home Healthy eating Ermolaev A.G., Novikova T.B., Kurzaeva L.V. Experience in modeling a business process using the example of the subject area “Work of a web studio”

Ermolaev A.G., Novikova T.B., Kurzaeva L.V. Experience in modeling a business process using the example of the subject area “Work of a web studio”

Automation of basic studio business processes at the sales stage

Date of publication: 10/19/2016

The fun begins. Automation of document flow and work with clients is the first pillar on which the conveyor work of any agency stands. This is the first and least obvious way to save studio money and, as a result, free up uselessly loaded managerial resources for useful work.

It was thanks to the approach described below that WebCanape achieved high productivity at the start without increasing the costs of scaling the team. Only after 5 years of work did we have a dedicated sales department. Before this, a flow of 120 applications per month with a conversion of 60% was processed by one person.

But speed is not only savings, it also means loyal customers. Whoever makes the first proposal wins :) A real entrepreneur with money would rather choose the first offer he likes than waste time waiting for different options.

Basic business processes of the studio at the sales stage

Let's look at the basic business processes that exist in any web studio.

Accounting for incoming applications

Sending a questionnaire, brief

Brief processing, cost calculation

Preparation of CP

Preparation of agreement and applications

Invoicing

Bill payment

The application must be accepted, entered into the CRM accounting system (5 minutes), the data transferred to the basic part of the brief and sent to the client (another 5 minutes). After the client fills out the brief, it needs to be processed, a calculation made (20 minutes) and a thoughtful Commercial offer(40 minutes) with preliminary site structure and services. It will take another 30 minutes to prepare the contract and applications, and 10 minutes to issue an invoice.

To implement these processes per application, a standard sales department requires approximately 110 minutes of pure time. This means that it takes 128 hours to process 70 applications. When recalculated for a large number of applications, these are significant losses that are not needed by the client, but affect the final cost of the product. At the same time, for some reason the web studio is trying to optimize production (the process of creating a product), and not these empty processes. Let's see what we did.

To process 70 applications per month, the manager needed 128 hours (full-time salesman). After optimization and automation of processes, it became 37 hours. Now you see why we worked for a long time without a dedicated sales department. The only thing is that it is very important to have an experienced person at the entrance. Automation by itself will not work.

Speed and interchangeability

Step by step, recognizing the problem of low efficiency, we created a system that helped managers work faster with clients. I've already said why speed is more important than cost, but I didn't mention one more problem.

For many, it comes to the fore. The sales manager cannot prepare a professional CP. Where can you find sales people with experience in selling websites when they are not available in the regions?

Accordingly, we needed to provide a tool that would help good managers with little experience in the field of web development to quickly manage document flow and create professional CP.

Ours has become such a tool internal tool, which we called “Calculator”. Much later, it was reborn into CanapeCRM, which we began to offer to clients.

Electronic documents. We have 100% abandoned Word documents and moved online. Only a link is sent to the client (to the brief, CP, agreement, invoice). If something changes, just make changes to the document in the system, press F5 and the client’s document is already updated. Saving on this and similar processes results in high operational efficiency.

Automatic notifications. The second important part of automation is alerts. In the process of work, the manager is forced to write a large number of letters to clients that do not contain important information. The client needs to be informed of the status of the project, request information, tell what to prepare for the upcoming stages, etc. When there are a lot of projects, it greatly distracts from the main task, forces you to switch gears and slows down your work. The CRM system can and should itself provide information to the client and send reminders.

One day that will save a million

Spend this day fully setting up the system. Notification texts, commercial proposal templates, contracts and everything that may be useful. This will help you work more profitably and not increase in price along with rising salaries.

I will be hosting a webinar on Monday, October 31, 2016. We will discuss previous materials, talk about important steps at the start, show you how to set up a document management system and answer all questions. Register for the webinar.

If you have any questions, you can write in the comments to the posts. Our telegram channel: https://telegram.me/joinchat/B5w9l0BjZloqHGLIRq-4aw. Facebook group.

All new materials will appear on CMS Magazine. We can also meet on webinars to cover topics in more detail and discuss details.

Full text read articles at

We quickly realized that making simple websites is unprofitable. Competition increased, the market was flooded small companies. All this led to lower prices for projects and a drop in business profitability. Customers became more qualified. Requests to create websites were supplemented by demands to “link” them to one or another information system.

Few people risked tackling complex tasks. For system integrators, such projects were too cheap, and for web studios too complex.

Our Studio has always been located in the Russian “silicon valley” - Zelenograd. We had strong programmers, which meant we could easily receive and fulfill such orders. It was decided - this is our chance!

This is how we turned from an ordinary studio into specialists who ensure the coordinated operation of a website with several information systems - web integrators.

What crap is this web integration of yours?

It is not difficult to ensure the exchange of data between two systems. But our first few years in our new capacity were painful and costly.

Instead of the expected profits, we lost money over and over again, encountering new difficulties, which our technical director gave the code name “pitfalls.”

We did not give up, and, like the mice from the joke, “were injecting ourselves, crying, but stubbornly continued to gnaw the cactus.”

Before you start

Before we talk about the processes, let’s agree on the terminology of this article.

For us programmers, any development of simple websites comes down to this model:

When you need to create not just a website, but an entire system where, in addition to the site’s database, a cash register with a cashier selling theater tickets, a warehouse system providing information about the balance of goods, or a payment service responsible for processing bank cards is also involved, we We use the concept of “third party”.

A third party is an information system located outside the server room or data center, designed to connect additional resources to our business logic. For example, an SMS service that sends short messages to the user’s phone or a system for reserving goods at a supplier’s warehouse. With the addition of a third party, the process becomes more complex, and we use this algorithm to save time and money when working on an integrated project.

Step 1. Goals and objectives

First of all you need to in simple language agree on what we ultimately want to get. The customer expects a specific result from the integration. Automation for the sake of system beauty is rarely of interest to anyone. Trying to articulate goals and expectations in writing is the best way to ensure that the results are understood equally by everyone involved in the work process. We often come across this formulation:

Typical example: The site must be integrated with the ProfTicket ticket system.

and in such cases we try to achieve greater clarity of the wording:

Good example: Buyers should be able to choose free places in the hall, pay for tickets and receive them by e-mail in sales offices or with the help courier delivery. Information on the availability of seats for sale for specific sessions is provided by the ProfTicket ticket system.

This formulation itself contains a number of questions that might otherwise get lost and emerge at the most inopportune moment.

Step 2. Business processes and interaction protocol

Now you need to decide how the systems should interact to perform a particular task. Let's continue to build analogies with the ticket system. By the way, we're talking about about a completely real project: in 2013, we helped the Dilyaver company open a ticket ordering service ShowMart.Ru. To make a ticket reservation, you need to answer several questions:

Which event did the buyer choose?
Which session (date and time combination) was selected?
Which seats (sector number, row and seats) were selected?
Have these places been sold to another buyer previously?
Are these places in reserve, in other words, are the purchase of these places being processed by another buyer right now?
And so on...

Any interaction between systems comes down to a “request-response” structure. The request is sent by the party that needs to receive the data (client), and the response is sent by the party that has this data (server).

The simpler and more unambiguous such a scheme is, the better. At a minimum, you need to make sure that only one of the systems responds to a single request and that the systems do not duplicate each other. For example, information about the price of tickets is stored in only one of them.

At some point, we will need to “ask” one of the systems to reserve tickets - put a mark that does not allow these tickets to be resold to another buyer, and after completing the purchase, one of the systems will need to send a notification letter to the buyer. Therefore, sometimes interaction is required not at the “request-response” level, but according to the “request-action” formula.

The process of interaction between the parties Now all we have to do is record what requests and responses each of the systems is responsible for. And also indicate a list of all possible errors.

Step 3. Decision-making rules and mediators

Even the simplest web integration project involves at least three parties:

Customer.
The owner of system A (for example, a 1C programmer on the client’s staff).
Owner of system B (actually, we are web programmers).

We will not delve into the reasons and analysis of what is happening. Let’s simply state it as a fact: conflicts of interest between the owners of two systems are inevitable. The complexity of the situation depends on the number of participants and their level of qualifications.

It is important to think about how controversial situations before they appear. This is not an easy topic, but it is necessary to agree on at least fundamental points, for example:

What will the parties be guided by when making a decision: speed, data security issues, or minimal changes to 1C?
Who will be the responsible party making the final decision if the system owners cannot agree among themselves?

At first glance, it seems that the answer to the last question is obvious: the customer - who else should make the final decisions? However, this is not always the case.

Integration projects place high demands on the technical knowledge of the decision maker. Therefore, sometimes the palm is given to one of the participants in the integration process, or an independent expert is brought in, whose authority is recognized by the owners of both systems.

Step 4. Data exchange standard and format

Now we need to agree on the basis of which standard and in what way we will exchange data between systems.

In most cases, the choice of protocol is determined by the amount of data and the frequency of its transmission. The story will be about those protocols that we most often encounter in our work.

SOAP

SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. If literally translated from English, you get “Simple Object Access Protocol”. This protocol is truly one of the simplest and most frequently used when building web projects. SOAP is a structured XML message exchange protocol.

In order for systems to use a unified regulation for constructing requests and responses, files are used with a description of such regulations, compiled on the basis of the WSDL standard (from the English Web Service Description Language).

SOAP is an extension of the XML-RPC protocol, and this is a big plus of the protocol. XML is widely used, and a huge number of specialists are at least superficially familiar with the XML-Schema format.

This same fact is also the biggest disadvantage of SOAP. XML is a voluminous format and as the amount of data exchanged between systems increases, the amount of transmitted traffic increases. As the latter increases, the time required to process requests and generate responses to them increases. All this makes the WSDL/SOAP combination practically unsuitable for use in systems with huge volumes of poorly structured data - in the so-called Big Data systems.

SOAP will be an excellent choice, for example, for solving problems of integrating an online store with a small assortment with a 1C warehouse system. Its standard distribution provides support for this protocol, and all that remains to be done is to prepare WSDL descriptions.

REST

REST (decoding the abbreviation in this case will not give us anything, so we will ignore it) is a protocol for calling a remote procedure using a regular HTTP request. Yes, using the same GET and POST methods from Tim O’Reilly’s textbooks.

Each method in REST is not accounted for by a separate entry in the WSDL file, but by a URL. For example, the method for obtaining information about the user will look like - http://example.com/rest/user. And the method for creating a new user is http://example.com/rest/user/create.

You can use the request body to pass parameters to REST, and HTTP status headers to describe errors. Everything is as simple as possible and does not require the use of additional protocols. REST is much more primitive than SOAP. This is what makes it a great choice when you need to exchange a large amount of data and do it frequently.

REST does not dictate what format requests should be sent in. This means that for these purposes you can use JSON (text data exchange format) - the most compact format for exchanging structures in text representation. Its use almost completely solves the problem of data volume.

BIKE

Sometimes it is necessary to use combinations of several communication methods and protocols.

1C has its own format CommerceML - XML for transmitting commercial information, most often product catalogs are transmitted in this way.

This format was developed by specialists from 1C and Extra.RU. They were helped by friends from the Moscow office of Microsoft.

For this reason, the format does not allow for many use cases, and “pure” CommerceML is often lacking. This leads to the need to supplement it with special functionality.

Sometimes the client does not have a dedicated external server to communicate with. Then we create a separate folder directly on the hosting server so that 1C can upload its files there. There they are recognized by our scripts according to a schedule.

In cases where we need to constantly keep data up to date, we can tie the Rest API and XML transfer together. Then 1C will send XML directly to the server using standard POST requests.

Step 5: Data Security

Most often, where the need for integration arises, there are trade secrets or personal data. Working with them after recent changes in legislation now deserves a separate article.

No one wants to see their customer base or daily revenue leaked to their competitors. Therefore, it is important to think about ensuring a sufficient level of security for the data exchanged between systems.

There are many protection options. We will look at just a few of them.

HTTPS

The HTTP protocol is the most common and most insecure. The data is transmitted unencrypted. HTTPS is a subset of the http protocol that supports encryption using SSL or TCL certificates.

Certificates are the algorithm by which data will be encrypted. Only the transmitting and receiving parties know about this algorithm at the time of data transmission. SSL certificates can be supplied by the server itself, but then they will be considered untrusted, and browsers may display images that frighten the user.

Window warning the user about an unreliable connection In order for a certificate to be considered trusted, it must be ordered from a certification organization - a certification authority. There are many such institutions. When working on projects for European customers, we prefer to use the services of one of the two largest players in the SSL certification market - Thawte or Verisign. In Russia we work with Ru-center. Their icons can often be seen on sites where payment or work with personal data is implied.

HTTP-Basic authorization

The second method of providing protection is the method in which two systems “introduce” themselves to each other using a “login-password” pair before they begin to exchange data. This method is called “HTTP-basic authorization”.

To prevent attackers from intercepting passwords, it is better to “introduce” yourself to systems in an encrypted form, i.e. HTTP-basic authorization must be used in conjunction with SSL encryption.

Providing access by IP address

If the system is not too complex and the servers of the communicating systems have specific and immutable IP addresses, you can grant access to communication only to these IP addresses.

This option is easy to implement and therefore widely used. But sometimes it leads to sudden problems with access.

Step 6. Technical specifications

You may have an excellent relationship with the customer or his 1C programmers, but “friendship is friendship, but tobacco is separate.” We strongly recommend that agreements on all described steps be recorded in writing.

An instructive example from own experience: We had to make a complex integration of the customer’s 1C:Enterprise with the online store they were using. At a meeting with 1C programmers, we agreed that they would prepare web services on their side, which the Studio’s web programmers would subsequently access.

In the process of close practical work, which took more than one month, 1C programmers changed their point of view and decided to make for us a copy of their database, replicated from the main one, and transfer it to us so that we could “do whatever we want with it” .

This meant that we needed to do an additional amount of work, because there were no web services or clear documentation attached to them. Since we did not record the previous agreements, we were faced with the customer’s fierce reluctance to consider the increased time frame and budget of the project.

In the above example, we were lucky - the 1C programmers turned out to be decent guys and confirmed to their management that we were right. But will you be as lucky next time?

You can work according to agile methodologies, use the classic “waterfall” or use a hybrid methodology. This is not important, as is the format and volume of technical specifications. The only important thing is that all agreements must be recorded in one way or another.

Step 7. Implementation

There are also several differences in the direct production of integration work from mono-development.

ONE TEAM

To ensure development goes as smoothly as possible, avoid dividing into “yours” and “ours”. On the contrary, do everything to form a single team of external information system developers and your programmers.

Strive to create a single, friendly team, even if only gathered for the duration of the project. You will save a lot of effort and time if all participants in the process are interested in finding effective solution, and not to shift the blame or work onto a programmer from another company.

In addition, it will take additional time to eliminate the difference in the qualifications of specialists and the development methodologies used. This should also be taken into account when calculating the time and budget of the project.

TESTING AT ENTRANCE

When working with a third party, you will have to do testing not only at the output, but also at the input.

An example from my own practice: a CRM system programmer reported that the web service necessary to complete the work was completed. The project manager created a task for the web programmer and submitted it, accompanied by a link to this web service. The next day, the web programmer began completing the task exactly as scheduled and was faced with the fact that the web service was not working. The task is returned to the CRM programmer. The time of the web programmer, the project manager and the customer’s money are wasted. Everyone is again waiting for the required web service to be ready.

Previously, everything depended only on your team, and the formulated task was immediately assigned to the programmer. Now you have to first make sure that the components to solve the problem, performed by a third party, actually work.

TEST COVERAGE

Requirements will change at the speed of light; owners of external information systems can change web services and APIs without warning. The composition of your own web programmers will change, or it may happen that, having written new functionality, the developers, through their actions, will break what worked great before. We treat one thing, we cripple the other.

The faster it is discovered where in the system and what exactly has “failed”, the lower the costs of supporting it will be, and the higher the profit will be. Therefore, do not skimp on code coverage with tests.

In the case of web integration, the percentage of code coverage by tests should be as high as possible.

Step 8: Fault Tolerance

Systems integration is carried out to reduce the time and financial costs of performing certain business processes. Web integration is more often characteristic of a developed, stable and successful business.

Some of the projects we have completed can cost anywhere from $35,000 to $70,000 lost in a 24-hour downtime. This makes us think additionally about measures to improve the fault tolerance of the entire system.

Backup. All this is prescribed in the terms of reference and contracts. But let's be honest, do you always check to see if the host or developer has actually set up backup procedures as agreed upon? Most often this becomes clear when the problem has already occurred.
Stress Testing. What traffic and peak load does the customer expect? Multiply this figure by at least 2.5 and do synthetic load tests. You need to test not only the site, but also those systems with which the project interacts.
Seasonality. Know the seasonality of your customer's business. Traffic to the website of the cinema chain, which we created and support, in new year holidays increases by 2-3 times. In this project we begin preparations for the New Year in early November.
Readiness for a rollback. You work in a team and this will have to be taken into account. Be prepared for the fact that your new functions may disrupt the normal operation of the external system and the changes will have to be quickly rolled back. Despite load testing, external systems sometimes fail for reasons beyond your control. You must be prepared to continue working by disabling the shared functionality for a while. For example, during a crash in the ticket purchasing service, instead of the ordering process, we show an apology message, but the site itself continues to function.

Step 9. Logging and monitoring

Don’t forget to take into account the costs of creating a logging system in the project timeline and budget. We've been making headway in this place for quite some time.

This is an objective tool with which you can restore the chronology of events; it will not only help you save your nerves, but will also protect you in the event of litigation. Therefore, it is important to “hang” the finished system with indicators and sensors.

At the Studio, we try to do everything in such a way that it is not possible to find out about the failure of the site or part of it. telephone conversation with an angry client, but with the help of our own monitoring systems.

We will not go into detail about this process and may dedicate a separate article to it, but for those who are new to these topics, we advise you to start by Googling the terms Pinba, Zabbix and Munin.

Step 10: Documentation

Agree on how it will be conducted project documentation, and try to keep it up to date.

This will help avoid situations where you have to familiarize yourself with the entire program code to troubleshoot problems. If even the programmer who originally developed all this, after six months no longer remembers what should work and how, is it worth talking about new developers?

The advice is the simplest in meaning and the most difficult to follow. At the Studio we try to do it something like this:

We agreed on the format for maintaining and storage location of project documentation.
We compiled a list of documents included in the concept of “project documentation”. As a rule, these are several documents, including a business process map, a description of the server architecture, our technical specifications, documentation for the external system API, etc.
We appointed someone responsible for keeping the documentation up to date. This is usually the project manager.
We set a frequency for checking documentation.

All! Now the person in charge from time to time does a selective or complete check, depending on who you like, to check the relevance of the documents. Or he doesn’t... and understands that he can get punished for it at any moment.

Conclusion

The article turned out to be long and complex. But the last thing I wanted was to scare you away from web integration. Of course, it requires experience. But there is no experience without practice. And there is no practice without mistakes.

Integration is good way increasing the efficiency of your customers' business processes. For web developers, this is a way to increase the cost and margin of their own services. And what’s more, due to the complexity of the process, competition in this market is less than in the website creation market.

Request: Now in the Studio we are trying to understand whether you are interested in reading such articles? It takes a lot of effort to make the material useful and practical. It took about 20 years to prepare this article. three o'clock specialists.

Our art director Sasha Kotov believes that we are “being foolish”, and no one will read this :-)

So if you find this work useful and think we should continue like this, please like this article or share it on social media. This way we will understand that we are not writing on the table and will get the motivation to continue.

The situation in the Internet services market in 2017 is not so simple. If 5-6 years ago new companies in this area appeared literally in dozens every day, now the situation has become more complicated. According to statistics, more than half of existing companies have existed for more than 6 years; previously the share of young ones was much higher. Competition in the market is enormous, and demand for services is stagnant. There are several reasons for this:

Five years ago, business was moving to the Internet in a much wider flow than is happening now. Many have already taken their place in the market, some still do not see the point in creating websites or use alternative options (SMM, advertising on bulletin boards, etc.). Crisis phenomena in the economy have negatively affected budgets and the desire of businesses to invest in development.
The cost of high-quality business promotion has increased. If previously a click on Yandex.Direct cost, on average, 5-7 rubles, today this figure is 5-10 times higher. If in the era of classic SEO and low competition, promoting a website to the top of search engines was relatively inexpensive and an average freelancer could handle it, now budgets can be measured in tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of rubles per month. Having acquired greater importance for the client than TV or outdoor advertising, the Internet automatically became expensive.
Competition between companies has reached its peak. Analysts note that a certain pool of reputable companies has established itself in the market (they have existed for more than 6 years), and the number of new companies and those that close annually are almost equal.

Of course, it cannot be said that entering the market today is pointless. Talk about the unprofitability of working in modern conditions beneficial to existing players who are already forced to work in a competitive environment and are trying to limit this flow. But a queue of clients will not automatically form for you.

The market capacity, according to 2015 data, was estimated at 24 billion rubles, and the number of participants in the market was more than 10 thousand. And this is not counting freelancers, of whom, according to rough estimates, there are more than a million.

There is a very strict gradation in the Internet services market based on status and budget. The transition from one class to another is very difficult. Conventionally, we can distinguish the economy segment ( average cost projects - up to 100 thousand rubles), middle class (projects with a budget of up to 500 thousand rubles) and premium class (average budget - 1 million rubles). It is noted that more than 40% of large orders are carried out by 20 top-class studios. The middle class is in difficult conditions because there are fewer clients during the crisis, and those that exist come with rather strict quality requirements. Expenses large quantity man-hours spent on projects result in low profitability. The economy segment specializes in standard projects, which in a certain sense is more profitable, but it constantly competes with freelancers. Often a web studio in this segment is a very abstract word and hides the same freelancer, only registered as an individual entrepreneur.

On average, a web studio with 4-5 employees on staff can simultaneously manage 5-6 projects. The average is 20 projects per year. There are companies that conduct 10-12 or more projects at the same time; this can be achieved either by recruiting more employees or by a stream of inexpensive standard projects. It all comes down to qualifications.

The nuance of a web studio’s work is that the classic approach from small to large does not work well here. If you plan to start with inexpensive projects and gradually move to more expensive ones, your journey will be very long. And it’s not a fact that it’s effective. Here you need to start with gaining experience - it’s best to get a job in a studio of medium and high level. Here you will quickly acquire high competence and meet people who may become your clients in the future. In this way, the path to the middle or premium class will be faster.

Project Summary

We are opening a middle-class web studio in a large regional center. It is assumed that the entrepreneur has at least 5 years of experience in a similar web studio as head of the development or promotion department.

The list of services provided includes:

Turnkey creation of business card websites, online stores and corporate portals based on Bitrix.
Landing page development.
Development of individual web design.
SEO website promotion.
Setup and support contextual advertising.
SMM and targeting in social networks.
Website audit and technical support.

When working with personnel, a mixed strategy will be used. Key employees are hired and work in the office: front-end and back-end developers, SEO specialist, designer. The remaining functions can be outsourced or freelanced, since they will be auxiliary areas for our company.

Potential partners will be Moscow companies, since the market is witnessing an optimization of budgets due to a shift from Moscow agencies to provincial ones, which require smaller budgets. Services will also be provided to local organizations.

Business registration

For work, the individual entrepreneur form is chosen. It is quite sufficient for contract work with other organizations, the registration process is faster, and reporting is easier. The simplified taxation system of 15% is chosen as the form of taxation, since in this business the costs of paying specialists are high.

No special permits are required for the company to operate.

Since the company does not deal with cash, the installation cash register not required. Acceptance of payment from clients will be made by non-cash payment to a bank account. Select a bank and open an account.

To work, it is desirable to obtain partner status, which is provided by the creators of popular platforms for creating websites: Bitrix, CS-Cart and others. At the first stage, it is planned to obtain the status of a 1C-Bitrix partner.

Cost of expenses - 5 thousand rubles.

Renting premises

To work you will need an office of 20 square meters. meters. Priority is given to office buildings and business centers. The location of its placement is not a priority, since outdoor advertising does not play a special role for us. Promotion channels will be on the Internet.

Primary requirements:

Office price.
Availability of quality tools.
The presence of a public transport stop and parking for the convenience of employees' commute to work.

The room can be organized in open-space format. The manager will also perform tasks for one of the positions (in our case, SEO specialist), work together with the team, so there is no need to allocate space for the manager’s office. We will install modular glass partitions at a total cost of 50 thousand rubles.

There is no need for special renovation of the premises, so we give preference to a place in which there is no need to invest additional money.

The cost of its rent will be 12 thousand rubles per month.

Purchase of equipment

This is one of the main items of start-up capital. To organize each workplace you need:

Table.
Chair.
Laptop.
Network hardware.

In addition, we will install a kettle, microwave, and cooler in the common area. Attachments in the table:

Staff

Employees are the most important component of this project. They are the main costs in the process of work, but they will also bring you profit. The staff will employ 4 people, the founder of the company himself will serve as an SEO specialist.

Accrual wages will be carried out according to a combined scheme: fixed rate (salary) + bonus.

The bonus will be awarded depending on the specialist’s contribution to a particular project.

Employee working hours: Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 18:00.

In addition, it is expected that some functions will be performed by non-staff employees. Freelancing will involve a contextual advertising specialist, an SMM manager, a content manager and several copywriters. The estimated cost of non-staff employees will be 100 thousand rubles per month.

In total, we will spend 218 thousand rubles per month on personnel.

Marketing and advertising

Standard methods of promoting a web studio are not suitable. Offline in this business works extremely poorly due to the fact that the target audience itself is focused on the Internet and is looking for partners there.

The main efforts should be directed specifically to online. The following directions are planned:

It is important to acquire the status of a specialist in your industry, then you can quickly reach the level where clients are already looking for your attention, and not vice versa. This is important in any field, especially on the Internet.

And it is advisable to start from some position: for example, with several customers with whom you have worked before.

Most of the online promotion work will be done on our own, but you will need a small budget for SEO and launching contextual advertising. In total it will cost about 100 thousand rubles. The same amount will be required for advertising monthly.

Financial plan

Start-up costs

Income

The profitability of a web studio can be divided into three groups. Firstly, these are permanent projects lasting from 2 months to a year. They are paid on the basis of the initially developed budget on the basis of a subscription fee or for execution specific tasks according to the approved plan. Secondly, these are small projects of short duration (reworking websites, creating landing pages). Thirdly, the website support service is a good addition to the account of web studios. She doesn't demand constant attention. As a rule, the package includes removing positions for key queries and their support, as well as prompt restoration of the site after a crash, DDoS attack or virus infection.

Approximate income plan in the table:

*Average prices for projects are indicated. The actual cost is calculated individually.

After deduction fixed costs and taxes, the entrepreneur has about 100 thousand rubles left.

Average profitability is about 25%. It can be considered good for this area. Market leaders note excellent profitability at 50%, which is what we should strive for.

The payback period, provided that this level of profit is quickly reached, will be 6-7 months. Real payback is expected in the 12-14th month of work, when we reach a stable flow of clients.

Advantages and disadvantages

The advantages of this plan include:

A stable starting position on the first clients, since the creator of the web studio has solid experience in this field and can assemble a team of proven professionals.
Transferring some of the tasks to employees to freelance, which has a positive effect on profitability.
Inexpensive premises in office building, minimal costs for these purposes.

The disadvantages include:

Possible reputational risks due to more complex control of remote employees.

Development prospects

Experts note the extremely high difficulty of scaling in this area. With absolutely crazy competition in the market, there are a huge number of freelancers who prefer to work independently rather than in an office. At the same time, even large web studios note a shortage of qualified specialists. Especially in the field of back-end development. All major players in this market always have open vacancies. However, the qualifications of most freelancers do not meet the requirements.

Thus, business development directly depends on the entrepreneur’s ability to find employees with sufficient qualifications and provide them with acceptable wages. This is further complicated by the fact that the notorious regional level for Internet specialties simply does not work. People can earn many times more remotely, including by collaborating with foreign customers.

In the future, we plan to gradually expand our staff, take on more orders and, accordingly, increase the number and quality of projects being implemented.

Business risks

Failure to reach the planned sales level. Solution: analyze the reasons for failure to fulfill the plan, work additionally to improve promotion channels and eliminate your shortcomings.
Inflated sales plan. The solution is to draw up a plan no earlier than three months later, when the capabilities of employees in terms of the number of tasks completed and work efficiency are clear. In the process, systematically increase the efficiency of time expenditure, since employee time resources are the most expensive thing in this business.
Low quality of services provided. Analyze the reasons, replace employees who cannot cope with their tasks. If it is difficult to find workers in your region, we will try to use decentralization and work with remote workers.
Financial crisis. Crises cause cuts in business budgets for online promotion. This is a serious risk for web studios, which, unfortunately, is impossible to predict.

Eventually

Web Studio - promising business for professionals in their field, but for the work to have an effect, it is important to put a lot of effort into becoming a professional yourself and gathering employees of the same level around you. It is important to retain the best and prevent them from leaving for competitors or free bread. And this can only be achieved with competitive wages and something more than just money. That's really important in this business.

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Ermolaev A.G., Novikova T.B., Kurzaeva L.V. Experience in modeling a business process using the example of the subject area “Work of a web studio”

Basic business processes of the studio at the sales stage

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