Southbridge: we develop the useful and remove the unnecessary

Our company lacks something unusual: we rent an office in the Voronezh region, hire people from distant cities of Russia, conclude with NDA employees for 10 years, write and publish opensource-plugins for Redmine.

In a few sketches, we show what we are guided by and how we treat our customers.

Utilitarian approach

Have you ever thought to install an Olympic standard swimming pool in your office? Huge expenses will fall on buyers, and your business will lose competitiveness, but you will have a pool. And you can save on air conditioning for the server.

This ridiculous example shows well what we are trying to avoid. Our philosophy: allocate more funds to important things, save on unnecessary ones. And then we will beat the others in quality and price.

Why we do not have an office in Moscow

When I grew up to create my own company and started hiring employees, we rented an office in Moscow. Five years of office life have shown: customers need our office last. Over the years, almost three people have made it difficult to see where we are and what we live.

On the other hand, it was becoming more and more difficult to find people in the Moscow office. The demand for admins increased, the number of applicants fell all the time, and their salary expectations grew. Meanwhile, the province regularly supplied us with people with the highest qualifications for reasonable money.

Therefore, we refused to have an office in Moscow and finally switched to remote hiring, and the money freed up went to the wage fund.

Our advantage: we hire the best specialists from all over the immense Russia, while keeping prices at a reasonable level.

Personal remark: I get great pleasure when among the hundreds of resumes I find THAT employee (careful, attentive, structural), and he joins our team.

Why do we need an office in Liski

Our financial department works in Liski: two very professional, hardworking and diligent girls. They truly love their work. In Moscow, to find such a spirit and attitude is very difficult.

The financial department mainly serves clients with paperwork. Agree on a contract, issue an employee, you can adjust the account remotely, but to keep correspondence - no.

Paper workflow is outdated. We use EDO "Dyadok". At the same time, we abandoned the staff accountant, our accounting department is kept by “Elba”, it does an excellent job even with foreign currency accounts. We automatically send an invitation to all clients to keep documents through the EDM. This feature is implemented in CRM, as we automate everything we can. But so far, at least one client needs paper contracts and acts, our financial department will work in Liski, and we will speed up, simplify and improve paper workflow.

We are loved at the local post office, because we are one of the largest payers. They quickly receive and process our correspondence.

We borrowed the idea of ​​unilateral acts from Yandex. We do not need an act: the contract provides for automatic acceptance of services, if the client did not make a complaint on time. Therefore, we sign the act in one copy and send it to the client’s accounting department. (The bureaucracy of large companies perceives such innovation badly: 1% of clients still require bilateral acts).

Our advantage: we care about the convenience and well-being of our clients' accounts, speeding up and simplifying the workflow. For example, we will respond to a reconciliation request within 30 minutes.

Why do we need a simple "human readable" contract

Does the client want to study the contract for 20 pages? Not. Can he see beyond the legal language that we offer him? Hardly.

Previously, our contract, as is customary in Russia, was 80% water and legal terms.
Revise Glavred helped to reconsider the attitude to the contract: http://bit.ly/2w9i02T
We turned to Vladimir Belyaev ( http://outlaw.center/ ) and within a month worked out a short, legally correct and understandable contract. For example, they removed all references to the law, as they are obliged to comply with the law regardless of the contract.

Our advantage: the client receives not a “bung for accounting”, but a beautiful document with clear instructions on how to use our services.

I began the story of Southbridge 's in-house kitchen with good examples showing our attitude to business. The most interesting thing to come. The next article will be about the quality of services and the organization of work of admins. Subscribe and look at the tape.

Have a nice day!