UIS founder Dmitry Shchukin talks about work and family, corporate culture and the first steps in one of the most successful IP telephony companies.
This is a text version of Dmitry Shchukin's interview buy phone number library with Marina Prokopenko, you can watch the video interview here .
Dossier
Dmitry Shchukin, a marathon entrepreneur, 25 years in business, in 10 years the company UIS headed by him has grown 10 times. Today UIS is one of the top 3 telephony for business and one of the top 3 marketing analysts in Russia.
About business: from first steps to strategic decisions
How did you go from being a PhD student in economics to becoming an entrepreneur?
It's a series of coincidences. That's how it is in most people's lives. I still don't consider myself an entrepreneur, it's just how life turned out.
Until the end of the 90s I was a happy broker, playing on the stock exchange. But ( as a result of the 1998 crisis. — Ed. ) the state went bankrupt, the GKO market collapsed.
I returned to my scientific supervisor and spent two and a half years doing science, defending my PhD. Even then I understood that under no circumstances would I remain in the Russian academic environment.
And then, like in a classic movie plot, friends called me to help them sort out sales, then pulled me into the business. So in 2000, I became CEO.
Since 2002 he started running his own business.
You grow by 30% every year. Tell us how you manage to do this?
This is a standard pace for us. After the pandemic and other events, we slowed down a bit, but made adjustments in time and continued to grow.
The pandemic has had a major impact on business in general, but this isn’t your first big challenge. Can you recall a turning point in the past 25 years?
In the early 2000s, I realized that tax optimization ( the goal of such optimization is to reduce payments to the budget, preserve and increase assets. - Ed. ) is a road to nowhere. Then I began to think about business, strategy and business model.
This choice shaped me as a businessman. At the same time, I realized that in the new paradigm, selling cheap long-distance calls ( providing services for selling telephone Internet traffic for long-distance calls. — Ed. ) is a failure. Income did not cover expenses, there was no talk of a future: we would definitely close, the question is — after how long.
This led to an adequate perception...
Yes, now I have a completely different attitude towards failures and systemic failures, because I understand that there are no avoiding black streaks in life.
Has it ever happened that after turning points everything only went for the better? And the "wrong" decisions turned out to be right?
This is entrepreneurial experience. We had cases when we made a strategic decision, and every time someone twirled their finger at their temple, but in the end we turned out to be right.
The first time this happened was in 2006-2008, when we said that the traditional telecom market was dying and would be consolidated by the big four ( The "big four" telecom operators: VimpelCom, MegaFon, MTS, Rostelecom. - Ed. ). We understood that private companies had nothing else to do and consciously went into cloud telephony. In essence, we started selling a "strange" service from scratch: a virtual number, a virtual PBX, etc.
Nobody believed that a serious business could be built on this?
We were considered crazy. We had not yet grown into a large company, we were looking for funding. The people we came to said: "What are you talking about, who needs this?" No one believed us, but in the end we created one of the first virtual PBXs and remained a technology leader for a long time. We still have one of the most functional PBXs on the market.
With virtual telephony everything is clear, it was a 100% hit. What else?
Another example: in 2013-2014, as a result of extensive research, we saw a growing problem in marketing. Marketers did not understand where customers came from and how much they cost. We decided to seriously address this issue. This is how our new products appeared - call tracking and advertising analytics. Unlike the story with the virtual PBX, this was a conscious approach. We found a niche and realized that demand would form in it.
I know there is another solution you are really counting on...
A year and a half ago, we came to the conclusion that we can’t deal with voice alone. Communications have become hybrid: a client can write in WhatsApp or Telegram, and only then call. It turns out that text also needs to be taken into account. We stopped perceiving ourselves as a cloud telephony company and started developing communications in general. This is our third strategic decision, which will also change the business and become a driver for UIS.
There are many competitors in your niche, but you managed to stand out from them. How did you do it?
We realized the main thing: if in negotiations with a client you remain exclusively in the cost coordinate, you have nothing to offer him. And even more! If a client consciously tries to buy something from you, he buys not the size of the check, but a solution to his problems.
This is the first key point. We try to understand what the client's problem is and what we can offer to solve it. How will we benefit the client and is it worth working with us?
Secondly, we are honest and open and support the client in the future. We always understand the problems in detail and provide the highest quality service. This is probably the tuning. We develop products in the direction that the client directs us.
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About the market, sales and marketing
Previously, everyone said that we need to plan 5, 10, 100 years ahead. Lately, we have been setting targets for 3-5 years, but what do you think about this?
The approach is about the same as yours. We have a meaningful goal where we want to go in 3-5 years, but we set specific tasks for six months to a year. And now we have realized that annual goals are also some kind of joke, and we are moving to short-term intervals. For now we have stopped at trimesters; in four months the level does not increase as much as in the interval of a year.
The sales department has changed, now you have to think about the client. The charisma of sales managers means nothing anymore, now it's technology and system. There must be control points, you need to be able to analyze why the client did not buy from you. I'm interested in how you see the changes in marketing. I think only 10% of marketers understand numbers, the rest are just creative. Is this true from your point of view?
You have outlined the trends and problems that we see and that we are trying to solve. This is the direction in which our company is developing.
It is important to understand that, firstly, the market is still in its initial phase. You are right, most people do not understand the situation well. Previously, you had a salesman, a free artist who brought something "in his beak", but his time has passed. Companies that do not understand that marketing and sales are just a set of regular business processes will fail. First of all, you need to rely on metrics, manage them, collect, control, analyze them.
How do you think the marketing market will change?
In general, there is a global trend: the cost of attracting a client in all competitive industries is growing and is rapidly approaching the conditional LTV ( customer lifetime value, which determines how much money the customer brings in, starting with the first purchase and ending with the last. - Ed. ).
The run-and-run format in which sales have always existed, and the marketing of the "give us the budget, we'll bring you someone now" type, still works, but it's becoming more difficult to manage every day. Companies that don't understand that they need to take control of the customer communication loop have no future. You need to understand what kind of client they are coming from, and how much they cost.
And look, there is a trend to complicate the customer journey. These are marketplaces, classifieds, social networks, messengers, review services, RuTube channels...
What a wonderful world it was in 2002! You could buy a nice multi-channel phone number, put it on your website and that's it - you get calls. You have everything under control: here's the number of calls that came in, you listen to them, count the leads, nothing complicated.
And now they write on Telegram, they write on VKontakte, someone calls with the phrase: “I’ve been talking to your manager on WhatsApp for two months, what the hell, why doesn’t he answer me.” Taking control of the company’s communication with the client is a real challenge.
In addition to the fact that interaction with the client becomes more complicated, do not forget that you also need to control the remote employee. That is why we work with medium-large businesses, they have already realized that the freebies are over and the markets have become competitors.
But did they really understand it?
Depends on the industry, but in general, yes, without a doubt. There are top 3 industries where the level of awareness is higher than the rest. These are real estate, auto and medicine.
Oh, real estate is good, yes.
There they have long understood that they will simply fold if they do not digitize all interactions with the client. In other industries, as they say, the process is just beginning, but I see this trend. As soon as some growing industry is formed, a window of opportunity opens. Let's take training platforms, they did not exist 5 years ago...
How long do you think this window of opportunity will last on the market?
Depends on the segment of the economy, but in general there will always be niches. The economy evolves, the rules of business behavior change, new opportunities and technologies open up.
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