Wherever I go in the world, and see the different offshore IT structures, the more I realize they are better in every way than their Western counterparts. Whatever the point of view I take, the comparisons always turn to their advantage.

The idea of this article came to me while visiting St Petersburg when Alex and I visited a very promising local IT company. What did we see? A company, having a structure of 160 employees completely centered on the Scandinavian countries with work groups organized in competence centres dedicated to clients, having teams of 5 to 50 employees, just as we do in Pentalog. At Pentalog, we have 5 teams with over 20 employees, including two of 50. These large projects, let’s not deceive ourselves, is the dream of every large French IT company who often struggle to sell their solutions, then implement them and exploit them. Meanwhile, more and more middleweight offshore companies, comprising 100 to 1,000 employees, sign these projects, that fear, the lack of ambition and investment prevent older IT companies from signing.

We have not lost a SINGLE deal against the leaders in this sector in France for years, even when we were opposed by their best offshore centers. Why is this? Very often their sales force imagines that question is who has the lowest prices. This is totally false. The client is not looking at -42 instead of -39%. It makes no sense. Instead, we often had the opportunity to justify the slightly higher prices from those of our competitors by demonstrating proven, systematic quality systems and the importance of a management who is extremely involved in the production unit. Finally, we demonstrate that all the Pentalog actors behave as entrepreneurs. When I think about all these middleweight structures, often locally owned, they share these same qualities as we do. So yes, I do not really see the agility or the strength of these major French companies. They are big and do not take advantage of their weight when preparing a very big contract. And when comparing them to the giant Indian companies… only Cap could possible resist, and perhaps Steria?

Old? In regards to their offers, first of all. Competence centres, dedicated teams, fixed price packages are not a standard practice and this is felt commercially. The businesses that we are in competition with, usually do not have the legs for those matches of 5 sets or a dozens points, even a hundred or more. Their offers and their talk of quality is generally not sufficient to reassure a client that is sending offshore the maintenance or development of their owner applications. Most are too prosaic, glued to the price and technology, when it is a complete business model that they have to sell. The business method of these structures has not been reviewed in a long time. What about their means of steering and project management? They usually are completely non-existent in comparison with the smaller structures I spoke of; the NATIVES they offer complete outsourcing and a full line of tools to steer the project but also the contract. They have the methods, tools and the discourse. They are young and do not need to renew the old methodology.

Perhaps the picture I have painted is quite black but this is reality of the situation and I just cannot justify the “dreadful” reality that comes to mind. But, these companies end up seducing no one. Their employees do not adhere to the company’s project, which remains absolutely illegible most of the time and concerns only the investment and pension funds. Their customers post pitiful rates of satisfaction in quality surveys. Yet, as a result of industrialization policies, new architectures and maturity of our industry, there is a great deal to be done to create new markets, renewing methodologies, organization, work tools and control and finally the image of this sector. Instead of this, because of the dictatorship of financial markets (shares, always shares!), they continue to fuel gross margins, while with competence centers and clouds, capital expenditures have heavily appeared among the pioneers of the industry. Imagine for one moment the capital expenditures of Infosys! Meanwhile, the French IT system is losing its market share. It is fortunate for emerging countries and companies such as Pentalog are in the hands of real entrepreneurs, and how necessary it is to know how to make bets a little more complex than those of external growth and to dare to evolve towards a global market through industrialized competence centres, in order to give this sector its patent of nobility.

In a few days I will come back to the dissatisfaction they generate for their shareholders too, finally, by comparing the results of offshore players, French tenors and Pentalog.