of smartphones, when adaptive designs were more common in conversations among their own than in real projects. But the demonstration could not go badly - the event was extremely important. And the agency did it.



    Now, after more than ten years, AGIMA has become one of the largest agencies and has helped dozens of large corporations that were known only offline to start an online business. Among them are "Ingosstrakh", "Pyaterochka", "Crossroads", "Snow Queen" and others.

    For a long time, AGIMA worked exclusively in fintech. “Insurance companies, tobacco companies, and retail came to us - large companies that understood that there was a food and digital transformation, but they didn’t have the expertise to keep up with it,” says Vitaliy Doshenko.

    Alfa Insurance remained one of the key partners. “It was a large company offline, and they needed a simple online representation with a list of services and a feedback form,” says Vitaliy. “Through the development of their portal, you can trace the entire history of the digital insurance market. For several years, we have restarted each form from that site as a separate large product - with calculators, calculations, integrations, online systems, the issue of online policies. Then they connected the personal accounts of agents, clients, made a backend and a bus for a mobile application, connected studies, analytics, SLA, information security. Alfa Insurance is now a leader in online insurance sales. ”




    How to get the largest customers


    AGIMA has worked with large companies from the start. Many agencies are afraid to go into this market segment. Scare off tenders, bureaucracy, complex processes, long and complicated communication.

    “Small boutique studios with a small staff choose the path of several small but stable customers. We are in a different weight category. We work only with enterprise clients - the largest customers in Russia. And in order to maintain a suitable level of service for them, completely different processes and financial planning are needed. Because of this, we can’t even take small projects from small companies. Our processes are more expensive. It turns out a shot from a cannon at sparrows, ”says Vitaliy.

    Tenders


    AGIMA is participating in tenders to attract new customers. Invitations to participate are received by five to ten largest agencies from various industry ratings. “We are well acquainted with these companies, as we are in the same price category. To win tenders you need meetings, conversations, identification of additional value, disclosure of problem points. Just sending estimates and price struggles in the upper segment is impossible. ”

    PR


    But the lion's share of revenue comes from reputation. AGIMA says that it has always been famous for PR, tried to broadcast large and small informational cases to customers and the community. So, after success with Alfa Insurance, many other insurance companies came to the agency with the desire to do the same.

    Competitions and awards


    The AGIMA website has a section with awards, and it resembles the mantelpiece of a champion’s house - solid cups, diplomas and certificates. The agency says that this is not a tool to attract customers, it is for the motivation of the team. Employees like it when they are evaluated by experts for professional achievements, and not just clients on earned money.



    “There are ratings that attract customers. But for clients, rewards are not a key criterion in deciding whether to work with an agency or not. It's just a cherry on the cake. If a team has powerful cases and a good product, they may not participate anywhere - their reputation will catch up with them, ”says Evgeny Lobanov.

    “We ourselves do not always submit projects to competitions that we are really proud of. Awards are often given for the visual part, but we have complex products for the client’s internal business processes that we cannot talk about, ”says Kristina Lyaptseva.




    What technologies use


    In 2008, AGIMA took the mobile approach as a priority. The company developed a website for Svyaznoy Bank, which became the first adaptive online bank. The biggest and crucial project, they consider MegaFon’s personal account in 2011.

    “We always looked west, and always saw a big gap between our markets. At that moment, no one understood why responsive sites were needed, why change functionality along with permission. Then there was no tile interface, there was no understanding about tiles, ”says Eugene.

    AGIMA chose Future Friendly Web as its slogan, but industrial giants and financial corporations had their own ideas about the present, the future and friendliness.

    According to Eugene, “Large and medium-sized customers are very afraid of the most modern approaches. It is dangerous to use them in industrial development - there are not enough specialists, it is not clear whether the community will continue to support the technology. Implementing it from scratch is more expensive than maintaining the implementation on the old one. ”

    The main technologies in the AGIMA stack are PHP, Python, .Net and Bitrix on the backend, JavaScript, React and Vue.js on the frontend.


    “We have many projects at Bitrix, because customers say:“ If we have to go to another contractor, we want him to be able to support what you wrote. And “Bitrix” is the most common among agencies that operate in an enterprise, ”says Vitaliy.

    AGIMA does not see anything wrong with this, and is trying to do well in the conditions that exist. “This is the legend of the developers that Bitrix is ​​bad,” says Eugene, “in fact, it performs certain business tasks. In its segment, it is easily maintained and cheap. We do not understand why to force the client to switch to another technology. For what? It’s better for us to be flexible than to take a position and break products for it. ”

    “Bitrix has its own problems, and you can read a lot of complaints about Habré. But we have real cases where “Bitrix” can withstand huge loads, ”adds Christina.

    Nevertheless, the slogan Future Friendly Web will soon be a thing of the past - it will be replaced with a new one. But the company does not believe that he did not justify himself, on the contrary. Eugene says that the slogan speaks about the approach to the product, and not about implementation: “We try to make it the least risky for the client, using technologies recognized and established in the industrial approach. But with these technologies, we are making a product that looks to the future. ”

    “We were the first to create products with which other agencies subsequently entered the market. System design came into fashion only now, although we actively used them back in 2012. The combination of qualitative and quantitative research in production, product analytics - all this we have seen in the last 5-7 years. I am sure that in a couple of years, everyone will start to apply quality control procedures from information security to integration testing. And we already use code analyzers everywhere, because we have very weak quality control procedures on the market. ”



    Product analytics


    AGIMA has a separate web analytics and quality research unit. The agency is not only engaged in data collection and reporting, but also develops solutions based on hypotheses. This is the only agency in Russia with a certificate from Google Analytics and the right to supply the Google Analytics 360 package.

    “The specificity of the market is that advertising agencies sell traffic and provide a tool for controlling it. Usually they use Google Analytics only to optimize advertising campaigns. But there is another branch of analytics in which we work - this is product analytics. When you are developing based on data. For this we use the 360 ​​package. In the West, this has been around for a long time, but in Russia this is a new trend. We even had the positioning of data driven development, ”says Vitaliy.




    How did you organize the work structure


    AGIMA's office is located on Petrovka, a five-minute walk from Red Square. The company has been located there since the opening, and now it already occupies two large floors.

    The agency used to have offices in other cities, but in order to collect expertise in one place, all employees were moved to Moscow. According to Eugene, communications accelerated, and it became more pleasant for employees to work together, not on Skype: “No matter what they say, the team falls apart with motivation when everyone is sitting in different offices, and even more so in different cities.”



    Now about 260 people work in AGIMA. But not all employees are in the same building with each other. About a hundred people work in customer offices. “Many producers, team leaders and architects work there. Thanks to this, communication in the spirit of “customer-contractor” disappears, and we get one united team, ”says Eugene.



    Motivation system


    For large food companies, this number of people is not rare. But among the web agencies, AGIMA is one of the largest in terms of staff. So that employees do not get lost and understand their place inside, the company has implemented a transparent motivation system.

    “For our size, we have a well-built management and financial accounting. The effectiveness of each employee is separately considered, how much he earns for the company, what kind of profit he brings, how this profit is reinvested in the needs of the team, ”says Vitaliy.

    For managers, volume is important


    The company measures the effectiveness of the quantity and quality of work delivered. Each manager is motivated by volume and profit. He has a rate of production - a certain amount of work that he must pass. If a company earns superprofits, it is shared with a team where each role has a certain percentage.

    For team leaders - profitability


    The motivation of team leaders is based on profitability and works as a counterbalance to the motivation of managers. Line specialists are supervised by the QA department. He calls customers, finds out what problems are on the project and monitors the implementation of improvements.

    For professionals - quality


    “Quality is a subjective thing,” says Eugene, “But all professionals come to the conclusion that quality is standard. Either verification procedures are carried out or not. Everything else is a subjective assessment. Therefore, the quality control department controls precisely linear specialists who have no motivation for volume and profitability. Thus, triple scales are obtained. Tops are motivated by profit and volume, and specialists by quality. ”




    According to what principle are they divided into joons and gentlemen


    The system of separation by levels is generally accepted everywhere, but the criteria of whom to consider as whom and why are vague. AGIMA solved this problem with its own grading system, which is based on the results.

    Each employee has KPI per quarter, and if it can be done twice, then the employee is admitted to the next level of internal certification. For example, a project manager, in order to become a signor, must close a certain amount of work within six months. After that, he undergoes online testing. For a certain time, answers questions - both theoretical and with a description of situations where a decision needs to be made.

    Having received a new level, the employee discovers access to more complex projects that can bring him more money.

    The junior developer first works on technical support under the supervision of other developers. There he does small, detailed tasks. When everyone is sure that he copes well with the tasks, he gets the level of middle.

    “There he can already make proposals to the Timlid, but so far he can’t blink for himself - he just pushes. Signor, on the other hand, has the opportunity to blink, manage a large number of developers and influence the technical aspects of the product, ”says Eugene,“ There are very cool theorists who can do interviews cool, know a lot, but do no good to the business. They do not solve problems; they cannot be trusted with the client. Processors are scary people. ”




    How people are hired


    In hiring, AGIMA takes the same rigorous, industrial, and analytical approach. They measure all channels of attraction, conversion after telephone conversations, initial interviews and all subsequent stages, consider the cost of attraction, and adjust all this based on the data collected.

    It turns out a lot of data, although the company does not grow by three hundred people a month - just an average of a hundred responses, only three people are suitable.

    “A lot of people do not meet the declared competencies. They come to the signor's price tag with junior level competencies. This is the main problem on the market. We do not have universities, but there is great demand, and a zero entry level in many professions, ”says Eugene.

    Recruitment Stages


    The path of a candidate for a place in AGIMA goes through several stages.

    At the first, the eychar calls the candidate and interrogates on the checklist to assess relevance. Then the candidate passes a twenty-minute online test, and then an in-person interview with the technical director, where, judging by the story of Eugene, the candidate may have a hard time:

    “I’ll ask the manager how to build a critical path for the project. Here, many are streaming. They do not know that there is a risk map by which to evaluate the project before starting work. They do not know that on the Gantt chart, in addition to evaluation and communication, it is necessary to add minimization of these risks. They do not know what it takes to apply resources and resolve critical points of intersection of resources.

    I ask what a web bus or web service is. I am very surprised by candidates who want more than one hundred thousand, but don’t know what it is, or don’t know what xml is. This is ridiculous for me.

    We ask backenders about storage structures because we have to interact with different DBMSs. There will be technical questions on OOP - we will ask the basics and on what it is. in general, what encapsulation or polymorphism is built. And just as many people fall off here. ”

    There are many conflicting opinions in the community about falling over on theoretical issues. But the agency explains this critical attitude by minimizing risks.

    “There are two people for the same salary, but one risk is minimized, and the second will only have to guess. The risk that an employee will come out and develop a product for our client without knowing the basics seems to me too critical. It’s better we randomly weed out one good person than take ten bad ones, ”says Eugene.

    “Many people have their own style, you can’t do anything,” adds Vitaliy, “for example, I share the position that you need to communicate with a person for at least an hour throughout his life's journey. How he came to digital, how he resolved the issue with the army, how he graduated from the institute, why he went to work by profession or not, what companies he went through, what major projects he did. And, of course, sometimes talented people also get rejections, you won’t do anything. ”




    How people are trained


    When the growth in the number of paid courses began, at the same time, dissatisfaction with their quality grew. This prompted the company to make its free university with entrance exams and real diplomas - AGIMA University. The first flows were in design and analytics. Two new ones are planned in this - team building and management.

    Eugene says that inside the company, too, much attention is paid to education: “We conduct at least two meetings a month, which take place during working hours. Top experts talk about cases on them. We have organized theme clubs, which also take place during working hours. There are weekly newsletters and digests. It is important for us that everyone inside understands their value. After all, if a person does not know why he is unique, then how can he transmit something outside. ”

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