Or “What IT integrators are silent about”. I will talk about the pitfalls of the industry, based on many years of experience working in it, and share my vision of what is destroying it, and what approach can save it and bring it to a new level of development.

Hello everyone!

My name is Yevhen Khrylin.

Formally, I hold the position of executive director of IT business partner Rightex.

Informally in the company I am responsible for management, team distribution, finances, customers, product line, marketing and branding. In general, to ensure that clients are satisfied and feel that they are working with real professionals who value them.

Having worked in several companies and progressed from an analyst to a project office manager, I took part in 30+ BPM implementation projects in various industries.

All this experience led me to start my own blog on habr.ru. In it, I will share my thoughts and ideas, which I hope will be useful to someone, and I will find like-minded people with similar views.

I will write in a leisurely manner, but in order to be as useful as possible to you. I will also share practical materials. Among the upcoming topics I have planned are:

• Automation as a competitive advantage

• Solving the problems of agricultural holdings through automation

• Why do you need an integrator company?

• BPMSoft must be able to cook

• Implementation of AI to solve business problems + real cases

I will return to the main topic of this post.

It may be immodest, but I believe that I have quite successfully grown up the career ladder – already at the age of 28, I held the position of head of the project office of a system integrator with 70+ people. However, I have constantly accumulated an understanding that the principles of building relationships with customers, partners and employees of some representatives of the TOP management from those I met in our industry, most often diverge from my ideas about what is right.

Nevertheless, on this path I was lucky to meet a person very close to me in spirit and views – Artem Volkov, who has more than 22 years of experience in IT in various positions. We agreed: in order to correct the shortcomings of the industry and change something in it, we need to organize our company, applying in practice the principles, methods and tools that we think are the most correct. Quite quickly, we determined its main goal – to become the industry standard for business automation and settled on the name Rightex.

In the first article of my blog, I will tell you exactly what and how we decided to change the industry. I assume that many of you have encountered similar cases and problems in IT and beyond.

Case 1

• Manipulation of management along with deception of customers, employees and partners

• Lack of respect for partners and responsibility towards them

Trust starts with honesty

I believe that it is correct to treat the client as an equal partner – with respect, openness and honesty.

Already at the first meetings, we directly discuss our pros and cons, we openly talk about the number of free specialists and the level of the team. We can also share financial indicators, if necessary.

In my opinion, this is how real trust and the right partnerships are built from the very beginning.

The principle of transparency within the team

The approach described above is shared by all members of our team. A culture of transparency helps achieve the best results by increasing trust between employees. This supports their belief in the value of their work and the confidence that they are being treated fairly.

When business speaks better than advertising

In my opinion, the ratio of those who are satisfied with the interaction with the integrator and are ready to recommend it to the total number of customers is one of the most important indicators for understanding the quality of work. We have that ratio 7 to 7, and I’m always willing to set up a reference call with anyone to confirm that.

Case 2

• Crazy and uncontrolled business growth

• Lack of prioritization of what is important in relation to the company’s vision and goals

• Chaoticness instead of systematicity, which leads employees to burnout

• Arrogance of managers who make decisions without consulting knowledge owners and operational staff

• Excessive multitasking that stresses people out instead of focusing on their work priorities

Only conscious growth

I perfectly understand that the growth of a system integrator consists in increasing the number of customers, tasks and professionals whose hours bring the company profit. But you can not chase multiple uncontrolled scaling. This is how we follow the path of consistent growth, simultaneously optimizing and automating internal production processes. For example, we have:

• configured competent CI/CD process (which most integrators do not have)

• developed budgeting and financial analysis of projects

• shared responsibility for participation in projects, including internal ones

Focus on the important

Our team members do not work on more than two projects at the same time, in order to deeply immerse themselves in the tasks and perform them well. When someone has free time, a person switches to internal projects of the company.

Each employee can follow the discussion that leads to important decisions. Teams are divided by projects as a result of general discussions, in which disagreement is also permissible. Thus, it is possible to achieve a more effective division of labor.

Compactness and efficiency

There is a thesis “the great work with the great”. From the very beginning, we positioned ourselves as a small super-qualified and cross-functional special forces. Later, in an interview with the owner of one of the largest messengers in the world, I heard a similar opinion about his team;)

Case 3

• Greed and desire to take on a project without the ability to implement it qualitatively

• Uncontrolled cooperation regarding advance payments, which then, believe it or not, have to be worked out

• Many words, but little action, or when “selling is better than production”

• Inflated markups for customers in the absence of proper production processes, lack of resources on projects and the use of unqualified teams

Grab everything you can

I pride myself on the fact that we manage to take on only those projects and tasks that we can complete at a high level that meets our standards.

We do not engage in global digital transformation and do not disperse to the implementation of many automation systems, but focus on one BPM platform – BPMSoft.

I always advocate that we create a value proposition for the client’s actual need and not promise more than we will deliver.

We do not strive to boast of a huge portfolio of clients, but each of our projects is implemented with a focus on quality and reliable partnerships.

Prepayment Risks: An Inside Look

I am convinced that one of the causes of problems for both the integrator and the client is a large advance payment at the start of the project. In addition, it can indicate financial problems at the integrator. In this case, the client risks not only receiving a non-working system, but also freezing his finances pending court proceedings (as practice has shown).

I consider another result of prepayment damage to be the banal laxity of top management and project management after receiving it. Most often, this leads to a deterioration in the quality of project implementation and its management.

Exception: I allow the use of prepayment, but only when the client needs to book a team for a project that starts later.

Case 4

• Lack of actual development of specialists and mentoring, even if they are formally available

• Suppression of employee initiatives aimed at improving company processes

• Inadequate remuneration of people involved in the development of the company

• Compensation of low salaries with “high” positions

• Excessive monitoring of employees and irrelevant reporting to management or customers

Professional growth is not just words

It became obvious to me a long time ago that the quality, time and cost of implementing a BPM system directly depend on the experience of the integrator team. Therefore, it is necessary to constantly improve the professional level of our specialists, because they are the key resource in IT implementations. However, for some reason, many companies lose sight of this.

Both myself and my partner Artem have always paid special attention to training, motivation and growth of employees, which helped us to form the current strong team. And not only her – many of our former colleagues have become cool specialists and now work in other companies. However, we still receive words of thanks for the path we have traveled together.

We invest in those who create value

I perfectly understand that not only professional growth is important for people, but also financial motivation. Despite the youth and size of our company, the level of income of its employees can be compared with large IT integrators. This became possible thanks to the clients’ recognition of the value and high level of our specialists in agreeing project budgets.

In addition, our team actively participates in the creation of products for the BPMSoft platform, receiving a proportional share of the remuneration from their sales.

Freedom of action, responsibility for the result

I have always been repelled by micromanagement and total control of employees. I am sure that their responsibility, compliance with deadlines and quality of work are much more important. The sharing of the company’s goals and values ​​by the team is also of great importance. It is necessary to focus on them, both when making strategic decisions and when performing tasks in your daily work.

Conclusion

I described these cases in order not to cause a storm of discussion in the comments or to advertise our company. My task is to openly share the problems of the industry, which I am familiar with firsthand, and show that it can be different.

I think that thanks to this approach, I managed to meet cool people and truly dedicated specialists, both from the current team and from clients and partners.