365 Days in Krakow: How Tigers is capturing the local market

‍Let's startfrom the beginning. How did your cooperation with Tigers start and how did it come to be you to open the first Tigers branch?

Marta Prochot-Matejuk, Customer Success Manager: At the turn of 2018/2019 - I can't remember now exactly in which month - I asked Francis Georgiev - owner and founder of Tigers - for a consultation in the activities I was conducting at that time. The audit went well, and that day and the conversations about business were very valuable and stayed with me for a long time. We had similar perspectives on business and marketing challenges. After a few years, one unexpected day I received a message with a proposal to talk about a branch in Krakow. It seemed to me at the time that... it wasn't for me - but as we can see it turned out differently 🙂 I think the key moment was our meeting together with Karolina Kawska, CEO of Tigers and Frank in Krakow. It's hard to describe, but I think it was then that we all felt the flow and there was a hunch that this could be a really good idea!

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It fell on Krakow - why do you think that's where Tigers needed to make its presence known?

MPM: I'll actually say what I started with 🙂 We have a lot of talented professionals in Krakow, so it's a good place for Tigers to get talent from the market. The second, equally important reason is to be close to our customers. By this phrase I mean a lot - in our daily work we focus on having a good understanding of our partners' business and the so-called "walking in our customers' shoes".

Being here, locally - in the center of Malopolska - we are definitely closer to customers from the south, who often pay attention to cooperation with local partners. 

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Tell us about the mistakes you wouldn't make now in opening a branch in Krakow and how you managed to deal with them?

MPM: I would have been quicker to deal with the contract to sign the Internet 😁 But seriously, from the first days here I wanted to know everything. Very quickly it turned out that this is impossible. The number of processes, the number of projects and the complexity of topics - to grasp it all - colloquially speaking - it takes some time. But above all, it takes acceptance and understanding that we don't have to control all things. To sum up what I would have done differently is that I would certainly have reduced the pressure on myself. 

A huge support for me at the beginning was that I could count on other leaders who prompted and were close (even if at a distance). I am especially grateful to Martyna Celuch, Customer Success Manager in Warsaw, and Karolina for the fact that I can ALWAYS count on them!

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July will mark one year since the opening of Tigers' Krakow branch. How do you perceive this time?

‍‍MPM: This year has been very intense for me. If I had to describe it in one word, I would say "change." No month looked the same, many things took me by surprise, and they had to be solved here and now. 

Facing the daily changing reality is not easy, so this year was neither easy nor comfortable. Despite this, it has brought me a lot of satisfaction and taught me a lot. I am immensely pleased with each new person who joins our team, and I am very proud of the kind of team we have managed to build. I look with admiration at my specialists, who record great results in activities on customer accounts and collect positive satisfaction survey ratings from our business partners. Today I know that I made the right decision a year ago, and I am grateful for all this time. And I think there is still a lot more to come.

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I suspect that it may not be so colorful all the time.... Have you encountered any challenges with the fact that the headquarters is located 300 kilometers away, however? How do you overcome them?

MPM: We try very hard to be #oneteam despite the kilometers separating us. We have the same goals, the same KPIs, we work on combined projects, where some specialists work on a daily basis from Krakow and some from Warsaw, and we manage to do it successfully. 

Challenges, of course, have been, are and will be - I think the biggest ones are those related to communication. Sometimes you communicate something in the corridor and it seems to you that the information has already "gone out into the world."
And in the kind of organization we already are, where we have dozens of people on board, it doesn't work that way anymore, so we have to take great care to communicate key messages efficiently. On the other hand, we have to take care that there aren't too many of them, because then there's a challenge with recording everything and getting distracted in the day-to-day duties. 

One - of the ways I think is very good - is a weekly newsletter, where you can find key news stories summarizing the week and come back for information. 

Not everything is perfect, but we are constantly working to improve these things, to be better and better. Certainly, the tools are quite an improvement. For example, scheduling tasks and being able to do them asynchronously reduces the need for meetings. And Notion, which has become our knowledge base - answers questions about processes, policies, or best practices - which is quite a convenience and a single source of knowledge for everyone. 

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What is the question of the team - how was it selected?

MPM: I am fortunate to work with not only great professionals, but also people. I love working with people who are open-minded to new ideas, who are not afraid to take risks, who are responsible and who believe in what they are doing - and those are the kind of people we rely on.

At Tigers, we pay great attention to values when recruiting. For me, this has always been key because I believe that skills can always be trained - while values must be consistent. 

‍Doyou do anything to make your presence in Krakow stronger?

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MPM: We are gradually trying to participate more strongly in industry events and "go out on the town," which is also part of our strategy for this year. 

The turning point of this year was certainly the breakfast we organized in April with marketing managers from the Krakow market. The event exceeded our wildest expectations. First of all, we had a great turnout as far as the invited guests were concerned, and secondly, it was a great group that took a very active part in the discussion we established together about Tik-Tok, as well as the challenges we face as marketers this year. During the event, our Tigers truck drove around the city, displaying an animation - which was an interesting part of the whole event. 

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What advice would you give to people who, like you, face a similar situation of creating a new field branch?

MPM: That's a very difficult question, because I'm in the middle of my own summary right now - so I'm still putting it all together still in my head.

This is nothing revelatory, but I would certainly say that there comes a time for everything - you just have to allow yourself to do it. We all make mistakes, and it's normal - but the most important thing is that we learn from it. But also that we should be able to celebrate these small moments and successes - and above all, be able to notice and appreciate them. 

Often we tend to focus on what didn't work out - not noticing how much good and valuable we do - we and the people around us, every day. 

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