A new way to sell services is a boxed solution. Choosing an EDMS: a boxed solution or custom development? Cons of cloud CRM systems

There are two ways to automate any activity: choose the right boxed product or order the development of a software product (SP). Consider the pros and cons of each of the approaches and common mistakes that arise when choosing software. The approaches under consideration are typical for the automation of any activity, and not just document management and office work.

Many heads of DOE services or case management today face the problem of choosing software for automating office work processes or workflow in their organizations. As a rule, the choice of EDMS begins with the exchange of experience between employees of the organization and is based on knowledge of the functions and features of the work of those EDMS with which some employees have already dealt. But you need to keep in mind that an ERMS that is suitable for one organization will not always be optimal for an organization with different functions or organizational structure. There are two ways to automate any activity: choose the right boxed product or order the development of a software product (SP). Consider the pros and cons of each of the approaches and common mistakes that arise when choosing software. I would like to note that the approaches under consideration are typical for the automation of any activity, and not just document management and office work.

E.S. Ulanova, Project Director, Center for New Technologies Parus CJSC

The consequences of the wrong choice of a software product are known to many - constant failures in the operation of business processes during implementation and further work, conflicts between departments due to increased functional duties and the absence of a regulated distribution of new responsibilities. In this article, we will try to figure out what is worth choosing in a given situation, taking into account the features of different software and its scope.

Choice of boxed software

Boxed software product- this is software, intended for an indefinite circle of customers and supplied on an "as is" basis, with standard features for all customers.

Boxed products are usually created and distributed by the manufacturing company with a complete set of installation and installation instructions that any user can use.

The most typical example of a boxed product is the Microsoft Windows operating system for personal computers.

There are boxed solutions of a more complex type, where installation requires special knowledge and skills - these are the products that are the subject of this article. The main feature of such a boxed solution is the pre-declared functionality that is not subject to change, and the system itself adapts to users through the standard settings of the boxed product without the participation of the developer company.

Boxed EDMS, as a rule, are licensed with a limited number of seats or functions. There are boxed EDMS that have a free version that is lightweight in terms of functionality.

Such versions may be suitable for small commercial companies that can use this product without modifications or modifications.

There are fundamentally different boxed EDMS platforms related to free software (FOS)*. Such EDMS platforms are designed for self-development and adaptation to the requirements of the customer organization.

The EDMS platform is a boxed product that implements the basic principles of the EDMS, such as business processes for coordinating documents, the principles of storing electronic versions of documents, working with electronic documents and others. The EDMS platform may require minor adjustments or major improvements, depending on the requirements and tasks that are set for the EDMS.

Distribution of boxed EDMS (Fig. 1) can occur directly from the developer to the customer or through an intermediary - an EDMS dealer who will help install and configure the EDMS. The method of distribution depends on the availability of qualified IT specialists in the customer's staff. Thus, if it is not possible or necessary to maintain such a specialist of the company, it makes sense to involve a dealer.

Rice. 1. Scheme of distribution of boxed EDMS

Boxed software company- a company that produces a completely ready-to-use product with all connection instructions.

Boxed software dealer is an intermediary between the developer company and the consumer of boxed software, providing services for setting up and supporting the operability of boxed software. A dealer can be either a separate company or a division of a boxed software development company.

Organization-customer of boxed software- a software consumer organization that can independently (through its IT support service) configure and work with a boxed product or use the services of a boxed software dealer.

Pros and cons of boxed EDMS

Boxed EDMS are produced by many Russian manufacturers. And such solutions have obvious pros and cons. The main advantage of boxed software is a reduction in purchase costs compared to custom development. The main disadvantage is the inability to change the functionality of the system.

At right choice boxed product, the benefit from the purchase far exceeds the lack of opportunities to refine the software.

The advantage of purchasing boxed software can also be called quite short term receiving the purchased product and minimum costs on its launch, since the ease of setting up such products is usually one of the competitive factors among EDMS solutions.

The presence of a unified technical support service for users can be called the main element of the development company's costs for supporting boxed products. Moreover, than harder system, the more support resources it requires. For buyers, such an organization of technical support is another plus, since the cost of maintaining technical support is divided between all buyers of this boxed solution and, with a sufficient number of users, it can be almost invisible to the buyer's budget. But you should also understand the minus of this approach - the developer of boxed software decides in which direction to develop his product and whether to develop it at all, whether it makes sense to maintain a technical support service for this product or whether it is worth stopping its support and development. In case of buying a boxed solution, the direction further development The software is built by the developer himself, and his approaches do not always coincide with the tasks of the customers who purchased this boxed software. most big profit the developer usually brings the first sale of a boxed solution, further support is a bonus option for customers and the ability to tie them to their other products and solutions.

Unfortunately, sometimes commercial companies stop releasing updates for a particular product. This may be due to the fact that the company is interested in the development of a new direction, and the support of the old product becomes unprofitable.

The developer of the boxed EDMS makes no warranty that this EDMS or this version He will continue to support the EDMS (including troubleshooting). In this case, the user of the boxed product has a choice: to use this product without enhancements (and without support). Russian legislation including) or exchange it for another product.

Mistakes when choosing boxed software

The main mistake when choosing a boxed EDMS is the lack of a stage of information survey and analysis of the needs of the organization. Many managers prefer to buy boxed software based on developer presentations and a superficial comparison of one or another functionality in the demonstrated EDMS. At the same time, everyone understands that at the presentation the developer will show the best in the system and, of course, will try to hide all the shortcomings of the software.

During such reviews, the customer cannot always fully evaluate all the functions of the software, not to mention the need to realize the need for all existing functions and understand how much they are needed specifically for his organization, moreover, sometimes under the standard names of functions, the developer and customer understand different processes. The fact that a function exists in the EDMS does not always mean that it exists in the form in which it would be convenient for the customer.

There is another way to choose - testing a boxed product for a short time on a limited number of jobs. This method may give better results than presentations, but almost all the disadvantages of the previous approach will remain.

Developers are trying to adjust the customer's processes to their system, justifying this with various beliefs, ranging from the fact that "it's right" and ending with the fact that "the system can only do this and it suits everyone else." Of course, there are rules and recommendations on how to conduct office work in an organization (such as GSDOU, GOSTs and OSTs), but how is it more convenient to organize this process in a particular organization, should be decided by the responsible employees directly of the organization itself.

Often software vendors are not specialists who understand the customer's business processes. Thus, the developer of a boxed product, casually or professionally guided at his own peril and risk, hopes to guess what the customer needs. In such cases, it makes sense to information survey of the organization's business processes, their assessment and, if necessary, adjustment, what is needed to a greater extent not so much for the customer to understand their information processes how much the developer to immerse himself in the problems and tasks of the organization.

However, the understanding of the need for information survey (immersion of developers in the processes of the customer) is typical for organizations with mature business processes, i.e., for those in which the processes have developed, are fixed and do not cause double interpretation.

Not everyone Russian companies and organizations can boast of such processes, so most Russian customers combine the process of choosing an EDMS with the optimization of their business processes and conduct an information survey primarily to fix and consolidate their processes at the organization level.

One of the postulates of the heads of companies - implementers of the EDMS - should be the assertion that it is impossible to automate chaos, therefore, it is necessary to first fix the business processes, and then describe the requirements for the EDMS functionality.

Otherwise, the processes will be adjusted during the implementation of the EDMS, and it will constantly cause negative reactions from users, i.e., unconsciously destroy existing processes without analyzing them.

The information survey should describe the processes "as is", all described processes should be analyzed, if necessary controversial points should be regulated and fixed in the documents of the organization. After that, it must be prepared process automation concept. It can be expressed in the form of a conclusion about the preservation of all existing processes, or it can result in requirements for optimizing the work of the organization, which sometimes end even with the reorganization of the unit.

When creating an automation concept, it is imperative to describe and analyze ways to achieve economic effect from the introduction of EDMS. The result of the description of the processes “as it should be” should be the requirements for the functions that the EDMS will automate. Only after that you can proceed to the choice of a boxed product.

The choice of a specific product should be based on a comparison of the requirements for the EDMS and the statement of the software product developer about the availability of such functionality. The main task is to choose only those products that meet the needs, and not to change the system of the organization's work under the functionality existing in the EDMS.

The choice between boxed products can be quite difficult, because sometimes products for automating the same process can be built completely different ways. In the matter of choice, an important advantage is the ability to flexibly configure the boxed product for organizational structure specific company.

Custom software

The definition of custom software lies in its name - it is a software product that is produced to order.

The undoubted advantage of custom software is its creation according to the requirements of the customer in accordance with all the features of the organization, and not in the image and likeness of another organization with similar structure and functions. But the costs of creating such software do not always justify the result obtained from the implementation.

Custom software is useful primarily for those areas of automation where this function is specific. In some organizations, document flow and office work can be built in such a way that boxed solutions cannot give the result required from automation (for example, law enforcement agencies, banks or commercial organizations with the specifics of territorial distribution and subordination). For such organizations, the right solution would be to implement custom software..

The information survey stage, as in the case of choosing a boxed solution, is the most important in the development of custom software, because at this stage the requirements for functions are laid down, which will be further designed and created by programmers from the side of the developer.

There are several ways and methods to create a custom EDMS. The two most common development approaches are:

cascade (classic development);

iterative development.

Rice. 2. Cascade model of EDMS development

Cascade (Fig. 2) (English waterfall model - "waterfall model") - a model of the software development process, in which the development process looks like a flow that sequentially passes through the phases of requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing, integration and support. Based on this methodology, Russian standards and GOSTs for the creation of automated systems (34th and 19th series), for example

GOSTs of the 34th series:

GOST 34.601-90 " Information technology. Set of standards for automated systems. Automated systems. Stages of creation";

GOST 34.201-89 “Information technology. Set of standards for automated systems. Types, completeness and designation of documents when creating automated systems”;

GOST 34.602-89 "Terms of reference for the creation of an automated system";

GOST 34.603-92 “Information technology. Types of testing of automated systems”;

GOST 34.320-96 “Information technologies. Database standards system. Concepts and terminology for the conceptual scheme and information base”;

GOST 34.321-96 “Information technologies. Database standards system. Reference Model for Data Management.

GOSTs of the 19th series:

GOST 19.001-77 " one system software documentation. General provisions»;

GOST 19.101-77 “Unified system of program documentation. Types of programs and program documents”;

GOST 19.102-77 "Development stages";

GOST 19.103-77 "Designations of programs and program documents";

GOST 19.104-78 "Main inscriptions";

GOST 19.105-78 " General requirements to program documents”;

GOST 19.106-78 "Requirements for printed program documents";

GOST 19.201-78 "Terms of reference, requirements for content and design";

GOST 19.202-78 “Specification. Requirements for content and design, etc.

Guidelines:

RD-34.698-90 “Guidelines. Information technology. A set of standards and guidance documents to automated systems. Automated systems requirements for the content of documents.

These standards imply that all requirements for an EDMS must first be described, and only then can one proceed to the coding stage, i.e., the process of writing program code, scripts in order to implement a certain algorithm in a certain programming language. Moreover, the requirements should include both functional tasks systems, as well as all ways of interacting with other systems, ways of presenting information in the EDMS, so quite often the description of all these requirements according to GOST takes a long time (from several months to several years).

This development model is good in the following situations:

● when implemented for projects lasting from several weeks to 2–3 months, since the described requirements do not have time to become obsolete;

● when implementing systems where there are no subtasks and several stages of functional development (for example, after the development of the main functionality of the EDMS, it will be necessary to finalize its interaction with the system accounting, and there are no requirements for this interaction yet);

● when the requirements for the created EDMS are clearly defined and fixed.

Iterative or iterative approach(Fig. 3) - execution of work in parallel with the continuous analysis of the results obtained and the adjustment of the previous stages of work. At the same time, development in each phase of development goes through a repeating cycle of iterations: Planning - Implementation - Verification - Evaluation.

Rice. 3. Iterative software development

This approach has become widespread in the United States and in the West, where it was developed. World-famous software development methodologies such as the Rational Unified Process (RUP) from Rational Software take this approach.

The basis of this approach is the gradual deepening of the functionality and requirements and the constant analysis of the created functionality together with the customer. In an iterative approach, an EDMS prototype is developed as early as possible to show users and get feedback about the system interface and approach to implementing processes.

For Russian market such an approach requires high-quality training of users, their familiarization with the still unfinished EDMS, since this can often cause a negative attitude towards a system that has not yet been created. Such participation of users in the development of the EDMS can be called both a plus and a minus. On the one hand, users see how the development is being carried out and can influence the process, on the other hand, this requires time and real participation of users (which is not their main activity).

Benefits of an iterative approach

Early detection of inconsistencies between the operation of the system and the requirements of the actual activities of the organization;

The emphasis of efforts is directed to the most important and critical areas of EDMS (for example, registration of documents, putting them under control, then developing reports on performance discipline, etc.);

Continuous iterative (i.e. repetitive) testing to evaluate the success of the entire project as a whole;

Involvement of key employees of the customer at the stage of development of the EDMS to create a product that really meets his needs;

The possibility of modular development and modular implementation of a single EDMS in terms of tasks and functionality;

A real assessment of the current state of the project and, as a result, greater confidence of customers and direct participants in its successful completion.

What to choose?

As a result: of course, there is no universal advice on choosing an EDMS, but there are approaches that will help to avoid many problems and mistakes both in determining the appropriate type of EDMS (boxed product or custom software) and in choosing the best EDMS for your organization among boxed products.

First of all, you need to analyze the needs of the organization and, based on them, select a software product. If a boxed solution is suitable to meet the needs of an organization in terms of the EDMS functionality, then it will be better (cheaper and faster) to stop at it, but then you need to remember about the dependence on the developer of this product. If, after analyzing the requirements, the organization understands that it cannot do without custom development, then here Special attention it is necessary to pay attention to the organization of the development project with the regulation of all actions and the creation of all necessary project documentation. This will help you not to depend on the company that develops custom software and, if necessary, painlessly change the system at almost any stage of the implementation and operation of the EDMS.

Expert opinion

D.V. Volodin, analyst, Microsoft SharePoint direction, Electronic Office Systems company

Many so-called. boxed products have a rich set of settings that allow you to largely adapt the system to the specifics of a particular organization.

At the same time, EDMS class systems have long and firmly occupied their niche in the market, there are many ready-made solutions, including industry solutions. In addition, even taking into account the possible specifics of the customer, the vast majority of the EDMS functionality is of a typical nature. Under these conditions, an attempt to develop an EDMS from scratch can be viewed rather as the invention of a bicycle.

Currently, the EDMS market has a clear tendency to blur the boundaries between boxed and custom products. These types actively seek to meet each other: "boxes" are overgrown with a large number of settings, and custom developments are replicated and released to the market in the form of ready-made solutions.

In order to facilitate the customer the difficult process of choosing an EDMS, we can propose to distinguish three groups of functional
for each product under consideration:

Typical configuration (minimum cost); if necessary, it can be deployed by the customer according to the developer's instructions;

Extended configuration without modifications (medium cost level); requires the participation of specialists in the implementation of the system;

Refinement of functionality, development of new modules (maximum cost); requires the involvement of programmers and a full-fledged software development project.

Most EDMS developers today offer all three options.

In the process of choosing a system, the customer needs to determine the list of functions that are critical to achieving the goals.

After that, you will need to distribute the items on the list into three groups - in accordance with the scheme described above. In this case, you should choose those products that have the maximum amount of critical functionality in a typical configuration. The missing functionality should be supplemented by more detailed settings, applying advanced configuration. It is advisable to resort to custom modifications only when the possibilities of the first two options have been exhausted, and critical tasks cannot be solved in any other way.

Antonina Bukina, Account Manager, InterTrust

somewhat unilateral comparative characteristic standard and custom system electronic document management should be supplemented with quite weighty points not covered in the article.

It should be emphasized that it is impossible to put “equal” between the concepts of “standard EDMS” and “boxed EDMS”. These are different comparative categories. Without going into details, we can highlight:

a) boxed EDMS (the boxed electronic document management system does not imply the possibility of improvements, it is installed "as is");

b) more complex EDMS (at the request of the customer, they can be customized or modified to the individual characteristics / needs of the client);

c) typical EDMS (basic, improved from version to version functions are inherited from one version to another, enriched with additional features - the basic functionality, as a rule, has been tested by thousands of customers);

d) EDMS developed from scratch for one specific organization.

Thus, standard EDMS, if they are not a boxed solution, are easy to
There is another way to choose - testing a boxed product for a short time on
adjusted and modified as necessary.

A typical electronic document management system, especially if it has been developed for a long time and is actively operated by customers, relieves the customer of serious risks. Why? It has been tested by not one, but hundreds, sometimes even a thousand clients (respectively, several thousand users), which indicates its viability. The consistency of the functionality has been proven by years of industrial operation in organizations of various industries and scales, which allows us to speak about the reliability of such software.

In addition, standard EDMS, as a rule, are improved from version to version, retaining the best achievements and including the most modern technologies. Essentially, they include best experience thousands of customers, the path of trial and error has been passed, a typical EDMS has already received recognition.

A product developed from scratch does not have the characteristics of reliability: there is no experience of operating it by any other company. You will be the first.

The more popular the standard version of the EDMS, the more specialists in its configuration, refinement, support and training to work with it you will find on the market, which will allow you not to become dependent on a narrow group of custom solution creators.

In a word, by implementing a standard solution, you can be sure of its performance for many years.

Dictionary

Free software (free software) is software products, upon sale of which the rights to their unlimited installation, launch, as well as free use, study, distribution and modification (improvement) are transferred to the buyer.

Iteration (lat. iteratio - “I repeat”) in the broadest sense of the word, the repetition of an action, phenomenon or process.

Selling "invisibility", something intangible, is much more difficult than selling ordinary goods - for example, clothes or building materials. It is no coincidence that service marketing is singled out as a separate area and assigned a special role to it. Today we will talk about the features of the sphere of non-material production and how to sell services.

What is a service

By service we mean any activities, benefits or benefits that are produced in the process of their provision and in most cases are intangible - that is, the buyer does not take possession of any material values. However, some services are directly linked to goods in their material form. So, when buying a plane ticket, we get exactly the service - moving from point A to point B.

Selling Features

All services, without exception, have General characteristics to consider when talking about how to sell services.

Intangibility

The most logical point. Services are intangible - that is, they cannot be touched, seen, tasted. Coming to the hairdresser, we cannot "try on" a new haircut in advance. What does this mean from a supplier's point of view? To increase sales, you need to make the services more tangible, highlight the key benefits that the client will receive. For example, for a hairdresser, this could be a portfolio with a photo the best works which confirms his skill.

Inseparable from the source

Another feature is that the service is always closely associated with a person or equipment. So, when buying a ticket to a concert, we expect to see our favorite musicians. If for some reason one of the group members has to be replaced, the service will not be the same. This directly implies the need to properly organize the process of providing services: learn how to work with a large number of clients at the same time or speed up the service process.

Variation in quality

Speaking about how to sell services correctly, it is important to remember that the quality of services is constantly changing depending on the place, time of provision and hundreds of other factors. One and the same waiter can serve you well one day, and the next - drop the dish or be rude (for example, because of poor health). What does it say? Starting a business in the service industry, it is always necessary to allocate a sufficient budget for recruiting and training really good specialists. In addition, it is necessary to set up feedback with customers to promptly handle any complaints and improve employee performance.

Impossibility of storage

Why is this important for a business owner? The fact is that in almost all sectors of the service sector, demand fluctuates: tours to seaside resorts are mainly ordered in the summer, and taxis around the city are booked at the height of the working day. How to sell services in this case? There are several marketing strategies that help stabilize demand and plan costs more effectively:

1. Differentiation of prices over time. To shift some of the demand from the peak period to the lull, many companies use discounts - for example, cinemas sell tickets at low prices for early evening screenings.
2. Creating an alternative for those waiting during peak hours. A good option- a separate cocktail bar for those who are waiting for a table in the restaurant.
3. Implementation of a system of pre-orders.

Other options are also practised. Some companies hire temporary or part-time workers during periods of peak demand.

Service Marketing: General Scheme

It is rather difficult to describe how to sell services effectively, because everything depends on the characteristics of a particular company and the niche in which it operates. It is impossible to offer a universal recipe for a large airline and a small hairdresser in a residential area of ​​Moscow. However, a certain algorithm common to all service enterprises still exists.

Step #1: Market Research

The first stage is a thorough, comprehensive study of the market in which you plan to work. The analysis is carried out in two directions:

• competitors;
• potential clients.

The collection of information about competitors is carried out in order to understand what exactly they offer, how they "catch" buyers, how they interact with them, what prices they set. It is important to know who are the key market players and who operate in the same region with the same target audience as you. This can significantly affect a company's marketing strategy.

Desk and field methods are used for the analysis. Desk data sources include trade journals and reference books, databases, and published ratings.

However, most often it is impossible to obtain the necessary information on a specific territory, since most publications work at the national or regional level. Then go straight to the field research:

• calling competitors under the guise of a potential client;
• inquiry and study commercial offers, advertising products;
• analysis of advertising activities.

It is also necessary to obtain as much information as possible about the clients of other companies. The main tools are questionnaires, surveys (on the Internet and on the streets), interviews. For development unique offer it is important to find out what exactly they like/dislike about the companies they are applying to at the moment.

Step #2: Developing a Pricing Policy and Additional Services

First of all, it is necessary to correctly calculate the cost of services sold. Knowing this indicator, you will be guided in how many customers you need to attract in order to reach zero, and what margin to set in order to earn. How to do it?

The cost of the service includes the sum of all expenses incurred by the contractor in the course of its provision. In this case, the costs are divided into 2 large groups:

1. Permanent. These include renting a room, paying utility bills, management expenses, depreciation of equipment (computers, office equipment).
2. Variables. Paying employees, purchasing materials, etc.

Basically, when calculating expenses, they are based on the time required to provide a particular service (for example, how many hours of the total time the programmer spent on completing the order).

13/09/17 11:41 AM 11/16/15 11:50 PM

Ready, but limited, or development with individual characteristics

As each company grows, sooner or later, they think about automating internal business processes. These can be processes related to contractual or documentation activities, marketing and sales processes, or even automation of production processes.

And the first question that arises before the company is to choose a boxed solution or a custom solution?

Both options have their advantages and disadvantages and depend on a variety of internal and external factors. In this article, we will try to cover this issue in more detail and give advice on choosing a solution.

Boxed solution

Such solutions are often referred to simply as "the box". This is a ready to use product.

The most obvious plus of a boxed solution is the speed of implementation. Boxed solutions already have a set of functions and automated business processes that can be used immediately after installation. Installation and configuration also does not take much time, and after adding users and filling out directories, the solution is ready for use. At the same time, the installation can be performed by the company's IT specialists on their own, and sometimes by ordinary employees with the proper qualifications.

Another plus is the price of such solutions. As a rule, they are much cheaper than developing a custom solution. In some cases, the price may differ by several times. In addition, the cost of the necessary modules and functions can be calculated in advance, without examining the customer's business processes.

The main disadvantages of boxed solutions include limited functionality. The set of functions, business processes and their implementation in the solution are pre-configured by the developer to cover as many companies as possible. Therefore, if the interface or the performance of some actions is not convenient for users, then it will not be possible to change them globally and you will have to use what is. The same applies to business processes and document routes. They are usually configured in a certain way, and inexperienced users may find it difficult to change them.

For the most part, boxed solutions are not designed to be developed. Therefore, finalize new functionality it won't always work. There are usually a limited number of settings that can be changed, and global changes or new features appear in future versions of the system.

Another disadvantage of such solutions is the lack of individual technical support. If as a result of using the system you get some kind of system error, then the solution developer will most likely give you a patch to fix it. In all other cases, you will have to solve problems yourself by searching for information and asking questions on the forums.

Custom solution

The development of a custom solution, unlike a box, begins with an analysis of business processes, tasks and problems of the client. Analysts of the solution provider talk with key employees of the customer, examine existing business processes, identify existing problems, get acquainted with the company's regulations. After a survey and study of needs, a technical task. Next stage– development and implementation of the solution. After that, the system is tested by the customer's users and finalized in case of problems and comments.

In most cases, custom development is already carried out on the basis of some basic solution with a certain set of functions and capabilities. This basic solution is further developed to suit the needs and requirements of the customer. This approach allows you to make the system as convenient and suitable for a particular organization as possible. In this case, all the features of internal processes in the company are taken into account. With changes in the company, the solution can be finalized or reworked to individually, which cannot be done with a boxed one.

Another advantage is the individual technical support. You can negotiate with the supplier about the terms of support that you need.

The disadvantages of custom solutions include the price and implementation time. Usually they are from 3-4 months or more.

We conducted a survey of our users on the topic “Do I need a boxed version of a project management system?”. For us, the correct answer to this question is great importance. Determines the path of development of the system and priorities for new functions.

The survey involved 155 companies using the cloud version or just those who registered to get acquainted with the system. There were only three questions, each with three possible answers.

Under the cut are graphics with results and our conclusions.

Sample

The sample is not too large (155 respondents), users do not really like to receive letters, and even more so to vote for something. The only motivation for participation was the promise to publish the results.

The number of respondents for each question turned out to be 50 times more than the number of answer options. The random distribution error of the answers will not be large -
a few percent and depends on the distribution of responses.

The significant inaccuracies of the experiment include the probability of the sample - only those who wanted to vote, and not random users from the general sample, voted. And, of course, the sample itself - in our database there is a bias in small business.

All these factors should be taken into account and conclusions can be drawn from the results of the survey.

Question #1

Do you need a boxed project management solution or is a cloud one also suitable?

32% of respondents are fundamentally ready to work only with boxed solutions for communication and work with tasks. If we take into account that among our respondents there is a bias towards small business, then 32% is the minimum market share that does not consider SaaS at all.
A few years ago this was not the case. We were working on another b2b project at the time, but the requests for the box were sporadic, they were simply not taken seriously. Now by releasing boxed version, we have closed the most popular commercial request.

Question #2

What is the main reason for the need for a boxed solution?

Strong bias in security and data storage at home- more than 60%. And that's for small businesses! When communicating directly with big companies, there security and a boxed solution is always the first or second question. (competes with the question: "How to get a report on what the team was doing")

Question #3

Over the past 3 years, boxed solutions have become more relevant? Does the Yarovaya Law somehow affect?

By itself, the Yarovaya Law does not bother anyone much. There is no one thing in particular that places safety so high. This is always a combination of many factors, and users really do not track changes in these factors. A typical dialogue between us and a client looks like this:

We need a boxed solution.
- Why boxed? let's start with the cloud, so it's faster to start
- No, now the management will only agree if it is installed on our servers
- And what has changed, because while you use the free cloud Trello?
- Yes, and we are not satisfied. Especially nothing has changed, but now the policy of switching only to secure solutions.

Conclusions from the survey and communication with companies:

• Not less than 30% of companies are ready to work only with boxes.
• In monetary terms, this is at least 70% of the market in our case. The estimate is taken from considerations of the distribution of employees by company size.
• Over the past few years, there have been dramatic changes in security preferences. This trend will only intensify. Distribution models will be similar to the installation of bunkers.
• There is a trend of active transition from clouds to self-hosted. We can only observe this in b2b. We are asked for the functions of uploading accumulated tasks from cloud systems to us in a box.
• We released the boxed version for a reason. direction needs to be developed. The cloud is perceived by many simply as an opportunity to test.

P.S. Poll: Agile in Russia 2017

We at YouGile are doing a big survey about flexible methodology in Russia. Here you need an order of magnitude more respondents than in the survey above. So far, just over 100 have taken part. The most popular answer to the question is: “Is Agile used in your company?”

“Yes, but not much” - 54.5% of respondents.

Get involved - take the Agile in Russia 2017 survey
12 questions, approximately 3 minutes