That’s me—back when I still had hair, when I knew how to get bored, and waaay before coronavirus—on a roller coaster. That seems to be a fitting way to describe the year 2020.
Sure, no year has been exactly boring here at Optiweb, but none of them can compare with this one! It’s difficult to summarize the entire year in a few bullet points, but I’ll try to extract the most notable events:
After the first quarantine, our world collapsed in a couple of weeks. First, there was an intrusion into one of our largest online stores, and then an intrusion into our Facebook business account. The first involved credit card fraud, and the second involved intruders burning through a few millions—you read that right, millions—of our clients’ advertising money.
Both events shook us to the core. Despite our security policy being at the level of most Slovenian companies up to that point, it was clearly not enough, so we had to take it a step further.
First, of course, we took care of our clients. We arranged the reimbursement of all monetary losses incurred due to the Facebook intrusion, and helped external institutions tackling the credit card fraud in order to mitigate the error and prevent similar scenarios in the future.
What followed was a detailed investigation of our own processes. In collaboration with external partners, we devised and implemented advanced preventive measures, with which we strengthened our security to an extremely high level—of this I’m certain. We’ll get to the “how” of it in a separate article, because we wouldn’t want such a thing to happen to anyone! This year, we also started optimizing older projects upon switching to a different platform (Magento 1) and changed the security rules for all of our websites—we’re especially dedicated to educating others in this topic.
I always stress how important our personnel are to us. Because they are.
Like every year before it, 2020 marked an increase in financial compensation, this time by approximately 10 %. On average, each employee received a 10% higher annual income due to an increase in salaries, bonuses, holiday allowances, etc.
However, it’s the nature of our business that personnel come and go. There’ve been quite a few such changes at Optiweb this year.
Some didn’t feel like they belonged anymore due to different views, some we didn’t really get on with anymore, and some simply chose to go down a different path. There’s nothing wrong with any of that—if anything, I’m sure it’s benefited both sides. At the same time, I’m grateful to everyone who was part of Optiweb’s story—no matter why they left. Each of them added their own piece to our puzzle, to which I can only say: thank you sincerely!
However, each departure means an opportunity for someone else to arrive and breathe some fresh air into the company. This year, for example, our teams grew by the largest number of senior personnel to date. I can easily say that this marked an outstanding shift in the field of human resources. The energy of experienced people who think strategically and know how to approach complex problems has been a complete game-changer. Allow me to highlight four key team members in particular:
They all have a lot of valuable experience, but at the same time they’re people in the truest sense.
Another novelty was our geographical diversity. We’re currently scattered across Slovenia, with two colleagues coming from abroad as well: Ljubomir from Serbia and Anida from the Czech Republic. The latter will officially join us in Slovenia in February with the help of a work visa! :)
Can you see yourself among us? We’re always in search of a new team member to spice things up! Join us now by applying to our talent pool!
Surely, you heard the expression “data is gold” at least a 1000 times this year. But just in case, here it is again. :)
One of our main goals for 2020 was to organize our financial analyses. To finally start monitoring on a monthly or weekly basis where we’re losing money, and find all discrepancies. Only now do we see how badly we needed this.
As a result, Ana (our CFO) and Anže (head of the WP team) laid some excellent groundwork, which we now update and upgrade on a monthly basis. First, we collected the financial plans of all team managers for 2020. Then, we compared these plans with each team’s actual financial data, as seen in our monthly P&L (profit & loss) statements. Now, the only thing left to do is to monitor where improvements are needed, where we’re wasting too much time, where we need more personnel, etc. – all on a monthly basis. All this data is invaluable and the results are already improving.
At the same time, we adopted the so-called “open-book management” approach, whereby we present financial data to everyone in the company every few months. In order for this sharing to be useful, we also educate our colleagues about what different information means. As you know, € 400,000 of profit can be seen clearly in the balance sheet, but how much of it goes to you and how much to your personnel is an entirely different story …
Well, these were our top 3 guidelines this year. Nevertheless, let me take this opportunity to highlight a few other key changes and events:
Once the pandemic is over, we intend to continue like this.
In addition, we’re proud of the following nominations, achievements, and public recognition:
For those of you who live by the numbers, let me summarize 2020 this way:
2021 will be the first year we’ve prepared a spectacular strategy for. Our goals are numerous and, to be honest, a bit far-fetched, but we’ve almost always managed to exceed them anyhow. What can we say, you need to spice things up with a pinch of ambition! :)
We divided our business strategy into 4 main pillars that complement each other:
Same old, I know. But what matters is what’s behind these pillars! More about that some other time, though … ;)
There’s no doubt in my mind that 2021 will be a success—I’ve never been more sure of anything else. Why? Because I’m surrounded by an amazing team that will help me get there! Dear all, I very much look forward to it.
A happy, ambitious (and a little less turbulent) new year, everybody!
And to make sure we didn’t get bored during the quarantines, there was always a special “homework” to be done!
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