Bobrovnikov Boris Leonidovich

Bobrovnikov Boris Leonidovich

Founder and CEO of CROC from 1992 to 2022.

Biography

Until the late 1980s: Geologist

Boris Bobrovnikov knew for sure that he would enter a technical university, and just in case he was preparing at three at once: he went to the physics and mathematics school at MVTU im. Bauman, studied with a mathematics teacher from MIPT and with a physicist from Moscow State University, looked closely at other institutes. And at the last moment he submitted documents to the geological exploration.

In his youth, in the late 70s, Boris Bobrovnikov worked as a janitor at the Taganka Theater. He worked just "for watching." I saw all the performances, met from afar with Vladimir Vysotsky.

From the first year, he set himself the goal of studying only on an increased scholarship - and for all five years he studied like that. Then he seriously became interested in skiing and by his senior year became the captain of the institute's national alpine skiing team. "I think sport plays a huge role in character formation, forces you to overcome yourself. And also teaches you to live and work in a team and for a team, "Bobrovnikov is sure.

There, at MGRI, he graduated from graduate school, defended his thesis. As a result, taking into account part-time work at the department in his student years, Boris Bobrovnikov worked in geophysics for more than ten years. Of these, according to his calculations, "pure" three years were lived in a tent, on annual expeditions. Geography of trips: Primorye, Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan...

At various times he was a researcher at the NIS of the Moscow Geological Exploration Institute and the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

was engaged in the development of new methods and equipment for ore geophysics and wrote a dissertation on this topic," says B. Bobrovnikov. - In expeditions for several months they tested in the field the radioelectronic equipment created in a year and, if necessary, redone something in it, repaid it. A working day of 20 hours, especially by the end of the season, is the norm. Field life has been deposited by a persistent conviction: geologists and geophysicists are a separate world in which bad people do not happen. Never. It's important.

Nevertheless, Boris Bobrovnikov, having worked after MGRI for another year at the Academic Institute of Oceanology, left this world - it became boring. In the late 80s, other interests and opportunities appeared.

1988: "The Speculator" and the Auto Repairman

business, I began by speculating on ski equipment on Ryazan Prospekt. It was back in the late 1970s. Then I was engaged in the repair of cars for a long time, defended my thesis, and after that I finally left science, devoted myself to the creation of sports and recreation clubs^[1]

By 1988, the candidate of technical sciences worked well as a night car repair - and a certain cooperative "Andrologist" invited him to full-time, repair management cars.

1990: Gym Chain

In 1990, the charismatic engineer, together with partner Georgy Halperin, founded and headed the sports and recreation association "Medicine, Culture and Sports." The network consisted of 18 gyms in Moscow, consisted of up to 350 personnel and was engaged in several activities - from unique offers in the field of medicine and health services to geological exploration abroad.

was also a period that greatly influenced character formation," admits B. Bobrovnikov. - The business was going well, but in 1992, when the scale of prices changed a lot, it became unprofitable. And my partner and I sold it. Just at that moment, an interesting activity turned up - to resell computer equipment from the United States.

1992: Start importing computers from the United States, founding "Croc"

The choice of IT was almost random, someone gave me a debt from computers, and I put my people to sell them. My companion was a strong expert and an excellent seller Evgeny Melnik, who offered to make a business for three (he left the company in 1997, having founded his own business). The third was my brother, who lived in the United States and was engaged in procurement there. Evgeny Melnik, accordingly, was responsible for sales, and I was engaged in organizing this whole process.

I was an investor in the project and created a structure that combined sales, logistics, finance... I have a Ph.D. in geophysical instrumentation - the subject is quite close. There were some funny stories from the days when we started a business in the field of IT: I soldered something somewhere, and it worked. Probably, the engineering mindset is still important. Although I must say that some of my business partners, on whom our business now largely depends, have a humanitarian education^[1].

Initially, we did not build a business on the mass resale of computers, as was then fashionable, but on the resale of intelligence - that is, VERY expensive equipment. In this area, competition was lower, but technology and financial risks were much higher. A high examination was required - and we relied on it. This is still what we are doing. Now this is called systemic integration, and then such a concept did not exist yet^[2].

In 1992 he founded the CROC company and until 2022 was its general director.

2012: A look at Kroka's business

"I was made a collector of crocodiles!" - Boris Bobrovnikov throws up his hands, standing in the middle of his office, forced by different-haired figures of toothed reptiles, which are something of a totem animal of the CROC company. Bobrovnikov admits that he does not have any particularly warm feelings for crocodiles, and chose the name for his company without much thought: a long time ago, back in the 1990s, American friends gave him the nickname Mr. Crocodile^[1].

• What are your features in the company now (2012)?

All together in one bottle. I am the owner, and the CEO, and the person who personally sells the largest projects and manages the most complex projects. In fact, it takes me a few minutes to figure out what's going on in the company at any level. I'm involved in the process from start to finish. I can understand some software badly, but I can easily explain to the owner of another business why he needs this or that solution. At the same time, I will tell you what I personally received from this as a business owner with sales of $1 billion a year, where I saved, where I felt an improvement, where it became worse. Talking on equal terms with links to personal experience usually has a good effect. In this regard, of course, I am an IT specialist: I can very well formulate what will happen if I do not invest in IT.

• What is the standard sales scheme for projects in your company? Do you prefer to immediately go to the leadership of a potential customer?

If we talk about marketing terms, then the object of our influence is primarily IT experts - these are those people who, like us, are specialists in the field of IT, but work on the customer's site and receive a salary from him. Our goal is to prove to these experts that we are the best contractor in the country to solve the problems facing their organization.

Above the experts is CIO - the main IT specialist in the organization. In the vast majority of cases, except for government agencies, he is an IT specialist with high or highest qualifications. Nevertheless, his opinion on many issues is based on the opinion of experts, since they can further understand some narrow areas.

The next subject of impact is CFO, CFO. We offer some solutions immediately at the level of the financial director, since these solutions may be more important to him than to CIO. It's a paradox, but it is. Well, the highest level is the business owner... This is exactly the consistency I insist on. Someone might argue that sales come from the top, meaning the decision is made at the first-person level and then goes down. In our business, such a scheme does not work or works in rare cases. And in the history of the CROC company there are very few precedents when we went over the top. In 98% of cases, we enter through the expert community within the company and then, having received its support, we rise higher. When internal employees confirm our qualifications, we can negotiate with management against this favorable background. It is not possible to do the opposite, so we are not trying.

• That is, your business is not built on personal connections?

This business is certainly built on personalities. And since it is built on personalities, it is built on connections. But this business is supremely pragmatic and highly competitive, and personal connections only work if they are backed by professionalism. All projects in the field of informatization, which are done with the help of administrative resources, are doomed to failure. As soon as we move away from free market competition, we are immediately guaranteed to fall into the field of unsuccessful IT projects.

• How many competitors do you have?

On the one hand, we have as many competitors as there are active IT companies on the market, which is several thousand. Any company can compete with us in any project, both theoretically and practically. But if we talk about especially large, complex, complex projects, then there are five to seven competitors on the Russian market, and this number is not growing.

• Are these companies that are equal to you in terms of expertise?

These are companies that are comparable to us in terms of expertise, turnover, headcount, experience in the market and the implementation of large projects. It is important to note here that the participation of only the largest companies requires a very small number of projects. Therefore, everyone competes against everyone. But at the same time, almost everyone has partnerships with everyone, because the system integrator should never do everything himself, it is meaningless and harmful, and from an economic point of view it is quite dangerous. We have hundreds of subcontractors across the country. We can compete with these companies in one situation, and cooperate in another: either work for them on a subcontract, or they will work on a subcontract with us. Such cooperation is a demand for time that appeared sometime in the early 2000s. And those companies for whom the competitive aspect or satisfaction of personal ambition came first had to either leave the market or adopt general rules and work like everyone else. The IT market is a market of gentlemen who, on the one hand, compete honestly and quite harshly, but at the same time are able to negotiate and always fulfill agreements. Perhaps I idealize a little, but this is how 90-95% of the market works. There are isolated examples of companies that do not agree, but they have a miserable fate.

• We studied the history of your company, looked at what customers were in different years, and it seemed that in the late nineties and early 2000s you had many clients from among government agencies, and then corporate customers began to prevail. Is that really the case?

Yes, this is so, but it must be borne in mind that state customers cause maximum interest from the outside. Therefore, the entire market can talk about some kind of small project in which the state is the customer, but not at all interested in hundreds of projects with commercial companies. Therefore, our most famous projects at that time were exclusively state-owned. The share of orders from government agencies in the CROC company in those years reached 30-35%. Now this figure has dropped to 13%, probably, it will continue to fall. Why? Firstly, we are actively developing the market, and for me customers from the market segment, which accounts for about half of GDP, are much preferable. It is enough to work with these clients simply. And this does not work with state customers and natural monopolies, where the qualification of IT specialists is much lower, often IT divisions are headed by people who are not specialists in IT.

• And that's bad for you...

This is primarily bad for the customer, although what is bad for him ultimately turns into problems for me. The first problem is the non-specific formulation of the task. If a person does not know what he wants, does not know how to formulate a problem, then it is not clear how to solve it. Moreover, during the solution process, the customer can change his point of view seven times. We have a lot of such precedents when, in the process of implementation, the terms of reference change three times. This means that we re-do the same thing three times. At the same time, the budget remains the same, which means that the project becomes unprofitable. The second problem is when the customer is guided by political interests when choosing a contractor: "We cannot work with this company, I will not cooperate with them." Businessmen are much more pragmatic, for them personal preferences do not play such a role. The third is the fluidity of the personnel. We start the project with one leader, then another comes and says: "I don't need all this, I need another." This probably happens at least a quarter of the time.

And the last thing to take into account when working with state customers is that any project is guaranteed to end with inspections of the Accounts Chamber, MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS the FSB, the Presidential Audit Office and a dozen other different structures. I'm not saying it's bad, I just want to say it's extra hassle, extra risks. We are used to this, because we have been working in this market for almost twenty years, but the task of betting on these customers is not worth it. Therefore, I say to my directors: "You can bring money from anywhere, but starting a project, for example, with some university, you need to understand that sooner or later a check will come. There is nothing wrong with this - go where you need to, answer questions, we will provide the relevant documents, you just have to keep in mind that the check will certainly take place. "

• Does this somehow affect the choice of customers?

I think it affects the fact that we do not get into frankly adventurous projects. For example, I basically never participated in any projects related to Electronic Russia. I think there will be those who wish there without us.

• After all, you can advise customers at the stage of setting a task...

We are very pleased to participate in setting the task, but if it is functional for businessmen, then it is more political for "state officials." And if it is not functional, then it is unlimited. That is, it can change in two accounts, you cannot insure against this - it means that you will have to redo some things, if not change the entire concept at all. Yes, we have wonderful customers from among the government agencies with whom we have been working for decades, who know very clearly what they want, who have an incredibly well-delivered IT process, maybe even better than many businessmen. But I say statistically. We have 800 existing customers, so there is an idea of ​ ​ what is happening in the market.

• What is the level of customers from the corporate sector for you?

Usually our client is an organization with an IT budget of at least $500 thousand per year. We do not specialize in implementing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.

• Is your business mainly concentrated in Moscow?

Moscow accounts for about 60%.

• What is your regional presence strategy?

We perfectly understand that there are established relationships in the regions, and it is impossible to change these relationships, you can only somehow relate to them. This means that in the regions we need these or other subcontractors depending on the client and the type of activity. We know that there is a client who works with a small company, and this small company knows the specifics of the client. At the same time, they lack financial resources, expertise, interaction with world producers - we can bring all this there. I have always been negative about the idea of ​ ​ my own presence in the regions, although we have a certain number of employees in the regions. Usually our structures in the regions were created under a specific customer. I don't really like it, because as soon as you appear in the region, you become the enemy of all local companies, and they stop cooperating with you, because you are directly competing with them.

• What are the main principles of corporate culture in your company?

The cornerstone is the creativity of employees. There is evidence that companies usually use creative potential by about 5%. If we use it by 10%, then we will be twice ahead of competitors in this regard. And the main task of managers, starting with me, is to give people the opportunity to implement in the CROC company to the maximum extent, more than in any other place. That is why we select creative personalities who want to self-realize and are ready to pay for it. The price is clear - readiness to work 24 hours a day.

• Do you have strategic goals formulated?

No, I can't stand that word. Our goal is to live a better life.

• And how is the planning process organized, how long are you looking forward?

For one year. It is pointless and even harmful to look further, I would say.

• What would you advise young entrepreneurs who want to implement the project on the IT market?

Firstly, a small remark: in order to work in the IT field, it is absolutely not necessary to be a professional IT specialist. It seems to me that the chances of success are higher for those who know how to be extremely active, while remaining correct. When activity develops into aggressiveness, it scares away both customers and its own employees. We select people in such a way that they are active, but at the same time they know how to work in a team. Because on the one hand, business in IT is made by personalities, and on the other hand, each personality should be able to work in a team.

Then there is, for example, such a general recommendation: it makes no sense to do something if you do not have competitive advantages. Competitive advantage is what sets your company or your future company apart. If you can't articulate them, it means an unenviable share awaits you. When there are, say, 20 IBM resellers on the market, trying to become the 21st IBM reseller is absolutely pointless, you will never succeed. But if some new technology comes up, and you see that no one is engaged in it on the market, and you can offer it, then this can be your finest hour. Although you have a very small chance of guessing the most promising technology. Therefore, it is advisable not to dwell on any one solution, but to take as the basis of the business a certain number of solutions and technologies. Companies that rely on one technology from one vendor may live for a long time, but it is difficult. They have a very cyclical business - that is, they do not. It is advisable to have a pool of solutions from different vendors, even if these are solutions with similar functionality.

• How would you formulate the main competitive advantages of CROC?

I think there are a few. First, it's mobility and responsiveness. Secondly, dedication. If we need to prepare a proposal in two days, we will prepare it, even if for the sake of this two days people will not leave the office. Only such workaholics work for us. The third is the level of professionalism, which we follow very closely. And the fourth is correctness in combination with activity, in any sequence.

2014: Performance on the stage of the cinema "Russia"

The artificial intelligence system developed by the IT corporation commissioned by the Ministry of Defense fails on the eve of the transfer to the client. The sales manager decides to imitate her work, a programmer in love with him is trying to help, as a result, confidential information from all iPhones is in the public domain, which helps to expose a British spy in the representative of the Ministry of Defense. This is not a script for a new series, but the plot of a performance staged for the 22nd anniversary of the CROC company on the stage of the Rossiya cinema, in which only its employees are involved. The general director of one of the country's largest system integrators, Boris Bobrovnikov, in a shiny suit with a huge collar, plays himself - the boss.

Boris Bobrovnikov is the most extravagant of the owners of Russian IT companies.

2015: TAdviser interview

In October 2015, Boris Bobrovnikov gave an interview to TAdvisder, talking about the directions of development of "CROC" and the Russian IT market^[3].

2019: First line in the ranking of "1000 best managers in Russia"

In 2019, Boris Bobrovnikov became the best leader in IT, taking first place in the ranking of "1000 best managers in Russia" of the Association of Managers of Russia and Kommersant Publishing House. Included in the ranking TOP-3 since 2015.

2020: Croc Digital Transformation Initiatives

Since 2018, with the active support of Boris, initiatives for the digital transformation of the CROC have been implemented. Under his supervision, the geography of the company's projects has grown 3 times in 4 years. In 2019-2020 successfully completed the first foreign projects of the company using machine learning, VR and AR technologies, face recognition, blockchain. video analysts UAV

Boris Bobrovnikov is a recognized expert in the business community. His experience as the founder of his own successful business attracts the attention of a new generation of businessmen. In 2020, Boris online told the closed club of entrepreneurs and top managers of Club 500 about the transformation of the CROC, the structure of the business, the role of digital marketing and international projects.

Management skills in different years were noted by such publications as "Secret of the Company" (high positions in the "top 100 of the Russian IT industry"), "Career" (in the "top 30 best leaders of computer companies"), CRN (one of the most authoritative leaders of Russian IT companies).

Effective management of Boris Bobrovnikov provided the company with a leading position in the IT market.

2022

Joining the list of the largest IT billionaires in Russia

In August 2022, TAdviser compiled the first list of the largest IT billionaires in Russia. Boris Bobrovnikov took tenth place in it (more).

Sale of a stake in CROC and resignation from the post of its CEO

On December 29, 2022, it became known about the withdrawal of Krok co-founder Boris Bobrovnikov from the company's shareholders. He will also cease to be its CEO. Read more here.

Political views

I was not a member of the party and am not going now - uninteresting and stupid (2012^[2].

Awards

Boris Bobrovnikov is one of the most influential people in the IT-Business for 13 years he has consistently held leading positions in the traditional ratings of the business and IT community.

In 2006 and 2008 - leading places in the ranking of "1000 professional managers of Russia" of the newspaper "Kommersant," 2007 - "500 most professional senior leaders" of the newspaper "Kommersant" and the Association of Managers of Russia Repeatedly included in the "25 best leaders of Russian IT companies" of CRN/RE magazine .

Hobbies and diet

In his free time from work, Boris Leonidovich is fond of wakeboarding and is engaged in scuba diving.

Among the musical addictions are industrial, trance and psychedelic performed by the Dutch and English.

I am very orthodox in nutrition. In the morning - oatmeal and scrambled eggs, and I end the day with some amount of rice or potatoes and a large piece of meat, preferably raw - carpaccio^[2].

Notes