“It's easier for us on a piece of paper”: why automation projects fail in Russian companies



    We are developing a service for monitoring outbound employees of Planado - it is used by companies whose employees are engaged in the installation and maintenance of equipment, windows and furniture, cleaning, delivery, assembly and so on. Using the application in the smartphone, the head of the company can find out where they are at a particular moment in time, whether they are doing work on technology, whether they remove garbage - there are geotracking, check lists, and photo reports for this.

    Ordinary employees almost never like the idea of ​​introducing Planado - no one likes control. And the management of the company is not always strong enough to resist this. Today we will talk about how we lost one of our customers.

    How we lost a client


    The leadership of one of the housing and communal services management companies from the Far East decided to increase the efficiency of their craftsmen who are on call - plumbers, electricians and cleaners. By "improving efficiency" here is meant a fairly simple control - who worked where and when, how long the order took. To solve the problem, they chose Planado - a service, although it was not created specifically for housing and communal services, but it is quite suitable for putting things in order in the management company.

    After a few months, management unexpectedly decided to wind down the project. We finally talked with the customer and here's what we heard:

    • The introduction of Planado has opened Pandora's box . It was quickly confirmed that the employees took left orders (suspicious gaps in the schedule and drawn out orders are visible), were late (determined by geolocation), poorly performed work (when photographing the results of the work for the checklist, the camera was closed by hand).
    • We have a specific contingent ” - it is difficult for employees to work with new technologies - many of them are elderly and not the most advanced people.
    • You can fire them, but where to get new ones?” “If the masters are tightly controlled, they will have to be fired, and finding even such people was not easy. New ones are unlikely to be better, managers decided.
    • Everything is normal with us - the business as a whole is alive, which means that extra difficulties are useless.

    They finished us off with this argument:

    The equipment fails - in a few months, almost all smartphones specially purchased on the occasion of the introduction of Planado were “broken” or “lost”.

    The final conclusion: “we’ll be better in the old fashioned way, keeping our records on the leaves - it’s easier for us.”

    How bad is it


    Real business in Russia is not a fashionable startup. A huge number of entrepreneurs have to work "on the ground" and face not the most decent employees who cheat on the company, break deadlines, unexpectedly go into bouts and disappear.

    To establish at least some work and bring the company into a plus under such conditions is already a feat. Far from everyone is enough to develop further forces.

    On the other hand, management companies basically live like that. And stand out from the gray mass is not difficult at all - just start working better than them. And this is exactly what helps achieve, for example, technologies like Planado.

    Bottom line: “yes, here the whole system needs to be changed”


    There is an old Soviet joke.

    Conversation in prison:
    - What article are you sitting on?
    - By political.
    “What did you do?”
    “I'm a plumber.” They called in the city party. I looked and blurted out: yes here the whole system needs to be changed!

    What happened in the described situation? In fact, the head of the company capitulated to negligent subordinates and admitted that in fact they are the ones who manage the company.

    We are sure that to endure employees who break and lose equipment, if only the authorities did not learn about their labor "achievements", means killing their own business. It can be scary to dismiss, but getting rid of bad employees is only a plus for the company, even if you have to search all over again.

    We ourselves faced this - a few years ago it happened to remotely manage a small business. Among the staff were equipment installers. It was difficult to control them from another city, as a result, all of the listed problems blossomed in lush colors - “left” orders, lateness, poor quality, theft of consumables, reluctance to keep records, etc. As a result, I had to change the entire project team, because bad employees laid out the entire team, even those who were once good. And a year later, the replacement had to be repeated. Only the third time we managed to establish processes, and as a result, this business worked stably and was subsequently successfully sold. If we had not shown rigidity then, most likely we would have simply closed the company and recorded a loss.

    An entrepreneur always has a choice - either move forward in spite of difficulties, or leave everything as it is. The second option is simpler, but all this will work only until the moment when competitors introduce new approaches to quality assurance. And then it will be impossible to compete with them.

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