The 5th week of quarantine is coming to an end. We turned to friends and clients of SmartTender to find out what changes have occurred over 35 days in various areas of the business. Even if quarantine ended tomorrow, it still managed to cause some negative consequences for the global and Ukrainian economies. Representatives of the leading Ukrainian business agreed to answer our questions and talk about how they adapted to work in an epidemic.

Dmytro Shapovalov CEO Clobbi

What Measures has Your Company Taken Since the Introduction of Quarantine?

We transferred our team to remote work from mid of March. This was pretty easy to do. Previously, client project`s managers (about a quarter of employees) spent 30-50% of their working time on business trips with clients. It is common for them to constantly work remotely and synchronize with the main team.

Those who worked from the office got used to remote for about a week, while we were debugging processes and communications. We tested Google G-Suite and many other solutions, but as a result, focused on such products:

- Microsoft Teams we use to synchronize teams, communicate, calls and exchange documents, as well as to communicate with customers;
- CRM for managing downloads and project portfolios, as well as for planning sprints for developers, was left based on IT-Enterprise;
- systems of budgeting cost control and payment management adapted to the current situation (unlike many other companies, this is easier for us, since these products are our development).

We made a new work plan for the teams. Our clients are industrial enterprises, due to quarantine some of them froze their work and expenses. Other companies, on the contrary, became more active and began urgently looking for ways to manage production remotely. We collect information from clients and redistributed the strength of the teams, focusing on leads and projects in the active phase. Part of the team is engaged in supporting frozen projects, we also need to work on them, although it has become smaller.

Reduced costs and stopped hiring until the end of quarantine. Employees were not fired, but about 8% were sent to the bench, these are those who are not involved in client projects right now. The increase in salaries following the results of the review and the payment of bonuses was also postponed until the end of quarantine. Bonuses do not burn out, this money will be paid when the quarantine is over. We also continued to take English lessons, it is critically important for work. But external courses and expensive training have so far been abandoned.

How did these Measures Affect the Business Processes Organization?

Now we work with internal projects in the same way as with external ones, on the principle of an internal client. Previously, we just about estimated costs and budgets for internal tasks, but now we have become much stricter. Now the employees who work on the task of the internal customer evaluate labor costs, we plan and approve the budget with the customer team and then adhere to it.

We also focused on lighter products and rebuilt the sales funnel by what the customer now needs. A regular project before quarantine necessarily included reengineering the company's processes. On average, a quarter of the project’s time we spent at the client’s production facilities: we communicated, analyzed how its processes are arranged, worked out solutions, trained users, and steering committees with directors.

Now customers still need to optimize costs, but companies are looking for lighter, boxed solutions. First of all, we offer new customers a lightweight system functionality for remote production management, cost control, and sales management. We start the project with what can help the client immediately, and we propose to carry out detailed analysis and optimization after quarantine.

The project implementation process has also changed. Instead of personal meetings and full-time training of clients, we prepare video materials and other ways to remotely teach how to work with the system.

With the announcement of quarantine, we have introduced daily budget control. Previously, budgeting and forecasting were addressed several times a month. Now the situation is changing every day: somewhere the quarantine is extended and the customers' plants stop, and we need to keep abreast.

Well and besides everything else we rebuilt dashboards: we quickly control the budget, cash flow, customer status, KPI.

What do You Recommend Ukrainian Business?

You should not hope that you will be able to “sit out” the quarantine, cutting costs as much as possible. It is necessary to adequately respond to the situation and not expect that everything will be as before. No one knows how long the quarantine will last, so you should accept the new rules of the game, look for new niches and approaches to sales.

Digitize your work as much as possible if you have not already done so. Digital solutions help to control everything in real-time. In the future, without them in any way.

About tools for remote work has been said a thousand times, but we know that not all companies have dealt with this. Use additional channels besides Skype, calls and instant messengers to provide communication with the team and clients.

What Conclusions did You Make After Three Weeks of the Quarantine?

Remote work has advantages. We have become more disciplined, do not drag out meetings and agree more quickly.

Many employees enjoyed working from home because they do not spend time on the road. I think that after quarantine, remote work will become more familiar and will open up new opportunities for scaling up the business because now we will not be so attached to the presence in the office.

In a remote mode, problems in the work of individual employees became more visible. We have previously analyzed the load, but now the results speak for themselves. At the same time, colleagues who worked with a focus on their KPI reoriented on how to change our business and now offer very cool ideas. In a crisis, the character of the team becomes visible. Do not miss this time and re-evaluate your colleagues.

Dmytro Piskarov, Chief Netpeak in Ukraine

What Measures has Your Company Taken Since the Introduction of Quarantine?

Since March 16, we have transferred more than 250 of our employees in all cities and countries to remote work. It was easier for us because the company already had a similar experience: at the end of December 2019, the Odessa office moved to a new place. Then a team of 120 people worked remotely for two weeks.

As before, all communication on tasks with us is configured through:

- CRM/ERP;
- task scheduler PlanFix;
- Video calls through Google Hangouts, Skype, and Zoom
- Telegram work chats
- calls via SIP telephony;
- Google Docs, Sheets and Calendar;
- Recording online employee activity through the Yaware time tracker.

We also carried out cost optimization at the agency. We do not dismiss employees due to the crisis, but in case of failure to fulfill KPI, the procedure is standard. However, the optimization of staff and work processes also affected us. For example, I had to stop the work of the cold lead generation department, since now it is irrelevant. Employees went on paid leave with the possibility of recovery after the stabilization of the situation. Besides, we received significant discounts from landlord offices, which will undoubtedly make it easier for us to go through this period.

During quarantine, we introduced a moratorium on the following activities:

1. Opening of new vacancies. However, we continue to close those vacancies that were open before quarantine began.
2. Purchase of equipment and furniture. To organize work at home, employees were allowed to take their work equipment, chair, and table from the office.
3. Qualifications, moving up the career ladder, changing incentive systems.
4. Team Buildings and Live Meetings.
5. Visiting external educational events (courses, conferences, seminars, training).

How did these Measures Affect the Business Processes Organization?

The main difficulties for us were a sharp restructuring of a large number of processes and the need to inform employees about what is happening.

Here's how we solved it:

1. We organized chats and channels on Telegram for all the news. We have channels of individual offices, individual cities, and individual teams. If something changes, we immediately warn employees about it.
2. The HR department quickly changed and created a large number of rules, manuals, regulations and immediately informed all employees about them.
3. We wrote an action algorithm for working remotely with answers to many questions. For example, “How will the working time be considered?” or "What if the power is turned off?" The result was a large manual of 25 pages with detailed answers and step-by-step instructions for organizing work from home.

What do You Recommend Ukrainian Business?

I believe that now the speed of decisions taken and the speed of adaptation to external events are very important. The faster your business responds to change, the more likely it is to survive.

I can advise business only when we come out of this crisis. I will share what we are doing now to pass this period easier.

1. Established daily reports on all important business indicators:
  - - - dashboard with the likelihood of customers leaving in the current and next months. Allows you to predict cash flows;
      - dashboard customers who refused to start work. It allows you to offer special conditions for the period of crisis and, of course, to predict cash flows;

Netpeak crisis client dashboard example developed during the crisis

- - - - Telegram-chat with daily reports on the movement of money in all regions of presence separately and comparison with the previous similar period;

1. Realizing that now the main thing for any business is free money, they lowered the entry criteria for customers and opened cheaper service packages with less content. Specifically, during the quarantine period, we launched the “Sell online while offline - offline” campaign and developed the PPC Start service, in which our specialists will launch ads on Google Ads or Facebook in 48 hours, set up analytics, and prices will be fixed in national currency with a reduced agency commission.
2. Rejected all costs except business-critical.
3. Changed the focus of top management from the implementation of a long-term strategy to a short-term anti-crisis plan. Daily monitor its implementation.

What Conclusions did You Make After Three Weeks of the Quarantine?

For myself, I reassessed the value of office and office work in general. For us, this is a big expense item, without which, as it turned out, we are well able to cope. I think this quarantine will make companies less attached to office work and hiring staff, and the freelance will become more common.

Besides, I realized that you can always adapt, even you have a business that is deeply connected offline. Here I am inspired by the example of our client, “Cinema Planet”. After the cinema was closed, they made an action with the sale of promotional codes for future film premieres and organized online sales of related products. This once again proves that now the “survivor” is not the strongest, but fast and flexible.

Maryna Halak, Managing Partner PRO.people Recruitment Agency

What Measures has Your Company Taken Since the Introduction of Quarantine?

March 16, our team came to the office for equipment, we held an operational meeting and learned about the health of employees. Our work is associated with a large number of communications with people, with the evaluation of candidates, and personal communication in this process is very important. But the transition to online was not big stress, as we have well-built business processes and communication.

In the agency’s work, 70% of the vacancies are marketing and C-level positions and 30% are IT. For IT-specialists, Zoom interviews are already a familiar scheme. But non-IT people in the first weeks had to transform the ways of communication. Therefore, we immediately realized that our new task now is to help adapt all market participants, both candidates, and clients.

For project management, we use Trello and internal CRM. For calls Zoom and Whereby.com. Work chats are in our favorite Telegram. We don’t track working hours. I prefer to trust the team, and in our profession, there is no concept of “standard 8-hour workday”.

The only thing agreed upon for the quarantine period is to inform about the start of work by photographing their workplace and sent in the chat. But this is more for inspiration and support of each other. In the first weeks, we introduced guidelines for the beginning of the working day by 10 am to synchronize the team and develop a habit. Now that everyone is used to the new conditions, everyone is working in their comfortable mode.

How did these Measures Affect the Business Processes Organization?

During the quarantine period, our clients (IT companies and marketing agencies) practically did not stop hiring. That is, 90% of the download is preserved. Some positions began to hold, but only temporarily. Moreover, in the second week after the introduction of quarantine, we signed a new client and are now in negotiations.

It’s not a new thing for us to look for solutions, we do it all the time. I would say that now our role has transformed into quality counseling and immersion in every situation, in every person.

Due to reductions in many companies, good specialists will enter the market and are already entering, which not all companies can retain for various reasons. At the same time, a large number of active job seekers are beginning to dump by wage level, as many job openings are globally declining. As a result, companies that can afford to hire now do this.

In short, hiring now is beneficial for those who have a financial margin of safety. Very "narrow" specialists continue to be hunted as actively as before quarantine. Therefore, the processes of interacting with customers have not changed much, except that the meetings went to Zoom.

Now relevant are the questions that not every company can answer. What to do with those candidates who have already accepted the offer? How to organize an “exit” on the first working day? How to adapt a person remotely? Therefore, we realized that we needed to act as consultants for all parties: both companies and candidates. We offer various options, from the standard "exit" of a person remotely, if his activity allows, to the offer with a delay: the preliminary date of the first working day, fixed to the date of quarantine completion, is fixed.

We also noticed that it was difficult for candidates to adapt. The situation is changing every day and people are under stress. In the first week of quarantine, the candidate market "froze", people did not understand what would happen next and what they should do. Candidates who now have at least some stability and work are afraid to make sudden movements. It is understandable. And at us, vacancies was burn. Therefore, we came up with a new scheme for the market and called it the “pre-offer”.

What does it mean? We offer all strong specialists to communicate and pass interviews “for the future”. At a minimum, this is a great opportunity to train your presentation skills, as a maximum, in case of a positive decision to receive a pre-offer. Candidates now do not need to go anywhere and you can get an interview from home in your “pajamas” in your free time. It is very convenient and profitable. It was important for us to start communicating this to every specialist.

A candidate who liked the company, but is currently working, receives a pre-offer. However, he does not quit and works for the current employer until the quarantine is completed. After quarantine, the recruiter will contact the candidate and then there are two options for the development of events:

1. Confirmation of the pre-offer: the candidate receives an official letter in the mail, where the company's intentions turn into an offer, and the recruiter gives green light for dismissal and agrees on the release date.
2. The recruiter sends an official letter stating that the company holds a pre-offer. Neither the company nor the candidate has any risks.

A candidate with a pre-offer can also refuse or confirm his intentions.

Unexpectedly for ourselves, we quickly reformatted our school of recruiting “Be PRO” from offline to online. It turned out so cool that they released one group and scored a new one. Honestly, I didn’t plan to start the second stream so fast, but some guys wanted to start quarantined training while I had time to study. And we scored a group even without launching the site, only by reviews and my post on Facebook. They gave loyal conditions, made installments for students, additionally occupied the team with teaching. Win-win is in its purest form, and it’s convenient for us, we don’t need to sit in the office until 21:00 on lecture days, and students are well. I don’t know at all if I would decide on a clean online format if it weren’t for quarantine.

In general, the principle of our work now is to respond to market needs and promptly seek effective ways to close them without interruption.

So, for example, I have been conducting individual career consultations for candidates for five years. During the cuts in IT companies, we proposed to support these people, and this area has grown into a corporate one. That is, companies that cut people, pay them professional psychological and career assistance for the duration of the cut. I think this is very cool for the Ukrainian market.

What do You Recommend Ukrainian Business?

I want to wish Ukrainian business flexibility and understanding of the value of the main resource, human. Because quarantine and crisis will end, but people will remain.

It is important through which prism you look at the situation. For example, it is unusual and incomprehensible to me when this is all over, but not scary. I believe that this is the time to think about current business processes and the quality of built relationships with people. Think about what has been put off for a long time, and realize it if more time has appeared.

We have long wanted to make some kind of social assistance project for those who are looking for work. And it was precise during quarantine that the Telegram channel “I want to work!” It was launched, where we search and select partner companies that are looking for employees in IT and marketing. With it, people already receive invitations to interviews and work! We also created a partner Telegram channel for colleagues of HR “I want an employee”, where you can request a resume using the anonymous profile of the candidate. For candidates and employers, this is free.

We also started giving free lectures at universities on job search, resume writing, etc.

What Conclusions did You Make After Three Weeks of the Quarantine?

There is no need to panic and “squeeze” decisions out of you right away when they are not there. It is important to give yourself time to adapt, to relieve the brain from obsessive and, as a rule, ineffective thoughts. Get enough sleep, ask the team how they feel, take care of their people and start making decisions with a fresh mind. Do not rush and do not run after colleagues in the market. In the first week of quarantine, everyone rushed to open their courses, programs, etc. for free. What is good for one can be deadly different.

For myself, I thought that remote is not as scary as I imagined. Most likely, after quarantine, it will be easier to relate to the option of hiring remote employees in a team.

Vasyl Zadvornyi, CEO Prozorro

Will the Prozorro 2.0 System Launch be Postponed Due to Quarantine?

The current situation will not exactly affect the timeline for the entry into force of amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On Public Procurement”. We originally built the system so that it was as electronically as possible. Accordingly, the remote work and the concept of “tender on the couch” is exactly what we wanted to achieve. Quarantine conditions are a great way to check whether we succeed or not. Therefore, I do not see any fears for the work of customers and suppliers in the new conditions.

Prozorro is a modern IT company in which all employees can work from anywhere in the world. We are used, for example, to hold rallies online, and process test data remotely. Of course, system administrators continue to come to the office to download the latest system updates to the productive. This cannot be done remotely, according to the rules of information protection. The system is a secure server, and our actions must comply with the strict requirements of the ISIS. But all other processes occur online. Even the call center is already working from home.

Everything is almost ready for launch, the sites have been tested, the scenarios have been approved, so we can only turn on the system on April 19th.

What do You Recommend Ukrainian Business?

Quarantine is a serious challenge for any business. And I understand that the experience of going online that Prozorro has is not for everyone. The production and provision of certain services are difficult to transfer to the work-from-home format.

But, firstly, there is no need to be afraid of technical difficulties. Good quality video calling and a large number of other workflow management tools are now available. They work well, and many companies are already actively implementing them in their work. This is not at all what it was 10 years ago.

As for business in general, the quarantine will lead to a slowdown in the economy, and we already see it. However, we observe that the volume of public procurement is not decreasing compared to the same weeks of the last year. Moreover, it should be understood that the vast majority of purchases are sub-threshold. That is, it cannot be said that the volume remains the same only through tenders that started before the epidemic.

According to our data, in the first 16 days of quarantine, the state spent almost a billion hryvnias on the purchase of goods that help fight the epidemic and overcome its consequences. On average, the annual volume of public procurement exceeds 600 billion hryvnias. And this is not only fuel, road repairs or wagons. This is a wide range of products. I believe that public procurement will remain such a safe haven, and will help support the business during a slowdown in the economy.

And one moment. It is important to understand that even the epidemiological situation opens up new business opportunities. Now we see how many businesses are redesigning to produce the necessary goods: antiseptics, personal protective equipment, etc. We, as an ecosystem, are working to make consolidated need understandable.

For example, YouControl has launched two weeks ago, an interactive map of the needs of Ukrainian hospitals in basic personal protective equipment, mechanical ventilation devices, etc. We already see that this need is huge, and there is not enough capacity in the whole world to cover it. Moreover, this is a problem not only in Ukraine, but it is also a world problem. So in this direction, businesses have the opportunity to satisfy the real need of people and save human lives.

That's why suppliers should join the Prozorro site. For example, the Prozorro Market platform is a great opportunity to consolidate in one place all suppliers with all their offers. Of course, right now, suppliers of the goods mentioned above do not have a big problem finding customers. But on the other hand, access to the Prozorro Market is an opportunity to get the most interesting offer, look at competitors online and find a middle ground between supply and demand. For our part, we have simplified the procedure for entering the site as much as possible.

What Conclusions did You Make After Three Weeks of the Quarantine?

We, as humanity, are changing a lot and you need to understand that there will be even more online. The current situation is just another push in this direction. The quarantine will not pass for society in vain. We will begin to value personal communication more and be less afraid of working online.

I even think that the amount of such cross-border cooperation will increase. People will no longer avoid the opportunity to work remotely, even for foreign companies, because everyone is already used to it. Perhaps the anti trend of global deurbanization will begin. Previously, everyone came to the cities for the chance to get a good job. Quarantine showed that you can work from any place where there is fast Internet.

Anton Khvastunov, Development Director GIGAGROUP

What Measures has Your Company Taken Since the Introduction of Quarantine?

Quarantine has become a real challenge for every company. To secure our team and fulfill the quarantine conditions, we transferred more than 150 employees to remote work. We did not know how to organize this correctly, we did not have such experience, therefore we simply threw away all doubts and did. It was a necessary measure not only for the company as a whole but also for the health of each employee.

After three weeks of online work, we have already adapted. To solve many problems, we call up by corporate numbers, use our Telegram groups, organize online meetings using Zoom and Skype, and also set tasks and control the timing of their implementation using the Bitrix CRM system.

But this format of remote work is not suitable for the whole GIGAGROUP. The "heart" of our business is the commercial data center GigaCenter. It is an object of critical infrastructure, which means that we cannot transfer its employees to remote work. The data center is simply obliged to continue its uninterrupted work because the "lives" of many companies depend on this. Of course, we took into account all the recommendations of the state and took all necessary measures to protect each client and employee of GigaCenter.

Basic safety precautions (masks and hand antiseptics) are provided for all GigaCenter team members, as well as for visitors. We carry out daily quartzing of rooms, control the number of people who can be in the module at the same time.

We have limited visits to our data centers as much as possible and carry them out only in cases vital for companies. We also developed temporary rules for staying on the territory of our data center. Believe us, it is no less safe and sterile here than in any laboratory in the city.

We optimized expenses within the company as much as possible and made changes to the development strategy. We have temporarily suspended the search for new employees, we are not firing our specialists, the main goal is to keep the team in the form in which it is today.

How did these Measures Affect the Business Processes Organization?

Until quarantine was introduced within our group of companies, we used the Bitrix CRM system. This greatly helped us in organizing business processes with remote work. Each department of the company still maintains a personal kanban (a list of tasks), reflects the status of their implementation there, and also coordinates the time of online meetings to resolve important issues. And employees, in turn, create a daily report on completed tasks. All this helps the top management of the company to keep abreast of the work of each employee, to control the stages of the tasks, and also not to lose touch with the team.

Like many other companies, we have done a great job of organizing business processes within GIGAGROUP. Special manuals and instructions on remote work were created, each head of the department held personal conversations with his team. It was important for us to successfully organize the work of each employee and provide them with confidence in the future.

Our marketing and HR teams promptly informed employees, as well as customers, about any changes: they wrote official appeals in the blog of company websites, social networks, as well as special mailings for clients.

What do You Recommend Ukrainian Business?

The current crisis is difficult for everyone: from small to large businesses. And only the most powerful companies with the ability to adapt to changes and market needs will survive it.

It is difficult to advise something because each of us today is only learning to survive quarantine and uses all possible resources for this. For example, our team devoted all its efforts to optimizing expenses within the company and developed a kind of anti-crisis quarantine plan. We made changes to the development strategy of the company (for example, we reduced all expenses for offline promotion and optimized digital communications), suspended the launch of expensive projects and are transforming our IT service to today's market needs.

Cloud services have become indispensable. They provide many opportunities for solving the main task of the business - the effective organization of remote work of employees. For example, GigaCloud organized an online office in the cloud-based on the Microsoft Office 365 service and, together with Microsoft specialists, provided free access to the Office 365 E1 package for six months (GigaCloud is an official partner of Mіcrosoft and provides licenses for using the Office 365 service).

It is also important to mention that with the transition to remote work, the business has become even more vulnerable from cybersecurity. To help companies protect their corporate information, GigaSafe specialists provide a wide range of IT products that are especially relevant for any business.

We try by any means to keep the team and for years established relationships with partners and clients that we value so much. So, we give a discount to customers for whom our service is critical, we continue to cooperate with telecom operators and providers of Ukraine. After all, once the quarantine is over and "getting up" with a large team, with the support of partners and clients, it will be much easier than alone.

What Conclusions did You Make After Three Weeks of the Quarantine?

A tremendous reappraisal of values has occurred, both in life and in business. Perhaps quarantine has given us all the most important – time. Time to stop and rethink, to understand what is most priority for us.

Once again, we realized that the greatest value is time spent with ourselves, with our loved ones and like-minded people. Recently, my wife Lisa said that with the transition of the world to quarantine, we spend more time together at home, next to our five-month-old son, and began to smile more often. We noticed what our son is teaching us. And if we talk about business, then in such minutes team cohesion, partner support and the trust of our customers are important. I am sure that we will learn to be different, we will become more attentive to each other and to the time that we can now devote to reflection and contemplation.

Ilona Stankevych, Executive Producer and co-founder PaperPlanes Production

What Measures has Your Company Taken Since the Introduction of Quarantine?

In our field of activity, office work is not the key for most of the team, so many people had the opportunity to switch to remote work. Especially to the Post-production team. They work remotely without problems. Nevertheless, the key direction of our activity is shooting, and here, with the beginning of quarantine, serious changes took place. We immediately paused the next shoot (especially with children) until the end of quarantine.

Also in the first week, the team and I developed a guideline for safe filming, according to which you can shoot projects without close contact with each other and without attracting a large number of people. This is mostly a video interview or product review.

Minimizing filming is, first of all, the protection of our team, and people are our priority. Therefore, during quarantine, we complete existing projects that we have already shot and work on animated videos, explainer videos, and developing new video options. Everyone has been working online for a long time, but now, completely offline, it has become a bit more complicated. Therefore, I had to quickly adapt.

How did these Measures Affect the Business Processes Organization?

We have not had any global changes in the organization. Now I listen to and read many executives who share their experience of the crisis version of doing business during the quarantine period, cutting off a frantic part of the funds, first of all, for staff and related expenses.

We didn’t have any financial reductions as such, primarily because production works according to the project principle: most of the team is tied to the project, not to the salary, and this allows us to maneuver expenses and not be tied to the mass of associated expenses (for example, to rent large office).

In video production, work on each project is divided into three stages:

- Pre-production (preparatory stage, where the brainstorm takes place, detailed communication with the client, creativity, choice of equipment, locations, actors, etc. – all you need to prepare for filming);
- Production (filming);
- Post-production (editing, color correction, sound design, VFX, etc..).

As for the processes themselves at these stages, we implement the key points as follows:

- customer requests by email, Messenger, Telegram, or by phone;
- development of ideas by the creative part of the team - brainstorm via Skype, Zoom, Messenger;
- the main part of the technical aspects (legal and financial) with us is always online. Now we are testing the SmartSign SmartSender electronic document management function so that all documents are also signed exclusively online;
- if on the project we go to the Production stage (filming) - we act according to the aforementioned guideline;
- all communication of the team occurs in instant messengers (Telegram, Facebook Messenger);
- We carry out the tasks for the project in Trello, Google Drive (it always has been, so there were no internal problems here).

What do You Recommend Ukrainian Business?

It is hard to advise something in a situation of complete obscurity. I think the main thing is not to stop working. One day, the quarantine will end and we will all need to establish activities in all areas as soon as possible. Each is a consumer of each other, so everything is interconnected.

Now you need to optimize costs. Of course, it is not yet possible to leave the same prices for their services when the purchasing power of most consumers has fallen. It is very important to meet customers and understand that now is the time not to profit but to support each other. We try to adapt as much as possible to the financial capabilities of customers, offer them optimal products and minimize the cost of their production.

For example, if an animated video is conditionally worth $ 1000, now we can reduce the price by 20-40%. This primarily allows us to continue to exist, and customers, to order our product even during the quarantine. Indeed, now that everyone is at home, video content is very relevant.

What Conclusions did You Make After Three Weeks of the Quarantine?

You can’t lose a single day! Already somewhere on the third day of the quarantine, I began to think that maybe we were already missing something. Every crisis is painful, but it is an open window of opportunity. Opportunities to improve, adapt or start something new. And they should be grabbed!

For me, great examples are creative restaurateurs and establishments that were physically closed, but at the same time began to come up with new options for selling their products: they deliver grocery sets for cooking at home, broadcast their recipes online, deliver ready meals (in the end, everyone was ready to switch to daily cooking). There are always options, the main thing is to look for them. The quarantine will pass, and our actions will be remembered. Therefore, the values of each company should now be in the first place.

Oleh Vitvitskyi, Head of Corporate Client Relations Epicentr K

What Measures has Your Company Taken Since the Introduction of Quarantine?

According to the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers, Epicentr K, as a network of hardware stores, continues to work to provide the population with essential goods: protection and disinfection equipment, medical devices, quartz, and air disinfection products, personal hygiene products, household chemicals, basic products (flour, oil, water, drinks, fruits), baby food and goods for children.

To ensure the availability of the above goods in the network, the founders of the Epicenter group of companies Alexander and Galina Geregi created an operational headquarters in the company. We negotiated with all manufacturers and suppliers of these products and entered into long-term agreements.

For the safety of customers and staff in stores, the chain has introduced strict European standards for sanitary and hygienic control. The number of visitors is regulated – only one entrance works. By the established restrictions, no more than one person per 10 square meters is allowed into the trading room. m. Without fail, at the entrance to the store, all visitors measure the temperature. To avoid crowding at the box office, restrictive elements were installed.

On the trading floor, wet cleaning is constantly carried out with special equipment and every hour the equipment that customers come in contact with is disinfected: cash registers, strollers, baskets, etc. Every night, the store quartz rooms, where during working hours there are a large number of people. In the sales departments, checkout areas, staff rooms, and bathrooms, hand sanitizers were installed. Shopworkers were provided with personal protective equipment and disinfection and are allowed to work only after a doctor's examination. Also, they measure the temperature twice a day. The central office of the company partially works remotely.

We consider it our duty to support the medical industry of Ukraine in difficult times, therefore, we took the initiative to purchase mechanical ventilation devices for healthcare institutions. Now we are expecting the first batch of 100 devices, which we will then transfer to hospitals. At the same time, we are working with local authorities to provide healthcare facilities with protective equipment.

How did Quarantine Influence the Organization of Procurement and Tenders in Your Company?

During quarantine, we organize all tenders remotely. Applications are accumulated in the Potamus internal ERP system. We conduct auctions on the SmartTender site.

We did not feel a significant decrease in trading volumes. But, of course, their speed fell somewhat, and there are some nervousness and uncertainty on the part of the contractors. Therefore, we work with each individual and, if necessary, adjust our cooperation.