ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

ECJ Russian reporter, Oleg Popov of cleaning company Cristanval, explains that  the country's market for cleaning services rose by 20 per cent in 2011.

An industry or a company is a chain of well planned and executed operations which have proved efficient. Many Russian companies have learned how to run businesses in Europe and we maintain close business relationships with our European partners. They teach us their best practice and we implement it on our sites. Of course each business environment is unique. This, in turn, disallows the wholesale cloning of obtained experience - it must be properly and sensitively adapted.

As Dr Ichak Adizes, one of the world's leading experts on improving business and government performance through fundamental change, said: “Russia is still too young - with too many unanswered questions, an overabundance of energy, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit liberated at last from the prison of the Soviet era."

It cannot be disputed Russia is currently living through its rebirth: businesses are developing and people are hungry for knowledge and want to study. The market for cleaning services in Russia is also developing, and together with it, young cleaning companies are going through all these dramatic transformations of our times.

One of the greatest difficulties a fast growing company faces is determining a definitive, comprehensive and robust growth strategy. It often appears that a rapidly growing enterprise does not have any recognisable road map to follow. Of course there is a strategic vision in the mind of the business owner. But in reality market conditions are changing so fast that there is no time to implement business plans on the run. Emerging businesses must act to respond to shifts in the environment in order to survive and to prosper.

Since the consumer is the one who drives the market, it is he who sets the standards and determines the parameters of operation. He is, therefore, unwittingly developing key performance indicators and, in fact, determining the value of each employee to the company he engages with.
Certain points are essential to developing a successful business.

I am talking about seeking the best employee for each position, team building and creating and sustaining employee motivation in the workplace. Top managers should pay as much attention to their 'internal reality' as they do to their customers. Why is this necessary? It is because employees bring a brand to life; they are its ultimate custodians.

Business owners and managers work two full-time jobs: dealing with both the customer market and the labour market.

Should a company experience spiked growth, a downside of such rapid expansion manifests itself rather quickly, and the quality of services begins to plunge. When the number of clients and work locations increases, maintenance of quality control is harder to achieve. During the stressful period of being swamped by early success, the fundamental processes which had already been put in place and are functioning automatically, work the best. These operational models underpin quality maintenance and can be employed on new sites.

Regardless of fast growth, all business processes must be laid down. A company should always have people who can be informally called 'snoopers' - an advance guard of workers who arrive at new sites and assess the most effective methodology specific to that location.