TAdviser Interview: CIO of Duck-bill Maria Artamonova – about large-scale transformation of IT and plans of technology development

Maria Artamonova: First of all, from IT it was required to develop strategy which would provide not only preserving of all successful practices, and such, by the way, in Duck-bill there is a lot of, but also to designate the development plan for infrastructure, process automation, improvement of the user experience of employees and, of course, convenience of our buyers. Simple words, there was a need to prepare roadmap of changes in IT, perhaps, for further business development.

Maria Artamonova: Before my arrival, of course, the company lived with strategy, but it was, so to say, very conservative and rotated around the existing systems and processes which often are not meeting modern business needs. Otherwise being expressed, strategy consisted not in transformation of IT, and in accumulation of functionality of already very slow "organism" around that gradually conducted the company to a status of "colossus on clay feet".

In Duck-bill the software development approach which is not allowing to upgrade quickly to new versions, to perceive the new features provided in "box" right after their exit effectively was used to scale solutions. And it needed to be changed.

Of course, the decision on review of strategy was made not at once. At first we investigated possibility of an update-dash-refactoring of the fact that was and whether it made sense how the company will develop as it will look in 5 years what new features should appear and how many will cost all this "pleasure". Approach to a shell was executed not one and even not two times.

Maria Artamonova: I consider that the company in which there is a selected IT department already actually died. The arising contradiction of interests of business divisions and IT when implementing IT tasks often does not allow the companies to move ahead further: business often requires to make something quickly, at least on "crutches", and IT departments want to make it well, but, unfortunately, long.

Now deeper integration of business and IT is relevant, people should sit in one boat. And it can be done only with transition to product development, using flexible methodologies of development.

On this way we face a number of problems because in Russia there is no system culture of ownership of a product. Here very few people teach it, and many interpret these things differently. I worked in the field of more than 15 years and saw how it should work correctly as business should work in one command with IT.

Such organization of commands still, at least, helps to increase efficiency of communications at the expense of what the moments when the IT implements something that it is not necessary for business are excluded.

Maria Artamonova: In my opinion, a number of the large companies already in a sense depreciated the word Agile. I happened to see examples and fine execution of waterfall-development. Each approach is good where it is most appropriate. The main thing that in both cases process was customer-oriented, on a product, but was not torn off from reality.

Now Duck-bill is in process of creation of commands, the turning-on owners of a product (Product Owner) and developers. The customer from business, from different departments, formulates a task, and the owner of a product validates it: what needs to be made quicker that can be made is later whose tasks are the most priority for the company at present.

Maria Artamonova: Our TMS (Transport Management System, a management system for transport and logistics) already works on product methodology, own development "with U: I carry". Also we begin to rewrite work of a warehouse – we work on a new solution. Here too product commands.

I mentioned a situation with lack of product culture. People with experience in area of ownership of a product in the market are, but them literally units, and for them there is a fight from employers. As soon as in the company there is such employee, it means that the command can be created.

Now we actively take people using whom it would be possible to form product teams further. We are going to increase number of technical specialists in the company approximately twice in the short term.

Maria Artamonova: Competition gain – it is good. The monopoly kills an initiative and development. And while Duck-bill was one in the market, it so actively did not develop. Of course, there was an audience gain, but it not what the consumer waits from us for. To hold competitive advantages, we invest in IT. We realize that it is not point, but global investments which will allow us to put flexibility for the next 5-10 years. And to us it is in a sense simpler, than to competitors, especially left offline since we initially began with online, creating the corresponding infrastructure.

In respect of technologies we try to catch balance between absolutely new and already checked technologies, we try, we experiment. In the field of the crucial systems at us the approach similar on what is usually characteristic of banks – we use the checked solutions, but with more modern approach.

Now we create a good stack of technologies, including in terms of involvement of specialists from the market since people get a job more willingly there where there is a modern technology stack which is especially written from scratch.

Maria Artamonova: Yes, we are going to transfer the main part of systems to self-written solutions. But it does not mean that we completely refuse third-party platforms, for example, of SAP: on it there will be, at least, ERP. This system is steady in terms of accounting processes. Therefore there is no sense here to invent the bicycle.

Maria Artamonova: We try to live in clouds, but so far there is a restriction connected with the level of risks. Even the highest rate of availability of DPC – 99.99% - all the same in terms of a year turns out several hours of idle time. Our business works 24х7, every minute, and unavailability of systems means for us real loss of money.

Now we as an experiment discuss how it would be possible to organize collective responsibility: i.e., if at us systems stand idle, the owner of a cloud service offsets our financial losses. At such scheme of cooperation it is possible to think also of that all landscape was based in clouds. But it is not perspective of the near future.

Maria Artamonova: Buyers become more mobile, their life becomes quicker and expectations from the services surrounding them get under "filter" of these changes. In practice it means to Duck-bill that it is necessary to move aside fast delivery, speed of work of show-windows and improvement of the user experience.

Maria Artamonova: Certainly, a zone for optimization enormous. Now we have a delivery option "to the day" when the order is delivered within several hours, and there is an option - delivery on following and the next days. We are going to scale experience of fast delivery and to develop it the directions for reduction of time from commission of the order before its receiving.

If to look at experience of other countries, there it will be solved, for example, drones. Delivery in itself the drone from point "A" in point "B" is not a problem. But this experience will hardly be suitable for the Russian realities: people here very inventive, it is difficult to provide as they will react to flying drones. There can be many "hunters" wishing to be trained in accuracy on drones. But, on the other hand, nobody thought earlier that mobile phones will be so widespread therefore, everything is possible and drones can become a routine case.

We in the short term are going to solve a problem of reduction of delivery dates at the expense of such combination as technologies and process optimization at the same time.

Maria Artamonova: Now we estimate the project on partial automation of a warehouse and we look at examples of world players who use, including, robots. But until manual work is cheaper than automation, it is difficult to speak about its large-scale replacement. It concerns all industry.

Maria Artamonova: The young audience is distinguished by more active use of mobile devices and extremely high expectations on quality of service. The fact that audiences are more senior, often, seemed space, it seems to them normal. Besides, quite often young people prefer to eat outdoors. Therefore in terms of technologies here especially important role is played by development of mobile application that its interface was comfortable and the most intuitive.

Maria Artamonova: Now many already learned to collect and store data, it costs not so much. And now a task – to learn to take value from these data to the maximum. We know about our buyers much and if look far in the future, perhaps, our clients not people, and algorithms any more. It will be the recommendatory systems which realize the digital owner that it is necessary for him, his tastes, based on a digital mark which it leaves.

Now all aim to create the most accurate profiles, "digital doubles" of the client. Further the new, allowing to reveal most deeply his tastes, even an emotional status will be connected to the existing sources of data on the client. Within 5-7 years, I think, such technologies will already strongly change client experience.

Maria Artamonova: Understanding prospects of development of the technologies connected with data we in the company in 2019 selected it in the separate direction, and we had CDO (Chief Data Officer, the Chief Data Officer). After some business process is configured, mathematical models for this process form, isolates the patterns allowing to predict behavior, solutions of the client otherwise.

Maria Artamonova: I will remind the history of creation of the name of our company. Despite a logo, initially the name it was not connected with an animal. It appeared from an abbreviation of UTK – terminals which are used during the work in a warehouse. "UTK carry" - the name "Duck-bill" from this is formed. Devices which now pickers have in a warehouse work based on the self-written software. But we to nachina to look towards augmented reality and voice actuation for obtaining hints where what lies. By voice it would be possible to give and a feedback, what goods were taken by the picker.

Augmented reality, in turn, could show expanded information on goods in a warehouse which needs to be taken and put in the order and to issue hints how to reach the shelf with the necessary goods. In the nearest future we are going to organize a pilot project with augmented reality.

Those who deliver the order to the end consumer have devices – tablets. As we will upgrade them – a question still open.

Maria Artamonova: Running it is strong further, there is a high probability, as food in the future will look absolutely in a different way. Who knows, maybe, it will be possible even to print it houses on the 3D-printer, and normal food will be available only to well-founded segments of the population as now smart refrigerators. And refrigerators such are still far from perfect now: they distinguish only a limited set of products. It is a lot more that needs to be finished in this area.