As Severstal-TsES breaks from insourcers on foreign market. Interview of TAdviser with the CEO Kira Lapina
Kira Lapina, the CEO of Severstal-TsES company, in an interview of TAdviser in July, 2017 told about features of the Russian market of outsourcing services and business development of the company in foreign market.
Kira, are how demanded now in the Russian market of service of outsourcing of financial and personnel processes with which activity Severstal-TsES is connected?
Kira Lapina Say that in Russia demand of such services same as in the West, so far early, but the need for these services at us grows. Says growth of revenue of outsourcers and that fact that clients even more often address for similar services about it. More and more large companies think of increase in own efficiency and productivity, including due to involvement of outsourcers.
Outsourcing market in Russia has features - for example, strong position of state property as a part of the large companies, restrictions on the classified information and others. These factors can stop to some extent the companies from transfer of processes on outsourcing and constrain market development.
Your company began the activity with service of the enterprises of Severstal, but at it also external clients began to appear. How many them everything now? What largest?
Kira Lapina Concerning work with the market in Severstal-TsES two directions form now. The first – outsourcing. We service financial and connected chains of processes, we render services in the field of personnel management. The second direction is a consulting on the general service centers. Here services its organization, quality control of the current project, increase in efficiency of the existing center can include creation of the concept of such center at customer company.
Own service centers create the companies which or are not ready to transfer the processes to outsourcing, or see for themselves optimal hybrid model – a part of services (more often in expert area) - inside, and a part of services (most often, the simplest) - on outsourcing.
The most part of the current projects of our external customers - consulting. Many projects are already complete, a part of projects in work. We cannot open names of clients yet.
We have external clients and on outsourcing. These are the Russian and international groups with the Russian assets to which we render services in finance and personnel. We on service have legal persons who are located in Kazakhstan, Guinea, Burkina Faso and on separate financial services – in Canada, Great Britain, in Cyprus.
We began to render services to external clients in 2014. In total we have already more than 25 completed projects in the field of consulting and the signed contracts of outsourcing with external customers.
How essential company in the general activity the share of services to external customers is?
Kira Lapina Now it makes about 30%. In the long term we would like that it was the share of external clients much more – not less than 80% of revenue Severstal-TsES.
What role is played by IT in activity of the outsourcer?
Kira Lapina IT are the main key to increase in our efficiency. In addition to the normal automation equipment – the applications allowing to work with documents, reference books and the legislation we also need the technologies allowing to reduce to the maximum manual work. We constantly analyze where still it is possible to reduce handwork that process proceeded with the minimum participation of the employee.
How does Severstal-TsES automate the activity? What solutions are for this purpose used?
Kira Lapina There is a basic level of programs - it is the systems of the class ERP, the accounting systems, internal programs of automation, an electronic document management system in which we work with scans, we store archives and we exchange the documents having the legal importance. We also implement a possibility of optical character recognition, there are systems of robotic data processing. The last allow to coordinate among themselves the systems of different type: e-mail client, ERP system, Excel and others.
Automation equipment which we use vary from the client to the client: their choice depends on an IT landscape on the party of the customer. With some clients, for example, different services of microautomation are unavailable to use.
Some providers of outsourcing use completely the systems: they migrate to themselves data of the client and as in "a black box" then work with them. It, of course, is convenient. But small and medium business is ready to transfer data more often, and our target audience is large companies. They, as a rule, prefer not to store data on the party. In our case data are stored on client side in the different systems, and we far off get to them access through secure channels of communication.
How interaction Severstal-TsES as customer of IT and IT service is performed?
Kira Lapina With IT service of Severstal - Severstal-Infokom - we work under the agreement as with the supplier of services, the outsourcer. They render us services in area of both basic IT services, and development and support of systems.
We very strongly depend on support of IT therefore for us it was very important to determine parameters of quality of interaction: response time, time of the solution of a question, parameters of availability and other components of SLA.
Sometimes we should interact also with IT service of the client. For example, if in its ERP system there are errors or there are questions on side of the serviced geographical platforms.
What part do you personally take in the informatization concerning to Severstal-TsES?
Kira Lapina I offer and I advance the new ideas for implementation, I initiate projects, I monitor trends. If I see any new interesting technologies which could help to improve to us something, then I initiate pilot projects. Such projects allow us to understand - these technologies in our company can be applied or not.
Whether your company is going to undertake outsourcing of IT services?
Kira Lapina IT outsourcing is a special sphere, and in pure form we are not going to undertake such services. At the same time, together with other services we can provide cloud services. Periodically requests when the customer wants to transfer us the data and maintenance of a system from which these data come arrive. In a case with personnel outsourcing it is support of a HCM system, in a case with outsourcing of financial processes – the accounting systems. We could render such complex services.
Now we study options of similar services and a possibility of development of this direction. We could place a cloud in DPC of Severstal.
What are still possible options of diversification of business within competences Severstal-TsES?
Kira Lapina Services of contact center. For example, within HRM service specialists of our contact center can advise the customer's employees, answer their questions. The similar service is rendered within and a sales chain, a purchasing chain, treasurer services. We can provide services of contact center also out of some separate chains of processes at the enterprises, and perform functions of the general external contact center for the companies working in different spheres. Clients can attract contact center on outsourcing model to processing of primary requests from the clients or to the organization of "hot line" for suppliers, for example.
One more option of business development as continuation of services of outsourcing – rendering services of analytical center for our clients. In this case we speak not about stream service, and about single providing analytical reports for the solution of the questions arising at the client. In general, the analytics as service is quite perspective direction. Besides, we can render services in training of employees of the customer.
In the last several years often say that new technologies can force out professions of the lawyer and the accountant. About accountants, including, also representatives of the Ministry of Finance last year said. How already now do you observe such trend? Whether you are afraid that it will influence outsourcing business in this and adjacent areas?
Kira Lapina As for accountants, for example, in America they are divided into two types - bookkeeper and accountant. The first type is engaged, generally in technical transactions: creates documents in a system, unloads data, etc. This part can be automated and released easily a part of such employees. Ordinary accountants will be less and less.
In turn, accountant is involved where the reasoning, analytics, interpretation of laws, decision making, economy is required. It is more difficult to automate these functions. There are technologies facilitating their work, but, think, hardly they will force out such specialists in the near future.
Similar situation and with lawyers. Simple things, such as drawing up standard document forms, pre-judicial and dopretenzionny work - can be shablonizirovat and automated. At us in the company, for example, it is to some extent automated. Lawyers who interpret rules of law, incidents investigate, study administrative practice and execute some other difficult tasks - technologies will hardly replace.
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