How botanists automate institutions

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    Hi, Habr. Almost 2 years have passed since my last post . I am very glad that it turned out to be useful to many. Over the 2 years we have done a lot. And I would like to share my experience and my impressions.

    From 20 client establishments from one country, we have grown to almost 4,000 from 12 countries. Our team has grown 5 times. We opened an office in Moscow and Warsaw. They released the application, in addition to iOs and Web, also on Android and Windows. Significantly increased functionality. Translated Poster into 5 languages. Over the past quarter, they took part in 3 international exhibitions. We are closely friends with such companies as Epson, Microsoft, Intel. We are closely watched by several large investors. A European company offered us a takeover.

    At first glance, it might seem that everything is simple and cloudless, but I assure you this is not so. The most interesting and dangerous is yet to be. In fact, we went through only the first stage - the stage of testing the idea and building the first version of the product. The next step is the most difficult stage - the formation stage, when internal optimization and restructuring of the company takes place. This is what I want to talk about.

    Small intro


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    Poster - cash desk on the tablet. Allows you to automate the institution (cafe, bar, restaurant, shop ...) in just half an hour. It is paid by subscription, which includes updates and technical support, so the cost of implementation is usually up to 10 times lower than that of similar stationary solutions (even without taking into account updates and technical support).

    Technical support


    This is our trump card. We work with HoReCa (hotels, restaurants, cafes), and this is a very conservative market. Especially in the CIS countries. If we take European analogues, then all the TP (technical support) they have is carried out by mail, at best through chat. We immediately realized that you could not do without a phone and spent a lot of energy to build a hotline inside the company. (I can tell you in the comments about the pitfalls, if interested).

    Initially, TP was simple for us. There was a responsible manager who connected new clients and then led already connected ones. Very quickly, we abandoned this structure, since upon reaching 20-30 paid clients per manager, its performance on new connections dropped sharply. This scheme is suitable for starting. But there is a risk that the manager will take away part of his clients upon dismissal. Clients get used to one manager, who often does not keep a history of communication with a client, this makes it difficult to assign a client to a new manager.

    The next logical step was the "conveyor". We divided the department into Connection Managers, who helped clients get acquainted with the program and make the first payment, and into Technical specialists who solve current problems of clients. And it worked perfectly, while there were less than 10 such people, and no more than 1000 clients. It is difficult to scale such a structure further. Clients are becoming more diverse and it is necessary to introduce an individual approach for each of them.

    Now we have individual employees who specialize in the automation of coffee houses. During their work, they helped to open more than 100 such establishments. There are those who specialize in burger, franchises or chains of establishments, food trucks, festivals ... This allows you to more accurately and quickly help customers, because we already know all the intricacies of their business and help to understand everything even before questions arise. It took us a lot of effort and work to build such a process. Now we have an internal Wiki where we described all the processes of TP.

    Tip: immediately you need to get a Wiki in which to describe the processes in the company and what to do in a given situation. This is necessary so that new employees do not step on the same rake, so that your decisions are clear and balanced, and not depend on the mood and be a mystery to other employees.

    Staff training


    We pay special attention to the training of new employees. We did something like a mini certification center. Each employee who comes to work goes through a week of training, at the end of which he makes a presentation of the product to the company. During training, he passes several tests for theory and practice. An experienced manager is assigned to him, who helps him learn everything faster and is interested in making the training successful. This allowed us to put the process on stream and easily recruit and train 2-4 new employees per month.

    Tip : The process of training new employees should be tackled in advance. We put off this moment for a long time and as a result lost a lot of time. Read Lean Startup! I would read it earlier - I would save a lot of time.

    Technologies in TP


    With the growth in the number of customers, the number of calls to TP also increases. We used to use regular mail, then we could not cope. Implemented the Groove ticket system . Integrated it with their CRM, now everything works like a clock.

    We actively use chats in work. First tried Zopim . Cool but expensive. We switched to SiteHeart (ideal for small teams and simple tasks). Half a year ago, I discovered Intercom . They switched to him. First, registered users were transferred, then all. A couple of months ago, I noticed that competitors also began to use it, which is a good sign.

    For internal communication we use Slack . Mixpanel introduced in Novemberfor detailed analytics. For tasks we use Trello . All this is tied together. Now, when there is an appeal from the client, the manager fixes it in our CRM, from where it falls into the tasks of the programmers and a message to the head of the department to monitor the status.

    Tip : if the problem appears more than 2 times, you need to automate it and describe the process.

    Development


    We divided the entire development into project teams. Each project has a responsible person who leads the project from beginning to end and allocates resources. Nothing unusual here. Unless, there is a rule: once a month each developer should work for one day along with technical support in order to better understand customers and their responsibility for the product.

    Tip : everyone in the company should feel users: their feedback, problems, needs. This is not a problem or responsibility of the manager, it is the task of each employee.

    Mentality


    Recently, we often communicate with teams of similar products from Europe and America. We carefully study them at exhibitions. If you take the top 10 of these companies, then all of them are ahead of us about sales. However, only a few of them have key functionality, such as inventory, costing, marketing campaigns, modifiers, fiscalization. It’s simply impossible to work on the CIS market without which, because 90% of customers need these functions. In Europe, everything is simpler. Clients are willing to compromise on functionality, realizing that a cloud product costs 10 times less. In the CIS market, everything is different. In most cases, customers are not ready to put up with the lack of the necessary key functionality, even considering the large difference in price, which makes the entry threshold for new teams quite large.

    By the way, stationary systems often use this. They release a cloud version with bugs and meager functionality, and if a client comes to them and has no opportunity to shell out $ 10,000 for their stationary product, they sell him their unstable cloud version. After a while, the client calls them, is indignant, they have been saying for a long time that “this is a cloud solution, and they are all so budgetary, hence the price, and if he wants stability, then let him take a loan and buy a stationary solution.” After such a client, it is already difficult to convince that this company only has such an unfinished product. The client is now confident that all cloud solutions work disgusting.

    Tip : test ideas. Go to the field and chat with your customers. The experience of colleagues abroad can be deceiving.

    API


    Six months ago, we released an open API for developers. Now we are transferring all our products to it. Released the app for Poster Boss owners on it. Now five independent projects are integrating with us. Several products have already been successfully integrated, and soon we will talk about it. I believe that an open API is the key to success. Now, for example, two students from different countries have chosen Poster as their graduation project and are writing applications for it using our API. We even plan to do a thesis contest next year.

    Tip : strive for openness. Share knowledge, best practices. But do not release the API if you are not ready to support it and you do not have a person who will be responsible for it. API support and development is an ongoing process.

    Seasonality


    This fall, we were faced with a very unexpected phenomenon - the seasonality of our customers' businesses. Since Poster is distributed by subscription model, it is ideal for seasonal establishments that operate 4-6 months a year. We knew this, but were not prepared for such a scale. As a result, the shutdown rate for October-November was 15 times higher than normal. But it was literally two months and we quickly dealt with this phenomenon. Now we take these institutions into account a little differently in our growth model.

    Tip : get ready for sharp jumps. It could be a policy, a course, or something else.

    Expectations vs Reality


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    Here I would like to voice the most popular tips for articles about our product and how they did not pass a real test.

    1. First of all, you need to release an application on Android, it is cheaper and more popular.

    The most popular misconception. We launched Android almost a year ago and only 5% of our customers work on Android tablets. Only Chinese tablets with a disgusting touchscreen are constantly hanging up and slowly working cheaper than used iPad. If you want your business to work quickly, stably and without failures - you will have to take Samsung or Nexus. And here the difference is already insignificant, but the WOW effect is present only with the iPad, it costs over $ 50 for it. We help businesses save $ 3000-5000, while saving another $ 100 on a stable tablet is not practical.

    2. You do not have a warehouse / accounting / ... (substitute your own).

    Now we have almost everything. When there was no warehouse - we thought that now we’ll make a warehouse and sales will go. It was the same with bookkeeping. But the reality is that more than half of customers use only 20% of the features. In fact, less than half of customers use the warehouse and technical maps from the beginning of using the system. When we did this analysis, it was a shock for us. We are currently working on a gradual training of customers in basic functions in order to increase the number of those who use most of the opportunities.

    3. A tablet for each waiter / client.

    Less than 20% of our customers work with more than one terminal in the institution. Of course, it is economically more profitable: the waiter does not rush between the hall and the kitchen, the load on it decreases, as a result, you need fewer waiters. But in reality, only a few owners calculate this and implement it.

    4. A beautiful terminal interface is most important.

    The system is bought by the owner, not the waiter. In most cases, the owner does not care how the terminal looks for the waiter. And the waiter doesn’t care. The main thing is that the terminal should work quickly, the waiter could serve more guests and earn more tips. Only 25% of customers add photos to all products on the tablet. And about the same does not add a single photo of their products.

    5. Subscription puts the client “on the hook”, forcing you to pay constantly.

    Another popular misconception. On the "hook" it is planted stationary systems. After all, after he paid $ 5000-7000 for equipment and a system, he has almost no chance of abandoning or returning them. You have to pay for updates and technical support and wait for hours. With us, a client can export all the data at any time, just stop paying and switch to another system. He knows this, we know it. Therefore, we are doing our best to ensure that the client is always satisfied and does not have such misconceptions.

    Tip : Learn how customers use your product and help them better integrate with it. Do not believe what they write in the comments. Believe only numbers.

    This year we have faced a huge number of problems. We managed to solve many, many still to come. The most important thing that I understood is that business is a process. This is not something finite. You can’t just solve a problem. Over time, it will change and the solution will no longer fit. We have to come up with something new and optimize. You can’t stop and just watch.

    It would be interesting to hear who came across similar things and how did you solve them?

    PS I will be glad to answer questions in the comments.
    PPS We are looking for interesting projects in the restaurant sector for integration with our API. Who cares - write to the PM.

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