Deputy general director
About the company:
A company with a full-cycle production complex for growing champignons. Full cycle means that we not only grow champignons but also produce the compost in which the mushrooms grow. Today we are firmly among the five largest champignon producers in the country, with a production capacity of 10,000 tonnes of champignons a year. That is the capacity of our first phase, which we launched in the fourth quarter of 2019, and it will soon be a year since we started growing champignons and supplying them to the Russian market. Today we work with virtually all the federal retail chains.
Services:
We started working with UCMS Group in 2016, almost immediately after the legal entity was established. It must be said that everything developed fairly dynamically. At the time, favourable circumstances and conditions for creating this business had emerged in the country. Our project's founders had the idea of setting up champignon production. They invited me and my brother to lead it. Literally two weeks later we registered the legal entity and got down to the project. At that point there was no team, and a huge number of issues had to be dealt with at the same time, so we immediately started working in multitasking mode: on the one hand, studying European and global design experience and choosing a production site, and on the other, economic matters, financial modelling and building a team. Naturally, the question arose of who would handle the accounting. Given that at the first investment stage of the project a large number of documents and tasks were not expected, we thought that outsourcing would definitely be good, and we would see later.
I remember that I personally went into a search engine and honestly looked through, I think, five pages of Yandex, and picked five companies. I chose them by my own criteria: the information on the website, the reviews, and among those five companies we held a tender.
From my own impressions, at that time there was no clearly formed market for accounting outsourcing services, because completely different terms were being offered. In my view, when a market is more or less settled, the rules of the game should be the same, or very similar, and then there are details and specifics. Here I was surprised: for example, one company made the cost of its services dependent on our turnover, which struck me and even made me laugh a little: "And if our turnover is three payment transactions but for a very large amount?" They replied that in any case it was a fixed percentage of turnover. I decided that either the market was very young and still forming, or I had come across the wrong counterparties.
Then came the feedback in the form of commercial proposals, questions and clarifications.
Here I should say that UCMS was literally the first company to send its commercial proposal. You cannot help noticing such systemic things: speed of reaction, processing, and the completeness and quality of the commercial proposal.
If this system is well built in a company, and as a rule these are standard operations, then it works very precisely and flawlessly later on. That worked in UCMS's favour. I still remember that Natasha Romanenkova (sales manager) was the first to get in touch, asked competent clarifying questions, was the first to send a proposal and was ready to comment on it. But I still paused for a few days until all the proposals arrived, spoke to each company, and based on the results of the tender chose UCMS, and that is how we started working.
I always try to look at any company through two important aspects. First, as I said, it is how the system works, that is, how well the process is built. And second, an important element in any company is the team, the human factor: besides the system there are specific people, specific employees whom you come across in the relationship.
That is where UCMS Group started earning its points, because all the people I came across in the course of the work are, above all, professionals who fulfil their obligations very precisely, on time and with quality, and at the same time are simply pleasant to deal with on a human level.
That is precisely why the initial list of tasks handed to UCMS later expanded significantly.
We came to understand that, besides direct accounting and tax records, UCMS could handle a different range of tasks. Since we did not have a financial analyst on staff, it became more convenient to solve those tasks with UCMS's help, in particular the financial evaluation of the project and lending matters, which we successfully did directly with Ekaterina Menshikova. I remember as if it were now how Ekaterina and I spent more than one evening together over our financial model, which we worked through and brought into order. In effect, we created it. As we immersed ourselves in the specifics of the industry's production, completely new data emerged, which led to changes in the financial model. In the end it turned out quite thorough and professional.
I also realised that UCMS has very good methodologists, and at that point we had a need for additional education.
We asked UCMS Group to develop a programme specifically for us to improve our knowledge in some areas, including production accounting. And UCMS developed a very good training programme specifically for us.
So that is one of the characteristics: the company's flexibility. We asked, the company reacted instantly, understood the need, took a very short pause and offered a very concrete product. It responded very sensitively, and that was very pleasant. Those are good qualities in a company.
At that point UCMS took over the full accounting and tax records. In the first days of our interaction a personal manager was assigned who had direct experience of production accounting, which has its own specifics; in effect it was a personal manager with the experience and qualification of a chief accountant. That is also an element of system, which I liked very much. We were given all the contacts, and all issues were resolved through the personal manager.
What I remember is the feeling of working together, precisely that combination of system and human factor.
You know, I have just caught myself thinking that off the top of my head I can name at least five UCMS employees by first and last name, even though several years have passed. I think that means something. For example, in my case, if someone had to stay at the office until 9 pm, the UCMS employees stayed at work; there was no "goodbye at 6 pm". Because different situations happen, and there were times when deadlines were tight and a task had to be solved. I do not remember a formal approach from UCMS; that certainly appealed to me and won me over. I have positive, good impressions of working with the company.
At a certain stage we realised that we preferred the model of a chief accountant who works exclusively on the project, who knows it, who has immersed themselves in it and has come for the long term. And we want them in the office. That is convenient and, as it seemed to us, necessary, because the number of tasks that had appeared was easier to handle offline. On top of that our plant is in the Kaluga region, and we decided it was more cost-effective for us to keep part of the accounting team at the enterprise. Yes, I will not hide it, there were certain difficulties in forming the team, but given our specifics we decided to move to in-house accounting.
Reliable. And professionals, without a doubt. There is some inner confidence that the company is serious and here for the long term. When you work with a partner, that is very important.
We are now actively considering increasing production, with additional production already in the processing stage. Whether it will be canning or freezing. All options are being examined very carefully now, and I think we will certainly approve one of them.
I think the roots go back to Europe, but by the way, I have just remembered something else that won me over when choosing UCMS Group: I read that 1C had bought a controlling stake, and I noted to myself that 1C is a serious company, and if it had paid attention to UCMS, then it must be a good company.
We are indeed a subsidiary of 1C. Originally we were a Swedish company with offices in Poland, Romania and Hungary. Now we have offices in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In 2015 we were acquired by 1C, so we are now a Russian company with a European background.
