General director
Services:
About the company and myself:
We are a contract research organisation (CRO) providing strategic solutions for clinical trials. We conduct research on new drugs before they come to market. Our company was founded in 1993, so we have more than 20 years of experience in the market. Initially the company focused mainly on research in Central Europe. Over time it grew, and today we are genuinely a mid-size CRO with headquarters in Berlin and main operating offices in Boston, Warsaw and Kyiv.
The Russian office was opened in 2009, and I have worked at the company for more than 7 years as general director. Since then the company has developed significantly, and UCMS Group helped us at every stage of that development. Our team has also grown over the years. UCMS supports us, especially with preparing business trip documentation, and that is very relevant for us because our specialists travel actively to other cities, and it is important for us that business trip processing and reporting are handled as accurately as possible and, of course, that travel expenses are paid on time and correctly.
As soon as I joined the company as director, I assessed the state of the accounting department. I am not an accountant, but I have an MBA from the Plekhanov business school, where I was taught to form a view of a company's stage of development from certain diagnostic signs and various indicators. I had some doubts, so we organised an internal review of the accounting department, which Svetlana Makashina carried out at the time (note: head of the accounting outsourcing department in 2010-2014). In the end we realised that we had a lot of work to do and that we would continue doing it with UCMS Group. That is when we started our cooperation.
At that time the company's Russian office was small and hiring a dedicated person made no sense.
For me this question did not even arise; I wanted to find a reliable partner specifically in outsourcing, as one of your slogans says“so you can sleep better”, because we really did have nuances and difficulties.
I wanted the work to be done professionally, to know that we could genuinely rely on the partner. And as you noticed, there really was no tender; everything was very much tied to individuals. I knew how Svetlana works and I know how Ekaterina (Menshikova) works, so I wanted them to help build the work in our company. I understood that if the process is led by such professionals, I could expect a good result for my company. And that is what happened.
I think this is a good exception; there are not only tenders, things can happen differently too. Of course, as a manager making the decision, I knew there were other companies in this field and I understood the order of pricing. Our company had encountered UCMS Group before; we had worked together in other countries (in Hungary at the time, I think) and that was also one of the factors. Our CFO and our CEO supported the decision. I would not say it was a blind decision based only on personal preferences. Naturally they played an important role, but I also understood that UCMS Group holds a proper position in this services market and provides a good service at acceptable cost, and I had seen many references.
I expected everything: that you would build the processes and bring order to the accounting. A comprehensive view of what was happening in the company was needed to understand how to build the work.
Moving to outsourcing can be inconvenient and unfamiliar. Were there any difficulties?
We had another provider that was not a professional in outsourcing; they were more like auditors. There were a number of nuances in their work, which is why I had the idea of changing. For me personally the outsourcing format was new specifically in accounting; I had not encountered it before. But in my view we discussed everything in detail, and it helped a great deal that Svetlana and Ekaterina know the business specifics of companies like ours. I was glad that we started the cooperation with Ekaterina and Svetlana specifically. The situation is genuinely unique in many ways, but such cases are also very telling. Of course there were some difficulties with the team; I cannot say in detail, but if there had been anything serious I would remember. They were minor. In the process the right communication was built, and work with documents in the format we expected and at the level of service we now have.
Right now is that golden moment when we are absolutely delighted: we have Anastasia Morozova (senior specialist), who works with us, and she is truly wonderful and always in touch. We are on the same wavelength and it is very easy and comfortable to work together. So it is a good period now and I do not even have anything to say; in my view everything is perfect. Of course it was not always like this; there were some moments and the employees responsible for our company changed.
Everyone has problems, and naturally everyone makes mistakes; the question is only how it is resolved and how the mistakes are corrected.
When we had problems, shortcomings and errors, both on your side and joint ones, I always knew I could call Ekaterina (Menshikova), discuss it and always count on a quick response and prompt resolution. That is very important. It is great that there is such an attitude and readiness to respond. The most important factor for me.
We have a contact person on the client side and we have worked together from the very beginning. We are as involved as possible and constantly in touch. On our side there is a specialist, a senior specialist and a payroll specialist. We perform the full scope from bookkeeping to reporting, plus we prepare international reporting, calculate salaries and handle HR administration. And the company itself is developing: it has chosen the path of process unification and automation. There are requests to bring Russian accounting closer to international standards, maintain a single vendor register and use global systems for accounting areas, ideally with as little duplication as possible. The process started last year.
Yes, absolutely right. For now it is not entirely clear to me how all this will function and how invoices will be loaded; it is still in progress for us, but the process is already established in most of our other countries and we will get there soon too.
For me this is probably the hardest question, because right now everything is perfect. And when everything is going well, thoughts of improvement do not come to mind. The only thing I can say is probably to build a more effective backup system for when the main employees from the project team are away. That is, so that the backup not only exists but knows the existing nuances and open tasks. So that the person clearly understands all the necessary tasks and their deadlines.
Well, I would call you actively creative. For me that is also one of the important points.
People who work in accounting are usually not expected to be creative; they are considered boring people who work with papers.
But you have that characteristic trait: despite working with figures, most of your employees we deal with are lively and creative. Anastasia responds calmly to non-standard questions, and that matters to us too. The person knows how to interact with the world around them, and with us in particular.
We do not develop anything ourselves; we research our clients' products (pharmaceutical and biotech companies) which they bring to us in various areas, including oncology, cardiology and a number of other conditions. We work in a diverse environment, in different directions and with different drugs. We have grown recently mainly through outsourcing, because we have a large client and many employees work exclusively within that cooperation. Now the focus is shifting more towards developing the company's internal projects for our international clients, foreign companies that do not have representative offices in Russia. This means clinical trials in which we are entrusted with running the project end to end, so-called full service. And indeed many processes are becoming electronic because of the COVID situation; we are developing new products and processes for remote monitoring of research sites and for better interaction, so as to work well and efficiently in the new reality.
The answer is simple: because we are good together. We are all people, and people always value working with people, and if there is no contact at all, the rest will not be great either. I see it in myself, because I have been with my husband since school, and of course there were different periods, but I understand that relationships between people and between companies are built on the same principles. One of the toasts I give at friends' weddings is: always talk to each other. Problems start when dissatisfaction and things left unsaid accumulate. For me this dialogue is continuous, and that openness in relationships and maintaining dialogue is what helps preserve long and healthy relationships.
We spend most of our time at work. And we want it to bring more positive emotions than negative ones. For that we really need to work on ourselves and on each other, and that is impossible without feedback.
Personally it was not hard, because I have a lot of experience with foreign companies and there are various abbreviations there; I heard it and remembered it straight away. But I understand what you mean. I see that some employees have problems with it, and they especially often mix up the letters C and S, and sometimes call you Yusemsi. We actually have funny stories about our company name too.
One of the employees of the courier company we work with is convinced that we are“the Central Intelligence Club”.
You know, I will not say anything new; the idea is based on what we have discussed. It is openness to interaction and a readiness to resolve issues and problems promptly. Customer focus, of course, is a hackneyed word. Many claim to have it but may not understand what it actually means.
For me UCMS Group really is an example of a customer-centric company where it is not only a global slogan but a daily approach, in the details, in the attitude of both management and the people doing the work.
I do not like making unsubstantiated percentage claims, but in my feeling it has been like that in 90% of cases. Customer focus is there, including in the form of tolerance for the client's imperfections.
