April 15, 2015 at 01:19What is 1C? 1C Franchising, Part 2
You can talk about such a phenomenon as 1C franchising for a very long time. The general principles, advantages and disadvantages of the 1C company’s approach to certification, to work with partner companies, as well as many related phenomena, I revealed in the first part of the article “What is 1C? 1C Franchising Part 1 " .
And now I would like to talk about how the franchisees themselves organize their own work, what structure of divisions is formed in companies involved in the sale and implementation of 1C, which structural divisions are the main ones, how they work. Understanding these factors will help you better understand what to focus on when choosing artists who will help you implement new software, what is important to pay attention to when communicating with a sales manager, and which specialists will be involved in the implementation of your project.
In order to understand what to expect from a 1C franchisee company, it is also worthwhile to understand their structure. How do franchisees work? What are they made of? Regardless of the size of the company, the number of its branches, the franchisee consists of one unit - this is a certain legal entity, for example, 1C Franchisee LLC.
And from the inside, a company usually looks like this:
In this list, I deliberately went beyond the description to the personnel department, IT department, accounting and other departments that may be present in the company, but which the client does not encounter. Here I want to show only those units with which the customer is forced to communicate in the process of cooperation.
And now let's look at the quality of work, at what each of the company’s departments does.
Director (company or branch) - this is, most often, manager, manager. As a result, this person knows almost nothing about 1C. Often it was this person who once organized and built this business, but he knows almost nothing about 1C, about the technological features of software products, and in these matters he completely relies on his subordinates.
The director is the most advanced salesperson. It is in sales that he is a specialist, his functions are reduced mainly to helping to find a compromise in difficult situations. For example, in the process of project implementation, problems arise, the sales department or the implementation department cannot cope, the time is drawn out, the client is not satisfied. It is the director - this is the last link, another step that will help to “put out the fire” (agree with the client, calm him down, convince him to extend the deadlines, etc. etc.) These are the functions that the directors of the franchisee companies with whom I came across in practice.
The director almost never engages in the professional development of his employees, he simply acts as an administrator.
The bad news is that a company in a professional sense works on its own. The director is not a mentor, a mentor, he is just an administrator. This situation is observed in almost all companies, exceptions are extremely rare, and are most often found in small companies consisting of 10-15 people. In this case, the director often combines administrative functions with the functions of a 1C specialist, he also works on projects, does not lose qualifications, is constantly in the know about all the problems and innovations, develops himself and develops his company. But this, I repeat, is an exception to the rule. And most often the director is the administrator.
How does a sales department usually work? In the state, most often you can see young guys and girls (22 - 25 years old) who know very little about 1C. Most often, they simply took courses on selling 1C, received a certain amount of fragmentary information, remembered several terms. And they are mainly engaged in answering calls, asking questions, and finding out the primary needs of customers. If the conversation went well, preliminary agreements are reached, after telephone conversations, these young people meet with the client.
As a rule, sales staff do not know anything about 1C. Their level is often so low that they can confuse the configuration and the platform! As a result, such unfortunate specialists sell, they themselves do not know what.
There is one more trouble. Franchisees often position themselves as 1C. But in 1C itself there are a lot of different products. Today there are more than 300 or even 400 items (frankly, I myself do not remember exactly). There are ready-made configurations for beauty salons, for wholesale and retail sales, for jewelry sales and for petrochemicals, for production and services, and a lot of very different products for different business areas and different purposes.
Naturally, at the age of 21, a young man who was trained in 1C sales courses will not be able to figure it all out. Most likely, he won’t even remember the list of these products, but in order to understand how they differ from each other, why in one case it is better to choose one name and in the other completely different, 1C knowledge of a completely different level is needed.
But the motivation for these young people is sales. They must sell and nothing else. As a result, the client calls, asks questions, and the company employee sells to him, he does not know what, provides a choice of those products whose existence he remembered, and this, in fact, a very short list often does not include that product at all which the client actually needs.
No matter how ridiculous, in reality, sales often look like this:
What is the result? The client is offered to buy (and often even sell) “Trade Management”, “Clothing Trade”, and plus “1C Accounting”. But in fact, a person is engaged in manufacturing or tailoring to order. And he does not need any trade documents, analytics, accounting. Often, if you delve into the needs of the client, it turns out that he wanted from the very beginning to get the most ordinary “1C Accounting” and nothing more.
Why it happens? The manager himself does not understand what he is selling, but he knows well that it is necessary to sell as much as possible. The result is obvious: the client either leaves without a purchase at all, or works with this company, remains dissatisfied, and in the future, if necessary, to update the program or make any changes, he will look for an alternative (to a franchisee company or even a software product). Plus, of course, customer dissatisfaction is always a spot on the company's reputation.
There is one more possible way out of this situation: the manager or the client directly will seek the advice of the head of the sales department.
Typically, in any company, the sales department consists of ordinary employees and a manager. What is the difference between the latter? He is older, more experienced, knows a lot more about the product that he sells.
In addition, it is important to understand that among ordinary employees a very high staff turnover. Often an employee can work for just a few months, gets some minimal experience and goes to another company. Such a situation occurs in so many 1C franchisees. Almost everyone is lacking in sales specialists, and therefore even a slightly trained seller is already valued in the labor market, and competitors often try to lure him.
The head of the sales department has been working for the company for a long time, possibly even from the moment the company was founded, and he knows much more about what he sells than his subordinates. But still, it is focused on sales.
In general, in companies that are engaged in 1C, this is a massive problem: sales are engaged in sales, and not people who have left other departments, for example, from implementation, from living projects. And therefore, the sales department simply does not imagine what happens after the contract is drawn up, these people have never seen how the project is going, what difficulties their specialists may have later. They just sold, got their percentage of the sale, that's all. The problems of the client or colleagues from other departments are not of interest to them.
The head of the sales department is a person who knows products a little better than his subordinates, he is better versed in psychology, has more sales experience, knows how to find a common language even with complex customers. But, nevertheless, he is a salesman; he does not know the system itself.
So, the client was sold some kind of configuration, maybe the right one, maybe not. But the contract is concluded, the sale took place. What happens next?
Next, the implementation department is connected to the work. It consists of technical specialists, who are called very differently: 1C programmers, 1C consultants, implementers, 1C experts, 1C implementation staff, etc. In any case, the specialist of the implementation department visits the customer to install and configure the 1C software product.
Unfortunately, usually the level of knowledge of the implementers is very low. The main reason is that in 1C the division into programmers and consultants is very poor. Most often, a person may well know one thing: either programming or consulting. Thus, he will either be well-versed in the program, will be able to configure everything that is needed and even add the missing, but he is poorly versed in the subject area and will not be able to correctly and intelligently advise. Either the person is a good consultant, he will tell, tell, help, explain, but when it comes to the settings and the nuances of working with the program, he frankly “floats”.
It would be right to divide the work of the implementers in such a way that two specialists work with the client: the programmer performed his work, installed, configured and, if necessary, finalized the software product. A consultant should help to start working with software, help, tell, show and teach.
But, unfortunately, in this matter, as in almost the entire scheme of work of 1C franchisees, there is a misunderstanding by the management of these nuances, i.e. there are problems associated with incompetence. The head does not understand the features of working with 1C, employees are often not competent enough to correctly explain how to optimize the work, or simply habitually agree with what is. As a result, the whole chain is somewhat wrong, and the customer suffers from this, first of all.
In addition to the implementers themselves, who are technical specialists, often with quite a lot of experience, there are so-called disc carriers in the implementation department. These are usually young boys and girls who know almost nothing about 1C, and are engaged in distribution of discs.
The essence of this work is as follows. In order to install some kind of update, very often you need to bring it to the client on disk. It is this work that the peddlers do. In addition, they install this update right on the spot. This happens in a few clicks, and does not require any qualifications (except for the user level of computer skills).
These employees, in addition to their functions: bring the disk and install the update, do not know and do not know how. They will not be able to answer customer questions, will not be able to tell you what the essence of the updates are, or solve on the go some possible problems that may arise during installation. Most often, these people do not develop, do not learn. They either change the scope of activity in principle, or even at the age of 40 remain the same users who can bring a disk and press a few keys. These are just practical observations of mine and not just mine. As I understand it, people who are capable of learning programming almost never go to peddlers.
So, the software product was brought to the client, installed and configured. What's next? Either the client and his employees learn to work independently, or they appoint an implementer who will help them master the work in the new software product.
And here the following nuance is very important: the implementer must be an expert in this software product. Then he will be able to help employees of the client company make the transition to a new program. But if the intruder is not a specialist in the chosen configuration, which is especially often the case if the client is selling something exotic and not in demand, then the result of the work will be disastrous. Most likely, very soon, the client’s staff will again work on the old software, and the new solution, even if it is actually very good, will gather dust on disks.
Even in those rare cases when the client’s employees independently try to keep records in the new program as they understood and how it turns out, there is still very little benefit. After all, the money was spent not on getting an inconvenient alternative to the solution that was used earlier, but on new features, a new level of accounting automation, advanced analytics and other accounting tools that, as a result, no one uses.
As a rule, the head of the implementation department does not know anything about 1C. But these people are most often great administrators. The heads of the implementation departments, not knowing practically 1C, not understanding how the implementation process is going, try to manage and, at the same time, communicate with the client and solve current issues. Therefore, a successful head of the implementation department is always a great negotiator and a very good administrator.
Moreover, these people, who themselves are not experts in 1C, are, in fact, leading not the most advanced technical specialists, because, as I said above, the implementers for the most part are very poorly versed in what they install.
But, in spite of everything, the heads of the implementation department usually manage to somehow maintain order in their work and solve problems. Sometimes they hire consultants, sometimes programmers or freelance implementers who know the configuration right. At the same time, they agree with the client and maintain a certain visibility of the service.
Personally, I believe that the very fact of the availability of service and the loyal attitude of customers to the company in most cases is the merit of the head of the implementation department. Usually this position is occupied by very smart people who are able to find solutions in difficult situations and have excellent negotiator qualities. Moreover, as a rule, the head of the sales department has been working almost from the day the company was founded and is very loyal to it.
One minus - the head of the implementation department still does not know the program. On the other hand, his excellent administrator skills compensate for this shortcoming, and specialized knowledge in this position is not necessary at all.
What is telemarketing, today almost everyone knows. This work consists in the fact that from various databases, directories, catalogs, other open sources are taken contact details of different companies. After that, employees of the department (most often women) are engaged in systematically phoning contacts of potential customers, making so-called “cold calls”.
What are the responsibilities of employees of this department:
Employees of this department, most often, do not know anything about 1C. All their telephone calls are based on blanks, the so-called scripts. The main goal of the work of the telemarketing department employees is to obtain contact details of responsible persons.
The head of the telemarketing department is usually the sales department. And, in my opinion, this method of attracting customers is very effective. In practice, I have observed more than once the really high-quality and effective work of the telemarketing department. Of course, very often they mislead customers, appearing as “1C company,” but there is a result anyway. Moreover, the cost of the telemarketing department is much lower than the income that the cold calling method brings to the company.
If the client has certain rather voluminous wishes, the implementation department cannot cope with, this part of the work is transferred to the design department. For example, the client requires deep individual settings of the software product, or requires refinement (create a new report, processing, print form, etc.). In principle, the implementation department itself must cope with many similar tasks. But if the implementers fail, or they come to the conclusion that to satisfy all the wishes of the client requires a significant amount of complex work, then all these wishes are transferred to the design department.
What does the design department consist of?
Specialists of this department are distinguished by a high level of knowledge. Due to the fact that work is underway on projects, they try to take the best specialists to this department. Therefore, the level of knowledge in the design department is much higher than in the company as a whole.
On the other hand, as often happens in our country in general, the level of knowledge of the employees of this department is often insufficient to work with really serious projects. And therefore, the project work is as follows: install a software product, configure it as far as possible according to the wishes of the client. All. The work is considered finished.
A very big problem pops up here in the work of the design department: they absolutely do not sell any consulting services. All work is built around 1C. Today, the tasks of the business are predominantly complex. Today, just 1C is not enough for business. Bookkeeping. It also requires some kind of reporting, you need a connection with the production, trading, website, telephony, CRM, etc.
And to solve these problems, the franchisee company simply does not work. They do not offer such services, most often simply because they cannot complete tasks of this level. As a result, they narrow the scope of work to the level of their competence. And, as a result of this approach, a businessman receives a product that does not bring him any benefit.
In my practice, there were projects when it was necessary to implement, for example, the Enterprise Management program. But in order for it to work effectively, it needed to be connected with other software products, it was necessary to think about how people would work with it, to change their business process. And here, specialists from 1C franchisee do not have enough qualifications, because they initially put everything at the basis of the program, not business processes, but this is the wrong approach.
So, they installed the selected program, and then what? How to use it? How to enter data, for example, from a billing system or from Accounting or Warehouse? Manually transfer and duplicate everything? And what's the point of installing this program in general? Those. if before employees simply transferred the final digits from several programs to Excel and could quickly calculate what they need, now they will have to transfer all the primary information to another program. Of course, people will resist this approach to work, as a result, the software solution will be on the shelf.
And for a complex solution, the employees of the project department lack competence and desire. Because it is easiest to sell 1C separately, and not deal with either the site or any other software products. Just because today 1C configuration can cost up to 500 thousand rubles, while the net profit is very high, and the amount of work is minimal.
Imagine: they sold a product for 500,000, made a profit of 250,000. Just because they found a client and installed a ready-made solution for him. Naturally, the company is not interested in promoting related services; it is fully satisfied with high profits with a minimum of labor costs.
But, with all the problems, the design department remains the most highly professional and with the most thoughtful division of labor. Here, programmers go about their business, there are professional consultants for client consultations, and the manager is occupied with leadership.
The scheme is generally good. But still they only deal with 1C, which is insufficient to meet the needs of the business. In addition, the general level, even in this department, is very low, as I wrote above. Why it happens?
So, the structure of a typical franchisee company is fully disclosed. I hope that the advantages, disadvantages and problems I have described in detail and clearly. And now I propose to return to the general issues of 1C franchising.
I talked a lot about the problems of 1C franchising, the structure and principles of these companies. It is clear that problems and shortcomings are very important, because I examined them in detail. And now I would like to summarize the information and list the main pros and cons of the 1C franchise system. And I will begin with what I have spoken about a little - about the unconditional advantages of this system.
Pros of 1C franchising:
Cons of 1C franchising:
And in conclusion, I would like to give some tips on how to choose a 1C franchisee company? How to avoid problems? What to choose when choosing?
And in conclusion, I would like to clarify some of the nuances. I would really not like you to come to the conclusion that everything is bad in the 1C implementation market. Of course, I described the real situation, everything is really not rosy. However, a lot depends on your choice of service provider.
If you are not too lazy to study the subject, personally communicate with representatives of different franchisee companies, control the choice of software, then you will definitely have a wonderful and powerful tool for work - the 1C software product.
And if you entrust the choice of a software provider to a secretary or another ordinary employee who works for you today, and tomorrow, who knows? - then the result will be unpredictable.
Remember that employees come and go, their degree of loyalty to your company is quite limited, and the choice of software is a major investment of money, time and effort, including the working (paid) time of your employees, and they make this choice for a long time . So, I’ll repeat my advice: delve into all the nuances personally or, if this is not possible, entrust the work with software suppliers to a competent person whose loyalty to your company is beyond doubt.
And now I would like to talk about how the franchisees themselves organize their own work, what structure of divisions is formed in companies involved in the sale and implementation of 1C, which structural divisions are the main ones, how they work. Understanding these factors will help you better understand what to focus on when choosing artists who will help you implement new software, what is important to pay attention to when communicating with a sales manager, and which specialists will be involved in the implementation of your project.
The structure of franchisee companies 1C
In order to understand what to expect from a 1C franchisee company, it is also worthwhile to understand their structure. How do franchisees work? What are they made of? Regardless of the size of the company, the number of its branches, the franchisee consists of one unit - this is a certain legal entity, for example, 1C Franchisee LLC.
And from the inside, a company usually looks like this:
- Director
- Sales department.
- Department of implementation.
- Telemarketing Department.
- Design department (only in large enough companies).
- Department of information and technical support.
In this list, I deliberately went beyond the description to the personnel department, IT department, accounting and other departments that may be present in the company, but which the client does not encounter. Here I want to show only those units with which the customer is forced to communicate in the process of cooperation.
And now let's look at the quality of work, at what each of the company’s departments does.
Director
Director (company or branch) - this is, most often, manager, manager. As a result, this person knows almost nothing about 1C. Often it was this person who once organized and built this business, but he knows almost nothing about 1C, about the technological features of software products, and in these matters he completely relies on his subordinates.
The director is the most advanced salesperson. It is in sales that he is a specialist, his functions are reduced mainly to helping to find a compromise in difficult situations. For example, in the process of project implementation, problems arise, the sales department or the implementation department cannot cope, the time is drawn out, the client is not satisfied. It is the director - this is the last link, another step that will help to “put out the fire” (agree with the client, calm him down, convince him to extend the deadlines, etc. etc.) These are the functions that the directors of the franchisee companies with whom I came across in practice.
The director almost never engages in the professional development of his employees, he simply acts as an administrator.
What's bad about it?
The bad news is that a company in a professional sense works on its own. The director is not a mentor, a mentor, he is just an administrator. This situation is observed in almost all companies, exceptions are extremely rare, and are most often found in small companies consisting of 10-15 people. In this case, the director often combines administrative functions with the functions of a 1C specialist, he also works on projects, does not lose qualifications, is constantly in the know about all the problems and innovations, develops himself and develops his company. But this, I repeat, is an exception to the rule. And most often the director is the administrator.
Sales department
How does a sales department usually work? In the state, most often you can see young guys and girls (22 - 25 years old) who know very little about 1C. Most often, they simply took courses on selling 1C, received a certain amount of fragmentary information, remembered several terms. And they are mainly engaged in answering calls, asking questions, and finding out the primary needs of customers. If the conversation went well, preliminary agreements are reached, after telephone conversations, these young people meet with the client.
What is bad in such a work organization?
As a rule, sales staff do not know anything about 1C. Their level is often so low that they can confuse the configuration and the platform! As a result, such unfortunate specialists sell, they themselves do not know what.
There is one more trouble. Franchisees often position themselves as 1C. But in 1C itself there are a lot of different products. Today there are more than 300 or even 400 items (frankly, I myself do not remember exactly). There are ready-made configurations for beauty salons, for wholesale and retail sales, for jewelry sales and for petrochemicals, for production and services, and a lot of very different products for different business areas and different purposes.
Naturally, at the age of 21, a young man who was trained in 1C sales courses will not be able to figure it all out. Most likely, he won’t even remember the list of these products, but in order to understand how they differ from each other, why in one case it is better to choose one name and in the other completely different, 1C knowledge of a completely different level is needed.
But the motivation for these young people is sales. They must sell and nothing else. As a result, the client calls, asks questions, and the company employee sells to him, he does not know what, provides a choice of those products whose existence he remembered, and this, in fact, a very short list often does not include that product at all which the client actually needs.
No matter how ridiculous, in reality, sales often look like this:
Call from client: “Hello! I would like to buy the 1C program. "
Manager: “What are you doing?”
Client: “We do clothes.”
After this short dialogue, the manager goes to the catalog and tries to find something related to clothes, after which he offers the product he has found to the buyer.
What is the result? The client is offered to buy (and often even sell) “Trade Management”, “Clothing Trade”, and plus “1C Accounting”. But in fact, a person is engaged in manufacturing or tailoring to order. And he does not need any trade documents, analytics, accounting. Often, if you delve into the needs of the client, it turns out that he wanted from the very beginning to get the most ordinary “1C Accounting” and nothing more.
Why it happens? The manager himself does not understand what he is selling, but he knows well that it is necessary to sell as much as possible. The result is obvious: the client either leaves without a purchase at all, or works with this company, remains dissatisfied, and in the future, if necessary, to update the program or make any changes, he will look for an alternative (to a franchisee company or even a software product). Plus, of course, customer dissatisfaction is always a spot on the company's reputation.
Sales Manager
There is one more possible way out of this situation: the manager or the client directly will seek the advice of the head of the sales department.
Typically, in any company, the sales department consists of ordinary employees and a manager. What is the difference between the latter? He is older, more experienced, knows a lot more about the product that he sells.
In addition, it is important to understand that among ordinary employees a very high staff turnover. Often an employee can work for just a few months, gets some minimal experience and goes to another company. Such a situation occurs in so many 1C franchisees. Almost everyone is lacking in sales specialists, and therefore even a slightly trained seller is already valued in the labor market, and competitors often try to lure him.
The head of the sales department has been working for the company for a long time, possibly even from the moment the company was founded, and he knows much more about what he sells than his subordinates. But still, it is focused on sales.
In general, in companies that are engaged in 1C, this is a massive problem: sales are engaged in sales, and not people who have left other departments, for example, from implementation, from living projects. And therefore, the sales department simply does not imagine what happens after the contract is drawn up, these people have never seen how the project is going, what difficulties their specialists may have later. They just sold, got their percentage of the sale, that's all. The problems of the client or colleagues from other departments are not of interest to them.
The head of the sales department is a person who knows products a little better than his subordinates, he is better versed in psychology, has more sales experience, knows how to find a common language even with complex customers. But, nevertheless, he is a salesman; he does not know the system itself.
Important: it is completely impossible to know the 1C system. The configurations that exist today cover almost all accounting, all areas of activity. One person simply cannot know all the products. But at least a general idea of what configuration is best suited for what, and what is better to offer the client in a particular case, is quite realistic.
Implementation department
So, the client was sold some kind of configuration, maybe the right one, maybe not. But the contract is concluded, the sale took place. What happens next?
Next, the implementation department is connected to the work. It consists of technical specialists, who are called very differently: 1C programmers, 1C consultants, implementers, 1C experts, 1C implementation staff, etc. In any case, the specialist of the implementation department visits the customer to install and configure the 1C software product.
Unfortunately, usually the level of knowledge of the implementers is very low. The main reason is that in 1C the division into programmers and consultants is very poor. Most often, a person may well know one thing: either programming or consulting. Thus, he will either be well-versed in the program, will be able to configure everything that is needed and even add the missing, but he is poorly versed in the subject area and will not be able to correctly and intelligently advise. Either the person is a good consultant, he will tell, tell, help, explain, but when it comes to the settings and the nuances of working with the program, he frankly “floats”.
It would be right to divide the work of the implementers in such a way that two specialists work with the client: the programmer performed his work, installed, configured and, if necessary, finalized the software product. A consultant should help to start working with software, help, tell, show and teach.
But, unfortunately, in this matter, as in almost the entire scheme of work of 1C franchisees, there is a misunderstanding by the management of these nuances, i.e. there are problems associated with incompetence. The head does not understand the features of working with 1C, employees are often not competent enough to correctly explain how to optimize the work, or simply habitually agree with what is. As a result, the whole chain is somewhat wrong, and the customer suffers from this, first of all.
Disc carriers
In addition to the implementers themselves, who are technical specialists, often with quite a lot of experience, there are so-called disc carriers in the implementation department. These are usually young boys and girls who know almost nothing about 1C, and are engaged in distribution of discs.
The essence of this work is as follows. In order to install some kind of update, very often you need to bring it to the client on disk. It is this work that the peddlers do. In addition, they install this update right on the spot. This happens in a few clicks, and does not require any qualifications (except for the user level of computer skills).
These employees, in addition to their functions: bring the disk and install the update, do not know and do not know how. They will not be able to answer customer questions, will not be able to tell you what the essence of the updates are, or solve on the go some possible problems that may arise during installation. Most often, these people do not develop, do not learn. They either change the scope of activity in principle, or even at the age of 40 remain the same users who can bring a disk and press a few keys. These are just practical observations of mine and not just mine. As I understand it, people who are capable of learning programming almost never go to peddlers.
I will not talk about 1C programmers in this article, since this is a large, separate topic. I plan to talk about them in another article. And now I will limit myself only to mentioning that they, of course, are in the state, but the client almost never communicates with them.
Customer training: how does this happen?
So, the software product was brought to the client, installed and configured. What's next? Either the client and his employees learn to work independently, or they appoint an implementer who will help them master the work in the new software product.
And here the following nuance is very important: the implementer must be an expert in this software product. Then he will be able to help employees of the client company make the transition to a new program. But if the intruder is not a specialist in the chosen configuration, which is especially often the case if the client is selling something exotic and not in demand, then the result of the work will be disastrous. Most likely, very soon, the client’s staff will again work on the old software, and the new solution, even if it is actually very good, will gather dust on disks.
Even in those rare cases when the client’s employees independently try to keep records in the new program as they understood and how it turns out, there is still very little benefit. After all, the money was spent not on getting an inconvenient alternative to the solution that was used earlier, but on new features, a new level of accounting automation, advanced analytics and other accounting tools that, as a result, no one uses.
Head of Implementation Department
As a rule, the head of the implementation department does not know anything about 1C. But these people are most often great administrators. The heads of the implementation departments, not knowing practically 1C, not understanding how the implementation process is going, try to manage and, at the same time, communicate with the client and solve current issues. Therefore, a successful head of the implementation department is always a great negotiator and a very good administrator.
Moreover, these people, who themselves are not experts in 1C, are, in fact, leading not the most advanced technical specialists, because, as I said above, the implementers for the most part are very poorly versed in what they install.
But, in spite of everything, the heads of the implementation department usually manage to somehow maintain order in their work and solve problems. Sometimes they hire consultants, sometimes programmers or freelance implementers who know the configuration right. At the same time, they agree with the client and maintain a certain visibility of the service.
Personally, I believe that the very fact of the availability of service and the loyal attitude of customers to the company in most cases is the merit of the head of the implementation department. Usually this position is occupied by very smart people who are able to find solutions in difficult situations and have excellent negotiator qualities. Moreover, as a rule, the head of the sales department has been working almost from the day the company was founded and is very loyal to it.
One minus - the head of the implementation department still does not know the program. On the other hand, his excellent administrator skills compensate for this shortcoming, and specialized knowledge in this position is not necessary at all.
Telemarketing Department
What is telemarketing, today almost everyone knows. This work consists in the fact that from various databases, directories, catalogs, other open sources are taken contact details of different companies. After that, employees of the department (most often women) are engaged in systematically phoning contacts of potential customers, making so-called “cold calls”.
What are the responsibilities of employees of this department:
- Check the relevance of the phone.
- Find out which version of 1C is installed, what they generally use in the company.
- Get contact details of responsible persons (chief accountant, director, etc.)
- If you can contact the responsible person, offer the services of your company.
- In case of interest from a potential client, the “lead” (contacts of the interested person and the company as a whole) is transferred to the sales department for further work.
Employees of this department, most often, do not know anything about 1C. All their telephone calls are based on blanks, the so-called scripts. The main goal of the work of the telemarketing department employees is to obtain contact details of responsible persons.
The head of the telemarketing department is usually the sales department. And, in my opinion, this method of attracting customers is very effective. In practice, I have observed more than once the really high-quality and effective work of the telemarketing department. Of course, very often they mislead customers, appearing as “1C company,” but there is a result anyway. Moreover, the cost of the telemarketing department is much lower than the income that the cold calling method brings to the company.
Project management Department
If the client has certain rather voluminous wishes, the implementation department cannot cope with, this part of the work is transferred to the design department. For example, the client requires deep individual settings of the software product, or requires refinement (create a new report, processing, print form, etc.). In principle, the implementation department itself must cope with many similar tasks. But if the implementers fail, or they come to the conclusion that to satisfy all the wishes of the client requires a significant amount of complex work, then all these wishes are transferred to the design department.
What does the design department consist of?
- Programmers 1C
- Consultants 1C
- Project Manager
Specialists of this department are distinguished by a high level of knowledge. Due to the fact that work is underway on projects, they try to take the best specialists to this department. Therefore, the level of knowledge in the design department is much higher than in the company as a whole.
On the other hand, as often happens in our country in general, the level of knowledge of the employees of this department is often insufficient to work with really serious projects. And therefore, the project work is as follows: install a software product, configure it as far as possible according to the wishes of the client. All. The work is considered finished.
Disadvantages of the design department
A very big problem pops up here in the work of the design department: they absolutely do not sell any consulting services. All work is built around 1C. Today, the tasks of the business are predominantly complex. Today, just 1C is not enough for business. Bookkeeping. It also requires some kind of reporting, you need a connection with the production, trading, website, telephony, CRM, etc.
And to solve these problems, the franchisee company simply does not work. They do not offer such services, most often simply because they cannot complete tasks of this level. As a result, they narrow the scope of work to the level of their competence. And, as a result of this approach, a businessman receives a product that does not bring him any benefit.
In my practice, there were projects when it was necessary to implement, for example, the Enterprise Management program. But in order for it to work effectively, it needed to be connected with other software products, it was necessary to think about how people would work with it, to change their business process. And here, specialists from 1C franchisee do not have enough qualifications, because they initially put everything at the basis of the program, not business processes, but this is the wrong approach.
So, they installed the selected program, and then what? How to use it? How to enter data, for example, from a billing system or from Accounting or Warehouse? Manually transfer and duplicate everything? And what's the point of installing this program in general? Those. if before employees simply transferred the final digits from several programs to Excel and could quickly calculate what they need, now they will have to transfer all the primary information to another program. Of course, people will resist this approach to work, as a result, the software solution will be on the shelf.
And for a complex solution, the employees of the project department lack competence and desire. Because it is easiest to sell 1C separately, and not deal with either the site or any other software products. Just because today 1C configuration can cost up to 500 thousand rubles, while the net profit is very high, and the amount of work is minimal.
Imagine: they sold a product for 500,000, made a profit of 250,000. Just because they found a client and installed a ready-made solution for him. Naturally, the company is not interested in promoting related services; it is fully satisfied with high profits with a minimum of labor costs.
But, with all the problems, the design department remains the most highly professional and with the most thoughtful division of labor. Here, programmers go about their business, there are professional consultants for client consultations, and the manager is occupied with leadership.
The scheme is generally good. But still they only deal with 1C, which is insufficient to meet the needs of the business. In addition, the general level, even in this department, is very low, as I wrote above. Why it happens?
- High staff turnover. Specialists are very popular, and therefore they are often lured by competitors, in case of dissatisfaction, they also leave quickly and easily. At the same time, a person very often leaves in the middle of a project, does not delve into the project itself enough, is sprayed on different tasks. And, as a result, it does not grow professionally.
- The lack of a cohesive team. It is clear that for the successful implementation of any project, especially if it is the introduction of a software product, a close-knit team is a very important success factor. The causes of this problem: staff turnover, as well as the frequent transfer of specialists from one project to another. As a result, a close-knit team does not work out, the project manager has to deal with attempts to create a team spirit many times over again during the same project, often to no avail.
- Low leadership competency. Employees hide all problems, and even stages of work from the management of the company. The problem is that the management does not understand well what and how the project department employees perform. As a result, programmers are under constant pressure, just in case, as well as their willingness to replace a specialist with a project at the slightest suspicion that he might not be able to cope. In such conditions, specialists are forced to begin to hide the stages of work and possible problem situations from management.
So, the structure of a typical franchisee company is fully disclosed. I hope that the advantages, disadvantages and problems I have described in detail and clearly. And now I propose to return to the general issues of 1C franchising.
1C franchising: pros and cons
I talked a lot about the problems of 1C franchising, the structure and principles of these companies. It is clear that problems and shortcomings are very important, because I examined them in detail. And now I would like to summarize the information and list the main pros and cons of the 1C franchise system. And I will begin with what I have spoken about a little - about the unconditional advantages of this system.
Pros of 1C franchising:
- Franchisee companies almost completely cover the need for consulting services for the implementation and maintenance of 1C software products.
- Franchisee companies provide a huge number of jobs.
- 1C software products is a Russian software solution, it is fully suitable for the needs of our business, it does not need to be localized. A wide distribution of franchisees makes this solution affordable for entrepreneurs of any region.
- The 1C franchise system also creates competition between companies that sell and implement 1C software products. Each region has several different specialists, and the client still has plenty to choose from.
Cons of 1C franchising:
- Thanks to the franchising system, a lot of random people are involved in the implementation of this software.
- There is no single approach to the work of 1C franchisees.
- There is no control over the work of 1C franchisees, 1C company never acts as an arbiter in disputes, does not delve into any problems and complaints of customers. In fact, the buyer of the software product is left alone with the franchisee.
- A lot of lies, petty fraud, attempts to impersonate a 1C company, fraud with certificates, etc. Of course, this is a drawback not only of 1C franchising, but of the Russian market as a whole. And, nevertheless, the minus of the system also works in this area, which should be noted.
And in conclusion, I would like to give some tips on how to choose a 1C franchisee company? How to avoid problems? What to choose when choosing?
- It is important to understand that you are not choosing a company, but an artist . If a person came to your meeting, do not enthusiastically read press releases or study colorful cases with ready-made projects. Almost any company will provide you such beautiful advertising materials. Better pay attention to the person, make sure that you understand each other, try to establish partnerships with him.
- Better choose a small franchisee company. There is no reason to hope that a large company will care more about reputation than a small company. In fact, they are not much different from each other. But in a small company, if necessary, you can easily go to the head. While in a large company you will be transferred from department to department, you will communicate with a huge number of middle managers, often not at all related to your problem, and the leader will not even know about your existence. In addition, in a large company, the project manager can change at any time, and a sufficiently large number of orders will most likely prevent the head of the project department and higher management from remembering all the nuances of your project. And in a small company, almost all employees, including directors, will be engaged in you.
- Learn to understand the issue. Do not rely on franchisee managers, it is better to spend time yourself, to delve into the nuances and the difference between configurations (those that could potentially suit you), and ultimately choose a software product yourself. Configuration in 1C is your business tool, and they differ among themselves very much. And therefore, if you make a mistake in choosing a software product, then the benefit from it will be no more than a hammer in order to chop wood. Remember that the goal of the manager is to sell and as quickly as possible, and yours is to choose the best. And therefore, do not take the time, it pays off.
- When choosing specialists, you should not rely on the opinion of subordinates. Try to talk with them yourself, evaluate their own competence, focus on results, desire to establish fruitful cooperation.
- Never believe the press releases. Very often, as a plus, franchisees show links to press releases on the 1C website. I saw how they are written, I myself participated in writing some of them. Typically, press releases are written according to a certain template: “Have implemented such and such a product, successfully implemented such and such capabilities”. The manager from the sales department sends the template to the secretary, who fills it out on the basis of the data provided from the contract or other documentation, then this document is sent for signature to the client, most often, almost immediately after implementation. The customer has not yet figured out how the new software product works, did not understand whether this solution is worth the investment, and signs the document with almost no reading.
- Control finances in person. 1C franchising is at the same time the sale of a product and services for its implementation. And, as you know, where such a thing as services appears, the problem of bribes immediately arises in our country. If the manager entrusts most of the resolution of issues to his chief accountant or other subordinate, it is highly likely that they will agree on an inflated price and the subsequent rollback in favor of a particular official. Unfortunately, this is also a Russian reality, and it is better to consider this possibility in advance than to overpay for a service.
And in conclusion, I would like to clarify some of the nuances. I would really not like you to come to the conclusion that everything is bad in the 1C implementation market. Of course, I described the real situation, everything is really not rosy. However, a lot depends on your choice of service provider.
If you are not too lazy to study the subject, personally communicate with representatives of different franchisee companies, control the choice of software, then you will definitely have a wonderful and powerful tool for work - the 1C software product.
And if you entrust the choice of a software provider to a secretary or another ordinary employee who works for you today, and tomorrow, who knows? - then the result will be unpredictable.
Remember that employees come and go, their degree of loyalty to your company is quite limited, and the choice of software is a major investment of money, time and effort, including the working (paid) time of your employees, and they make this choice for a long time . So, I’ll repeat my advice: delve into all the nuances personally or, if this is not possible, entrust the work with software suppliers to a competent person whose loyalty to your company is beyond doubt.