The largest customers in Russia - a big score or a headache? AGIMA Experience

A hardware store (or a grocery store, or a kids' store, or whatever else) of a federal scale enters the market with an order - develop a web project. The task may be interesting technically, terribly profitable, but many developers and agencies still doubt whether he is ready to take on this.

Managers will present how they assemble the tenth meeting in a week to discuss the background, designers will like how they collect arguments that they don’t need to “play” anything else, and developers will receive a signed-up Beatrix project from the past contractor.
')
But those companies that take on this become the largest players in the market - after their customers. AGIMA is one of them. Commercial Director Vitaly Doschenko, PR Director Kristina Lyaptseva and Executive Director Yevgeny Lobanov told us about their experience - about tenders, competitions, the role of PR, compromises in the choice of technologies and much more.

Agima received an average rating of 4.6 and an average recommendation of 93% of its employees at My Circle, who highly appreciated their career growth, relationships with colleagues, and their relationship with the top management of the company.

---

How did AGIMA come about?

At the beginning of the two thousandth, a small digital agency got its first order. Managers of AlfaStrakhovaniye asked to design an annual report in electronic form for the board of directors. Then this just came into fashion, but not yet overgrown with general practices and standards.

The agency did not know what kind of equipment will be on the presentation, what permission to adapt the project for. This was before the era of smartphones, when responsive designs were more common in conversations among their own than in real projects. But the demonstration could not go bad - the event was extremely important. And the agency coped.



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

For a long time AGIMA worked exclusively in FINTECH. “Insurance, tobacco companies, retail came to us - big companies that understood that food and digital transformation was taking place, but they didn’t have the expertise inside to keep up with it,” says Vitaly Doschenko.

AlfaCtrakhovanie remained one of the key partners. “It was a large company offline, and they needed a simple Internet representation with a list of services and a feedback form,” Vitaly says, “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 release of online policies. Then they connected personal accounts of agents, clients, made a backend and a mobile application bus, connected research, analytics, SLA, information security. Now AlfaCtrakhovanie is a leader in online insurance sales. ”

---

How to get the largest customers

AGIMA has worked with large companies since the very beginning. Many agencies are afraid to go into this market segment. They scare away tenders, bureaucracy, complicated 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 customers - the largest customers in Russia. And in order to maintain a suitable level of service for them, we need completely different processes and financial planning. Because of this, we can not even take small projects from small companies. Our processes are more expensive. It turns out a shot from the cannon on the sparrows, "- says Vitaly.

Tenders

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

PR

But the lion's share of income comes from reputation. AGIMA says that she has always been famous for her PR, she tried to broadcast large and small information channels to clients and the community. So, after the success with AlfaStrakhovanie, many other insurance companies came to the agency with a desire to do the same.

Competitions and Awards

On the AGIMA website there is a section with awards, and it resembles a mantelpiece at home with a champion - solid cups, diplomas and certificates. The agency says that it is not a tool to attract customers, it is for the motivation of the team. Employees like when they are evaluated by experts for professional achievement, and not just clients for earned money.



“Ratings that attract customers - there is. But for customers, rewards are not the key criteria when 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 Yevgeny Lobanov.

“We ourselves do not always submit projects for contests that we are really proud of. Awards are often awarded for the visual part, but we have complex products for the internal business processes of the client, which we cannot tell, ”says Christina Lyaptseva.

---

What technologies are used

In 2008, AGIMA chose the mobile approach as a priority. The company developed a website for Svyaznoy Bank, which became the first adaptive online bank. They consider MegaFon’s personal account in 2011 to be the largest and most crucial project.

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

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

According to Eugene, “Large and medium-sized clients 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 supporting implementation on the old. ”

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

“We have a lot of projects on Bitrix, because clients say:“ If we have to go to another contractor, we want him to be able to support what you have written. A “Bitrix” - the most common among agencies that work in the enterprise, ”- says Vitaly.

AGIMA does not see anything wrong with this, and is trying to do well in the conditions that exist. “This is a developer legend 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 forcing a client to switch to another technology. For what? It’s better for us to be flexible ourselves than to take a position and break products for its sake. ”

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

However, the Future Friendly Web slogan 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 the implementation: “We try to make it the least risky for the client, using technologies that are recognized and well-established in the industrial approach. But with these technologies we make a product that looks to the future. ”

“We were the first to create products with which other agencies subsequently entered the market. The system design came into fashion only now, although we actively applied them back in 2012. The combination of qualitative and quantitative research in production, product analytics - we have seen all this in the last 5-7 years. I am sure that in a couple of years everyone will begin 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 delivery rights for the Google Analytics 360 package.

“The specificity of the market is that advertising agencies sell traffic and provide a tool to control 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 on the basis of data. For this, we use the 360 ​​package. In the West, this is already a long time ago, but in Russia this is a new trend. We even had data driven development positioning, ”says Vitaly.

---

How to organize the work structure

AGIMA office is located in 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.

Previously, the agency had offices in other cities, but in order to gather the expertise in one place, all employees were transferred to Moscow. According to Yevgeny, communications accelerated, and it became more pleasant for employees to work together, rather than via Skype: “No matter what they say, the team’s motivation falls apart when everyone is in different offices, and even more so in different cities.”



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

Motivation system

For large product companies, this number of people is not rare. But among the web agencies AGIMA is one of the largest in terms of staff. To keep employees from being lost and understand their place inside, the company introduced a transparent system of motivation.

“For our size, we have a good management and financial accounting. Separately, the efficiency of each employee is considered, how much he earns for the company, how much profit he brings, how this profit is reinvested in the needs of the team, ”says Vitaly.

For managers, volume matters

The company measures the effectiveness of the quantity and quality of work submitted. Every manager is motivated by volume and profit. He has a production rate - a certain amount of work that he must pass. If a company gets super profit, it shares 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 around, finds out what problems there 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 performed or not. All the rest is a subjective assessment. Therefore, the quality control department controls exactly 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 is divided into June and Signor

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

Each employee has a KPI per quarter, and if he manages to perform it twice, the employee is allowed to internal certification to the next level. For example, a project manager to become a signor must close a certain amount of work in six months. After that, he passes online testing. For some time answers questions - both theoretical, and with the description of situations where it is necessary to make the decision.

Having obtained a new level, an 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 makes small, detailed tasks. When everyone is confident that he copes well with tasks, he gets a middle level.

“There he can already make proposals to Timlid, but so far he cannot merge himself - he is just pushing. Signor also has the opportunity to merge, manage a large number of developers and influence the technical aspects of the product, ”says Yevgeny,“ There are very cool theorists who are cool at interviewing, they know a lot, but they do not bring any benefit to the business. They do not solve the problem, they can not be trusted to the client. Processors are scary people. ”

---

How to hire people

In hiring AGIMA uses 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, correct it all on the basis of the collected data.

There is a lot of data, although the company does not grow by three hundred people per month - just on average, for a hundred responses, only three people are suitable.

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

Stages of hiring

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

On the first, Euchar calls the candidate and polls the checklist to assess relevance. Then the candidate passes a twenty-minute online test, and behind him - 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 project path. Here, many sypyatsya. They do not know that there is a risk map on which it is necessary to evaluate the project before starting work. They do not know that, in addition to evaluation and communication, the Gantt chart must be minimized with these risks. They do not know that you need to inflict resources and resolve the critical points of intersection of resources.

I ask what is a web bus or web service. I am greatly surprised by candidates who want more than one hundred thousand, but do not know what it is, or do not know what xml is. It's funny to me.

We ask backenders about storage structures, because we have to interact with different DBMS. There will be technical questions about the PLO - ask the basics and what it is. in general, what is encapsulation or polymorphism is constructed. And here exactly the same number of people fall off. ”

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

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

“Many people have their own style, you can’t do anything,” adds Vitaly, “I, for example, 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 solved 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 the biggest projects he had done. And, of course, sometimes talented people also get rejected, you can’t do anything. ”

---

How people are taught

When the increase in the number of paid courses began, concurrently grew and dissatisfaction with their quality. It pushed the company to make its free university with entrance exams and real diplomas - AGIMA University. The first streams were design and analytics. In this, two new ones are planned - team building and management.

Yevgeny says that within the company, education also pays a lot of attention: “We spend at least two meetings a month, which take place during working hours. They top experts talk about cases. We have organized thematic clubs, which also take place during working hours. There are weekly newsletters and digests. It is important for us that everyone inside understand their value. After all, if a person does not know what he is unique with, then how can he translate something outside. ”