As we enter 2021, we begin our journey with a new CEO onboard and a handful of goals to accomplish. Radosław Bułat and Piotr Sędzik, 2 of the 4 founders of Applover, who are Members of its Management Board, changed their roles in the organization. Radosław Bułat, previously a CEO, will become a CIO and grow and develop our product – Bench by Applover. Piotr Sędzik, formerly a COO, will become Applover’s President. The management board’s composition will not change but new roles will help us in effective growth and solemn focus on our priorities – as we described here.

But today, we want to talk about our goals and challenges for 2021 with our new CEO! 

Natalia Kamecka: So Piotr, as our new CEO, can you tell us what Applover’s plans for 2021 are?

Piotr Sędzik: Well, we have a lot planned for 2021! I can say that we have 4 main goals for Applover to accomplish:

  1. Professionalization of processes inside the company

I want to make our internal processes function better, so we can all work more efficiently as a team. We will improve processes in the administration (digitization of documents, easier signing new contracts with clients and employees as first examples), HR, sales, and marketing department. We want to act faster and more organized so our clients can have more in a shorter time. 

  1. Applover as a great workplace to grow

We want to develop Applover as a great company to work for. I believe that we are such a company already, but we can still improve some areas and showcase them better to our potential candidates.

  1. Increased profitability of the company

Not only do we want to increase our income from 2020, but we also aim to work on challenging, more profitable projects.

  1. Delegation – increased role of leaders

Our goal is to delegate more tasks, give team leaders more responsibilities, and allow even more than so far to take responsibility for the internal project from the very start to the end.

These are our main goals for 2021 and I hope that with our top tech experts we will achieve all of them. Because we already have made a lot of progress to do so.

NK: That is great! Can you tell us a bit more about how you are planning to achieve these goals and what did you already do as the first steps to make it happen?

PS: Each of our departments has its leader who is responsible for introducing changes that are needed.. With the help of the Board, we are working on the professionalization of processes in their areas of responsibility. We are setting up plans for quarters and the whole year, plan the KPIs that leaders must deliver, and provide them with the budget to make all of their goals possible. Some of their goals are already in the ongoing process, some are to be introduced in the next quarter. To be more specific I can say that our marketing team plans on increasing the inbound activities which include the development of our blog. Our sales team plans on winning new clients in Poland and abroad as well as growing their team. The HR department works on PGFs for non-technical people and improves our internal communication. And the administration team plans on digitization documents and their flow, and that is only some of the plans for each of the departments.

Moreover, we already have introduced tech leaders to our organization, making a lot of processes more smooth and clear for everyone at Applover. Leaders in our organization play an essential role. Thanks to them, we can develop by delegating more and more tasks and responsibilities. 

When it comes to the career paths of our team members, we have already introduced PGFs for technical people and we are working on them for non-technical employees. With them, we are sure that everyone will feel taken care of and they will know exactly what they need to do or improve in order to grow with us.

NK: Alright, how about other plans for Applover? How much are you planning to grow in 2021?

PS: With Radosław’s solemn focus on Bench development, I am sure we can make it work even better and help match more developers to the projects they will love to be a part of. This tool means a lot to us as an organization. We devoted a lot of time and energy to it, and we truly believe in it. Awards we received for it, only confirmed we are on the right path. 

Our sales goals are pretty ambitious. Jan, our Head of Sales, plans to win new enterprise clients (he is close to winning one already!). As Applover, we want to expand our presence in the UK, USA, and DACH markets, as we already have a lot of clients from these parts of the world. What is more, our goal is to win a big client on the Polish market and focus more on providing more services to our existing clients. Jan also plans to increase the visibility of Bench in our offer and more often communicate to our team with what amazing clients we start to work with. 

Moreover, we will definitely grow. We plan to increase our income to 8 500 000 – 9 000 000 PLN (we earned 5 900 000 PLN in 2020) and increase profitability to 12-15%. We want to enlarge our team – we are already recruiting a lot of people. You can see how many open positions we have at the moment on our career page. More and more of our team members work outside of our HQ in Wrocław, and we are hiring people from everywhere in Poland. That’s another advantage of the global pandemic of COVID-19. 

NK: Are you ready for another outbreak of the global pandemic?  

PS: Of course! We work in the hybrid model – some people work remotely, some partly remotely, partly on-site, and there are several people who work only on-site because that’s their preference. We are allowing all of the models because we can work efficiently despite it. Obviously, we are taking every precaution we can, when it comes to employees working in our office. We made several steps to make us as a stable workplace as possible and make our team feel safe is our priority. We didn’t fire anyone when the pandemic outburst and we are not planning on doing so in the future. We learned to recruit remotely, we know how to conduct the onboarding process off-site, and we just feel confident in how we work nowadays. Moreover, we continuously take care of our team spirit organizing remote integrations and being attentive to our team’s needs. 

NK: That sounds great. Do you have any wishes for 2021 for yourself in the new role?

PS: I wish every one of our team is safe and healthy, as well as their beloved ones. We know how pandemic can be disruptive to our mental health as well and I just hope that soon we could all go back to the new normal, and celebrate another year at Applover on our office’s terrace watching movies. Moreover, I really want to meet in person with our amazing clients, to introduce myself in my new role, shake hands with new clients and say to them, “Thank you for trusting us!”