Pentablog: The european offshore, nearshore and right costing blog

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Frédéric Lasnier

President&Chief Executive Officer

At a time when new technologies are becoming the main business carrier, communication is now all about transparency.
Aymeric Libeau

CIO - Vice President Infrastructures and R&D

« Creating the ship is not about weaving the canvas, forging the nails, reading the stars, but rather about giving a taste for the sea » Saint Exupéry
Monica Jiman

Deputy CEO

Deputy CEO
Alexandra Mondanel

International Operations Officer

Relying on partnership in diverse geographical, economical and cultural environments is the best way to sustain a strategy based on strong growth and international expansion.
Hélène Hemery

Marketing Manager

An innovative web policy deployed through the use of web 2.0 marketing methods ensures a greater visibility of products and services.
Sophie Lelarge

WW Sales and BL Director

WW Sales and BL Director
Pierre Peutin

Head of Business Line for Information Systems

Head of Business Line for Information Systems
Mickaël Hiver

Head of Business Lines for Embedded Systems & BPO

We take pride in helping our clients to implement their ideas, which is why we make full use of our consulting role.
Eric Gouin

Administrator

Administrator
Aleth Delcenserie

Quality Manager

Men accept change only when needed and they see need only in crisis", Jean Monnet, founding father of European unity.
Tuan Nguyenquoc

Sales Director

A Vietnamese proverb says "When eating a fruit, think of the person who planted the tree". Here, each employee takes part in growing the company and enjoys its fruit.

The authors:

Contact : +33 2 38 25 30 30 Pentalog TV Pentalog

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Frédéric Lasnier
Title: President&Chief Executive Officer
Bio: After a quick passage in a national marketing service company, Frederic Lasnier founded Pentalog with four colleagues, academics like himself. During a period of economic stagnation (in 1993).
In 1995, he decided to open permanently the capital of Pentalog to the participation of his employees. This participation now has reached 56%. It was a political vision that he shared with the founding members. Starting from 1997, Pentalog exported their first services outside of France. The percentage of foreign activities subsequently reached 60% in 2006.
In 1999, as part of a large software project (10 000 man-days in J2EE), he made his first trip to Romania and laid the foundation for the Pentalog policy of European "low cost". In 2005, he initiated the creation of BPO services (Business Process Outsourcing) and offered a New Business Model to Pentalog High Tech. In 2006, with the help of Ausy, one of the 5 most important players in the French market of outsourced R&D services, he created Pentalog Technology, a joint venture between Ausy and Pentalog, co-owned equally by the two partners. The Joint Venture aims to provide low cost but high quality R & D to global players. Pentalog took operational control of this alliance.
In 2008, Pentalog Deutschland, the German subsidiary of the group was created.
In 2009, Frederic created Pentalog Vietnam.
In all these areas, the management is provided from Orleans and it is here where 70% of the consolidated value is held.
Frederic is the father of the adaptation of the "design to cost" for intellectual services in France.

Aymeric Libeau
Title: CIO - Vice President Infrastructure & R&D
Bio: The management of infrastructure and R&D Aymeric is supervising includes all the technical aspects (for the company as well as for our customers), whether they are related to corporate needs, resources to complete a project, R&D activities or quality control.
Aymeric is the one who defines the strategy of development of our infrastructure and information system.
This former peacekeeper has led several international operations, in particular in Eastern Europe. He remains operational for some of our customers, whether as an expert in architecture, a project director or consultant in the choice of technologies.

Monica Jiman
Title: Deputy CEO
Bio: Monica graduated in Marketing and Production from the University of Orleans, and joined Pentalog as a trainee.
She then became the Manager of the branch office in Bucharest, today employing 50 people in the field of outsourced software development on the offshore as well as local market in Romania.
In May 2009 she became Chief Operational Officer. Monica is now in charge of operations in Vietnam, Eastern Europe, France and Germany, involving over 300 employees. She manages sales and business lines, the creation of new branch offices, recruitment, human resources and the responsibility of contractual operations.
Monica has been Pentalog's Deputy CEO (Deputy Chief Executive Officer) since August 2011. She is in charge of operational management, including the management of production and production structures, financial and reporting management, administration and development of existing partnerships, supervision of the information systems, technical management and … the incubator.

Alexandra Mondanel
Title: International Operations Officer
Bio: After a 4-month internship within the Pentalog Orleans Team, Alexandra was recruited to develop the company's international activities. She holds a postgraduate degree in International Business and foreign languages and she is European to the core: her mother is German and her father is French; she attended a British University, and used to work for the German subsidiary of a French company before joining Pentalog in 2005. Her ability to speak four languages will be determining to find partners all accross Europe.

Sophie Lelarge
Title: WW Sales and BL Director
Bio: Sophie is the group's Sales Director and manages the 3 Business Lines: Information Systems, Embedded Systems and BPO.
She ensures the dialogue with consultants and project managers, as well as the monitoring of our commitments, in coordination with the project managers.

Pierre Peutin
Title: Head of Business Line for Information Systems
Bio: Pierre entered Pentalog as a developer, in 1999. He has worked on web and client/servers projects, on missions of medium and long duration in both France and Belgium. After several years as a developer, Pierre oriented himself towards Business Intelligence by participating in various reporting projects for customers like PSA Peugeot Citroën, Loxam or the ACTICALL group. Later, Pierre became Project Leader for specific application developments, managing teams of 1 to 7 people based in France and offshore for Pentalog. Pierre then naturally served as an offshore Project Director before taking on the responsibility of the Business Line for Information Systems.
Pierre is presently responsible for writing business proposals, monitoring existing customers, commitment control vis-à-vis our customers on projects, compliance with Pentalog quality system procedures and control and optimization of expenses for the Business Line.

Mickaël Hiver
Title: Head of Business Lines for Embedded Systems & BPO
Bio: Mickaël entered Pentalog as a Network Administrator in February 1997 with the aim to gain global understanding of information technology in order to assist and guide users in meeting their real needs. For 8 years he was an in-house producer for Pentalog clients. With his acquired experience, Mickaël progressively left production to become first a Project Manager, then Project Director and finally the Head of Business Lines for Embedded Systems & BPO.
Mickaël is a hands-on and open person, with an acute sense of organization and priorities. Through his assistance and counseling he gives his clients and prospective clients the opportunity to focus calmly on their actual core business.

Eric Gouin
Title: Administrator
Bio: Eric graduated from a renown school of Physics and Chemistry in Paris. While he was a student he used to develop websites related to his student activities.
After two research internships within a French company producing mobile phone components in the Sophia-Antipolis Technopole, he joined the IT world in which he held several key positions.
He now is a finance and management control consultant.

Aleth Delcenserie
Title: Quality Manager
Bio: Associate-founder of Pentalog and board member, Aleth Delcenserie first evolved in the graphics department of the company. Gifted with a strong sense of organization and a taste for detail, she conducted with rigorous methodology publishing projects and electronic media for over ten years, and launched the Pentalog BPO-DTP sector at the end of 2005.
From September 2007, Aleth has been responsible for the definition and for the implementation of the Pentalog Quality Policy, leading to the ISO 9001:2008 certification of the group, on December 24, 2008.
As the Director of Quality Control, Aleth is now based in Moldova since 1 January 2009, where she now shares her time between coaching project managers in implementing effectiveness control and the progress of Pentalog Quality.

Tuan Nguyenquoc
Title: Sales Director
Bio: Tuan holds a Master's Degree in Information Systems and New Technologies from the Paris-Dauphine University, and gained some professional experience in France before returning to Vietnam to start his offshore adventure. He became a team leader in a Datawarehouse deployment project in Africa for a telecom provider, and witnessed violent riots in Kinshasa during a couple of days.
Following this project, Tuan turned to a Marcom position as the offshore business development manager of a big Vietnamese IT services company.
While reading the Pentalog blog Tuan became acquainted with Frederic and they met during Frederic's first visit in Vietnam. He was immediately convinced by Pentalog's business model and now manages the development of the first Pentalog office in Vietnam.

Blog

ETEBAC is almost finished…

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Last week I attended a breakfast concerning the migration from French ETEBAC protocols to EBICS / SEPA for bank telecommunication applications. I believe it would be of interest to share this information with everyone, so that all small and medium-sized businesses can prepare for this migration of their communications system with their banks.

ETEBAC, what is it?

I’ll start first by putting certain elements into their context by recalling that this is the standard inter-bank telecommunication application. ETEBAC which means “Exchange TElematiques BAnque Clients” has been used since 1991. It allows a company to exchange files (account extracts, transfers, BOR, etc…) with its banks. I emphasize the plural of the word bank as it only makes sense if the company works with several banks on one hand, and secondly, if it wishes to automate its dealings with them.

There are several versions of ETEBAC:

ETEBAC3 which is the unsecured version of the protocol where the client is obliged to confirm all dealings by fax with its bank

ETEBAC5 which is the secure version of the protocol operating with smart cards (encrypted files and an authenticated transmitter).

This protocol works on the basis of flat files of fixed length.

Why is it going to change?

On July 1, 2011, maintenance and the marketing network TRANSPAC will cease to operate. This will result in the termination of banking protocols operating under X25 (ETEBAC 3, ETEBAC 5, etc.). These protocols will then migrate to Internet networks.

With the end of the Transpac network, the banks will therefore be obliged to use other standards such as:

EBICS for Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard.

SEPA Single Euro Payment Area.

SWIFT Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

These new protocols will operate on the internet and use XML. Among the notable developments, I can cite the lengthening of the text zone from the current 30 characters, to 140 characters and the abandonment of the bank identification form, for the IBAN which has a more European context.

What will change?

Concretely, this means that a company should verify its information system to see if it will be compatible with these new changes (changes from traditional bank identification form to IBAN, compatibility of software used, etc…). If this is not the case, then the company should contact a provider who will audit the IS and propose the most appropriate solution.

This new standard will oblige the banks to perform better, in terms of turnaround time (D +1 working day) and the application of invoicing for European transfers.

But I think we should be very careful about the offers that are being proposed because presently, all banks do not propose the same protocol and also each bank will offer different solutions according to the protocol they have chosen. We must be very vigilant concerning the coherence of the information system in order to use a single protocol, which is entirely possible.

Who will be affected?

The choice of using EBICS depends on the number of banks with which a company interacts. Let’s say if the company is only working with one bank, to implement a simple solution like EDI via the website of the bank would be adequate.

In the case the company is working with several banks and wishes to automate the exchanges then it should move towards an EBICS protocol.

For the rest, in the case of very large companies or to companies that perform many daily transactions, it may be more helpful to approach the SWIFT protocol.

Companies must address the issue now to be ready to change over as of July 1, 2011.

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