UCMS Group Russia customer since 2016 till 2018 year
Evgeny Tinkov
"Master Grib" is a full-cycle production complex for mushroom cultivation. A full cycle means that we not only grow mushrooms, but also produce compost in which mushrooms grow. Now we are confidently among the five largest mushroom producers in the country with a production capacity of 10,000 tons of mushrooms per year. This is the production capacity of our first stage, which we launched in the fourth quarter of 2019, and it will soon be a year since we grow mushrooms and supply them to the Russian market. Today we work with almost all federal retail chains.
Full accounting, payroll, HR administration
Customer's employees training
Why did you decide to switch to outsourcing?
We started working with UCMS Group in 2016, almost immediately after the establishment of a legal entity. I must say that everything in general developed quite dynamically. At that time, favorable circumstances and conditions arose in the country for creating this business. Our founders of the project (Andrey Dakhnovich and Alexey Dakhnovich) had an idea to create a mushroom production. They invited me and my brother to lead it. Literally two weeks later, we registered a legal entity and began to closely work with the project. At that time, there was no team, but it was necessary to deal with a large number of issues at the same time, work immediately began in a multitasking mode: on the one hand, studying the experience of European and world design, choosing a production site, and on the other, economic issues, financial modeling, team building. Naturally, the question arose: who would be responsible for the accounting department. Taking into account the fact 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 then we will see.
Did you have a tender?
I remember that I personally honestly looked at probably five Yandex pages, chose five companies. I chose them for some reasons: according to the information on the website, according to reviews, and among these five companies, we held a tender.
I can say that at that time there was no clearly formed market for accounting outsourcing services, because completely different working conditions were offered. In my opinion, when the market is more or less settled, the rules of the game should be the same, or very similar, and then there are details and features. Here I was surprised, for example, that one of the companies made the cost of its services dependent on our turnover, it struck me so much and even made me laugh: "And if our turnover is three payment transactions, but for a very large amount?" and they answered that in any case it is a fixed percentage of turnover. I decided that either the market is very young, it is still forming, or I ended up with the wrong counterparties.
Why did you choose UCMS Group?
And then the feedback has already come in the form of commercial offers, questions, clarifications.
It must be said here that UCMS was the first, in the literal sense of the word, company that sent its commercial proposal. You involuntarily begin to pay attention to such systemic moments: reaction speed, processing, completeness and literacy of a commercial proposal.
If this system is built up in a company, and as a rule, these are standard operations, then it works very clearly and flawlessly in the future. In UCMS it worked. I still remember that Natasha Romanenkova (sales manager) was the first to contact, asked competent clarifying questions, she was the first to send a proposal and was ready to comment on it. But I still took a break for several days, until all the proposals came, talked to each company, and based on the results of the tender, I chose UCMS, and then we started working.
How comfortable did you feel at the start of the project?
I always try to look at each company in the context of two important aspects. First, I have already said that this is the work of the system, it is very important how competently the process is structured. And, secondly, an important element in any company is the team, the human factor, in addition to the system, there are specific people, specific employees whom you have to deal with within the framework of relationships.
Then UCMS Group began to earn its points, because all the people whom I had to deal with were, first of all, professionals, who very clearly fulfilled their obligations within the time frame, efficiently, and at the same time it was generally humanly pleasant to communicate with them.
That is why the initial list of tasks that was transferred to UCMS has significantly expanded in the future.
What unique projects have been implemented during the collaboration?
There was an understanding that in addition to direct accounting and taxation, UCMS can solve other range of tasks. Since our staff did not have a financial analyst, it became more convenient to solve these tasks with the help of UCMS, in particular, the financial assessment of the project, lending issues, which we successfully coordinated directly with Ekaterina Menshikova. As I remember now, we spent lots of evenings with Ekaterina working with our financial model, which we updated and put in order. In fact, we created it. As we immersed ourselves in the specifics of the industry's production, completely new data appeared, which entailed changes in the financial model. As a result, it turned out to be quite detailed and professional.
In addition, I realized that UCMS has very good methodologists, and at that moment we had a need for additional education.
We asked UCMS Group to develop a program specifically for us to improve our knowledge in some areas, including those related to production accounting. And UCMS has developed a very good training program for us.
This is one of the features – the flexibility of the company. We asked and the company reacted with lightning speed, understood the need, took a very short pause, and offered a very specific product. It reacted very subtly, and it was very pleasant. These are good features of the company.
How were your accounting workflows organized? How much were you personally invloved?
At that time, UCMS took over full accounting and taxation. In the first days of our interaction, a personal manager who directly had experience in production accounting was appointed, and such bookkeeping has its own characteristics, in fact, it was a personal manager with experience and qualifications of a chief accountant. This is also a certain element of consistency, which I really liked. We were given all the contacts for communication, and all issues were resolved through a personal manager.
Was there something during our collaboration that you especially remember?
I remember the feeling of work, this is exactly the combination of consistency and the human factor.
You know, I just caught myself thinking that I can give at least five names and surnames of UCMS employees offhand, although several years have passed. I think it still means something. For example, in my case it was such that if I had to stay in the office until 21:00 pm, then UCMS employees stayed at work, there was no such thing – at 18:00 we say "goodbye". Because there are different situations, and there have been such situations that deadlines were tight, sometimes it was necessary to solve the problem. I don't remember the formal approach from UCMS, of course it was very impressive. I have positive, good impression from working with the company.
Why did you decide to switch to an internal accounting service?
At a certain stage, we realized that we were closer to a scheme with a chief accountant who deals exclusively with a project that she knows, into which she plunged and came for a long time. And we want her to be in the office. It is convenient and, as it seemed to us, necessary, because the number of tasks that appeared was more convenient to solve offline. Plus, our plant is located in the Kaluga region, and we felt that it would be more economically profitable for us to keep a part of the team of accountants at the enterprise. Of course there were certain difficulties with the formation of the team, but taking into account our specifics, we decided to switch to internal accounting.
Describe us in one word
Reliable. And the professionals, of course. Some kind of inner confidence that the company is serious and for a long time. When working with a partner, this is very important.
Tell us, what are your plans now? Maybe you want to become a leader?
We are now very actively thinking about production increase, about additional production already within the framework of processing. Either it will be conservation, or freezing. All options are now being considered very carefully and I think that we will certainly approve one of them.
Where did UCMS come from?
In my opinion, the roots grow from Europe, but by the way, I just remembered what else bribed me when choosing the UCMS Group – I read that 1C bought a controlling stake, and I noted for myself that 1C is a serious company, and if it drew attention to UCMS, that means it is a good company.
We are really a subsidiary of 1C. Initially we were a Swedish company, we had offices in Poland, Romania, Hungary. We now have offices in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In 2015, we were bought by 1C, so now we are a Russian company with a European background.