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80 I Eastern Europe bne February 2022
reach a greater range of houses in a much faster time.
One intriguing dimension of the shift
to e-groceries is that online customers simply buy more, so the stakes are higher for retailers. "The average purchase is almost three times larger," Alasheev confirmed. "For some reason, when people shop offline, it's ok to drop in at several shops. But online, where you would have thought that it's easier to just close the application, open a new one, and make another order, that's not the case. Online, people are less inclined to make several orders. Because of that, they tend to buy more when they go online."
Beyond Taylor
Vkusvill’s success – even through two waves of incredibly rapid expansion – is built on a very unusual philosophy. The company espouses a management system called ‘Beyond Taylor’, which involves dispensing with the traditional layers
of corporate hierarchy in favour of a much leaner system which puts people first: "Businesses are mostly oriented
on eliminating the human factor, considering it as a kind of problem for the business," Alasheev lamented. "And the instruments for that are things like KPIs, job descriptions, control of performance. We don't have any of that stuff."
The idea behind favouring independent teams over departments is that it
gives each individual more freedom
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and more scope for creativity and experimentation. "If you take a store, that's a self-managed team - they
don't really have a boss, they operate
on their own. And that's what people need, basically... When you have a goal without anyone telling you what to do, and you achieve that goal, it's very good motivation, and a source of enthusiasm and joy. That's why we see that people can spend thousands of hours on
have any evidence that this model is more effective than the traditional management structure? Alasheev shrugged. "This model allowed us to build the largest food brand in Russia. This model allowed us to build a company from scratch, profitable from day one. It was paid completely with our own money. We have no bank debt, and we always raise money in the company. So that's evidence in itself."
Another virtue of the Beyond Taylor management system is the agility it brings. As a foodtech brand working with huge data sets, quick responses
to subtle market changes are of the essence for Vkusvill. When the company had to scale up its online offering in response to the pandemic, for example, it managed to bring its share of online sales from zero to thirty percent in
just a year. Alasheev attributes this feat of logistics to a nimble, people- oriented model. "It's not bureaucracy, but humanocracy. We didn't need
to re-write the job descriptions,
to re-arrange our departments or re-negotiate a new set of KPIs. We could jump straight into the task."
“This model allowed us to build the largest food brand in Russia. This model allowed us to build
a company from scratch, profitable from day one. It was paid completely with our own money.
We have no bank debt, and we always raise
money in the company. So that's evidence in itself”
computer games without being paid for it. We're trying to re-create that in the work environment. If, rather than being told what to do, you play the game yourself and then simply discuss what you achieved, both the game and the discussion of what you achieved become fun."
A workplace where everyone is an associate, without dress codes, fines, bosses, or budgets sounds rather utopian. But does Vkusvill
Reports have been circulating that Vkusvill is mulling an IPO, but Alasheev insists that the company is considering a much broader range of mechanisms
to fuel future growth. "For our 12.5 years of existence, we've managed to finance our growth on our own, without tapping any financial markets. But since right now competition in e-grocery is more fierce, we are considering some of the financial markets – equity, financial, strategic investment. We're open to all options."