How did we overcome this crisis
My company was also affected by the crisis. As, however, and all. I know many leaders of many companies and I don’t know anyone whom the crisis would not have touched. And those who say “everything is fine with us” are simply bluffing. No, of course, I think there are those who have not been affected by the crisis, and even those who have started to do better, but there are few. And this post, apparently, not for them. How to return the company to the pre-crisis level? What specifically to take to prevent stagnation? I will share my experience, because I have succeeded.
However, not all are compelled to tell. I know that I am honored by competitors. But I think the basic idea and approach to solving this problem will be clear.
To be understood what will be discussed. Here we have laid out the results of the company for 2009. There is a picture from my desktop. There are two main indicators of the company. The company's revenue and the number of initial applications of new customers. Comments are almost superfluous. It shows that by mid-2009, the company's revenue had dropped significantly, and the number of initial customer requests dropped to almost zero at the beginning of the year. These two graphics are constantly before my eyes and now. So as not to relax.
')
At first, I treated the drop in revenues in the style of “well, the crisis is the same, everything falls for everyone”. Then I got tired of it and I realized that if nothing was done, the situation could go too far.
I decided to introduce the so-called BSC system in my own company and try in practice what it is. The task was seemingly simple - to stop the decline in revenue and make it grow by the end of the year.
Everything would seem simple. Here you have a goal. You need to reach it. But how? What exactly do you need to do? Very often in high offices they simply plan financial indicators and ... everything. Then they lower these financial plans down there, look down on them, shrug their shoulders and work “as before.” Then, in the same high offices, there is a downward correction of plans, because “there are objective reasons for that” or simply staff reductions or other measures occur that do not solve the problem fundamentally. In short, it is certainly possible to plan financial indicators, but the final employees need to be informed not at all by financial plans, but by others. One can plan financial indicators for oneself, but if ordinary employees do not understand what exactly they should do to achieve them, then such planning is worthless.
Worked in three main areas.
1. The system of attracting new customers. It is this system that will ultimately lead to an increase in the company's revenue.
2. Improving the product. It should be better in all respects. And just better and better than the competition.
3. Labor productivity. We have it and so high, but it should be even higher.
The goal tree looked approximately as in the picture, only in much more detail, right down to concrete actions. In general, everything is clear from the picture - to achieve a specific goal there should not be a confusion, everything should be clear, clear and unequivocal. It should be clear to all company employees what we do, why we do, when we do and who exactly does.
In the process there were some changes in the objectives, but in general everything is like that. For each task, the dates, the performers, the responsible ones are defined.
For example, one of the intermediate goals is to increase the number of initial customer requests by the end of the year by 3 times. Looking ahead, I will say that it did not happen three times, but more than ten.
To do this, we clearly divided the channels through which we get new customers. The main channel is, of course, our site. But visitors get to the site in different ways. Clearly divided and these paths and set goals for each of the paths. How many customers should come?
One of the ways, for example, is the context on search engines. They dealt with it more closely, all ads rated for efficiency and conversion, ineffective or rewritten or thrown out. Slightly increased the budget in context and expanded the number of search phrases.
Carefully worked the rest of the way, for each of which have developed specific actions and objectives.
In order to significantly increase the number of initial hits, site traffic by the end of the year had to be tripled. But, what's the point if you have three times more visitors to your site, but on average a visitor spends 5 seconds on the site? The effect of this increase will be zero. Therefore, one of the main sub-goals was to increase by three times the time that the visitor spends on the site. Increased in the end six times. The time that a visitor spends on the site, in our opinion, is much more important than the sheer number of visitors. Therefore, here the goal is divided into three - the number of visitors, the time that the visitor spends on the site and the new site design. As it turned out, design means a lot.
In order to delay the visitor on the site, he needs to offer something new and interesting. And we started writing interesting articles, making video materials and posting it all on the site. I discovered an amazing thing - when you start writing interesting articles “for people”, in a normal and understandable language, the reader and the media start paying attention to your materials. It happened in our case.
Truly, AS was right. Pushkin, who once said something about the lovers complicates everything: "these people will never say" early in the morning ", they write" as soon as the first rays of the rising sun lit up the eastern edge of the azure sky. "
Several publications have turned to us with a request to publish our articles on their pages. Thus, we received an additional influx of visitors. Tied up with the managers of publications and continue regular publications.
We did not make video materials in the style of “about anything”, but high-quality material that is interesting to real users. As a result, some users lingered on the site for hours.
Completely redone the site design. Worked with designers on this issue for almost six months. The new design seemed simple and fresh to us. Exactly what is needed.
Work to increase the visitor's time on the site continues now. For example, if before users simply downloaded instructions from the site in PDF, now they will be in html directly on the site.
Of course, they did search engine optimization more thoroughly. We stopped the relationship with a company that previously "spun up" the site and started to do it yourself. They just found a literate person who instructed us (and continues to instruct) on the right path, listened to his recommendations, which seemed to us very practical. By the way, also habrovets. He also translated the site to a new, modern engine, so that we could manage all the content normally and efficiently.
We removed the texts that the previous company placed with us for promotion. Because it was the lyrics for robots, not for humans. Yes, in some positions the site dropped a little, but the time of visitors grew and the number of failures decreased (we also follow the number of failures). Because when a person comes to the site and sees quality, interesting material, it is much better than when he sees solid tags and uninteresting text.
More often they began to tell the public about themselves. It turned out that many are interested. Began to blog on Habré, by the way.
Completely redone the product interface. Developed a huge amount of useful functionality, to which in the "fat" time just hands did not reach. This part of the project lasted about eight months.
Another area we have been working hard for all this time is to increase the productivity of the company's employees. It was rather high in our country, but it was precisely labor productivity that was put in the company at the forefront. For this, a new customer support system was introduced, the system for installing new versions to customers was fully automated, the system for managing our product settings at customers was automated. It saved just a huge amount of time. As a result, time was freed up quite a lot and we were able to devote this time to developing new functionality. And the product has become more perfect and labor productivity has increased significantly.
In order to achieve some goal, it must be converted into simple and understandable tasks that are quite achievable by employees in quite a certain time. Tasks should be simple and quantifiable.
Of course, all this can be done only if:
1. There is no limit to your persistence, and you know how to bring what you have begun to its logical conclusion.
2. You are not afraid of change.
3. Are you sure your product is good?
However, not all are compelled to tell. I know that I am honored by competitors. But I think the basic idea and approach to solving this problem will be clear.
To be understood what will be discussed. Here we have laid out the results of the company for 2009. There is a picture from my desktop. There are two main indicators of the company. The company's revenue and the number of initial applications of new customers. Comments are almost superfluous. It shows that by mid-2009, the company's revenue had dropped significantly, and the number of initial customer requests dropped to almost zero at the beginning of the year. These two graphics are constantly before my eyes and now. So as not to relax.
')
At first, I treated the drop in revenues in the style of “well, the crisis is the same, everything falls for everyone”. Then I got tired of it and I realized that if nothing was done, the situation could go too far.
I decided to introduce the so-called BSC system in my own company and try in practice what it is. The task was seemingly simple - to stop the decline in revenue and make it grow by the end of the year.
Everything would seem simple. Here you have a goal. You need to reach it. But how? What exactly do you need to do? Very often in high offices they simply plan financial indicators and ... everything. Then they lower these financial plans down there, look down on them, shrug their shoulders and work “as before.” Then, in the same high offices, there is a downward correction of plans, because “there are objective reasons for that” or simply staff reductions or other measures occur that do not solve the problem fundamentally. In short, it is certainly possible to plan financial indicators, but the final employees need to be informed not at all by financial plans, but by others. One can plan financial indicators for oneself, but if ordinary employees do not understand what exactly they should do to achieve them, then such planning is worthless.
Worked in three main areas.
1. The system of attracting new customers. It is this system that will ultimately lead to an increase in the company's revenue.
2. Improving the product. It should be better in all respects. And just better and better than the competition.
3. Labor productivity. We have it and so high, but it should be even higher.
The goal tree looked approximately as in the picture, only in much more detail, right down to concrete actions. In general, everything is clear from the picture - to achieve a specific goal there should not be a confusion, everything should be clear, clear and unequivocal. It should be clear to all company employees what we do, why we do, when we do and who exactly does.
In the process there were some changes in the objectives, but in general everything is like that. For each task, the dates, the performers, the responsible ones are defined.
For example, one of the intermediate goals is to increase the number of initial customer requests by the end of the year by 3 times. Looking ahead, I will say that it did not happen three times, but more than ten.
To do this, we clearly divided the channels through which we get new customers. The main channel is, of course, our site. But visitors get to the site in different ways. Clearly divided and these paths and set goals for each of the paths. How many customers should come?
One of the ways, for example, is the context on search engines. They dealt with it more closely, all ads rated for efficiency and conversion, ineffective or rewritten or thrown out. Slightly increased the budget in context and expanded the number of search phrases.
Carefully worked the rest of the way, for each of which have developed specific actions and objectives.
In order to significantly increase the number of initial hits, site traffic by the end of the year had to be tripled. But, what's the point if you have three times more visitors to your site, but on average a visitor spends 5 seconds on the site? The effect of this increase will be zero. Therefore, one of the main sub-goals was to increase by three times the time that the visitor spends on the site. Increased in the end six times. The time that a visitor spends on the site, in our opinion, is much more important than the sheer number of visitors. Therefore, here the goal is divided into three - the number of visitors, the time that the visitor spends on the site and the new site design. As it turned out, design means a lot.
In order to delay the visitor on the site, he needs to offer something new and interesting. And we started writing interesting articles, making video materials and posting it all on the site. I discovered an amazing thing - when you start writing interesting articles “for people”, in a normal and understandable language, the reader and the media start paying attention to your materials. It happened in our case.
Truly, AS was right. Pushkin, who once said something about the lovers complicates everything: "these people will never say" early in the morning ", they write" as soon as the first rays of the rising sun lit up the eastern edge of the azure sky. "
Several publications have turned to us with a request to publish our articles on their pages. Thus, we received an additional influx of visitors. Tied up with the managers of publications and continue regular publications.
We did not make video materials in the style of “about anything”, but high-quality material that is interesting to real users. As a result, some users lingered on the site for hours.
Completely redone the site design. Worked with designers on this issue for almost six months. The new design seemed simple and fresh to us. Exactly what is needed.
Work to increase the visitor's time on the site continues now. For example, if before users simply downloaded instructions from the site in PDF, now they will be in html directly on the site.
Of course, they did search engine optimization more thoroughly. We stopped the relationship with a company that previously "spun up" the site and started to do it yourself. They just found a literate person who instructed us (and continues to instruct) on the right path, listened to his recommendations, which seemed to us very practical. By the way, also habrovets. He also translated the site to a new, modern engine, so that we could manage all the content normally and efficiently.
We removed the texts that the previous company placed with us for promotion. Because it was the lyrics for robots, not for humans. Yes, in some positions the site dropped a little, but the time of visitors grew and the number of failures decreased (we also follow the number of failures). Because when a person comes to the site and sees quality, interesting material, it is much better than when he sees solid tags and uninteresting text.
More often they began to tell the public about themselves. It turned out that many are interested. Began to blog on Habré, by the way.
Completely redone the product interface. Developed a huge amount of useful functionality, to which in the "fat" time just hands did not reach. This part of the project lasted about eight months.
Another area we have been working hard for all this time is to increase the productivity of the company's employees. It was rather high in our country, but it was precisely labor productivity that was put in the company at the forefront. For this, a new customer support system was introduced, the system for installing new versions to customers was fully automated, the system for managing our product settings at customers was automated. It saved just a huge amount of time. As a result, time was freed up quite a lot and we were able to devote this time to developing new functionality. And the product has become more perfect and labor productivity has increased significantly.
findings
In order to achieve some goal, it must be converted into simple and understandable tasks that are quite achievable by employees in quite a certain time. Tasks should be simple and quantifiable.
Of course, all this can be done only if:
1. There is no limit to your persistence, and you know how to bring what you have begun to its logical conclusion.
2. You are not afraid of change.
3. Are you sure your product is good?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/97959/
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