A growing demand for making office tasks easier to manage has been spotted by Oleksandr Gudkov and Andriy Zhyvolovych, co-founders of online service TOPES where office supplies can be ordered.
The service was developed and launched in 2013, using $15,000 of founders’ personal savings. Around 60 Ukrainian companies use it now. Polish and Kazakhstani versions will be introduced to occupy the new markets.
“We started brainstorming what businesses usually have in their offices and what they need every day. Water, stationary, cleaning services, taxi, train or bus tickets and soon,” Gudkov tells. “Ordering is usually done through emails, phone calls, lots of websites and it takes too much time.”
Therefore, making a coherent service to manage all of this looked like a successful idea.
“All modern tech savvy companies are interested in getting rid of any administrative tasks that are not related to what the company’s work is all about,” Zhyvolovych says.
Service packages are sold for $99-$198 per month. The more expensive the package is, the bigger amount of company’s employees it can serve.
If a company subscribes to the service, each employee gets an access to it and may place there an order for what he needs. All the order statuses can be tracked online. A bank account is linked to the service to cover the expenses.
If a supplier is regularly picked by the TOPES clients, it gets to a list of recommended partners.
“Paperwork that goes with the orders is usually still required by the company’s accountant, so we deliver it to the company twice a month,” Zhyvolovych says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored byAVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.
