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.
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.
Wonderful weather here in California After 3 days of meetings in the Bay area, we can now confirm there are definitely interesting opportunities to be seized for our business here. We are already about to make 2 offers to companies we met and we had promising discussions about setting up a local Pentalog entity.
We were very impressed by the people we had the pleasure to meet so far: be they French or American, either managing start-ups, working for big or mid-sized companies, or former CEOs, they all have impressive professional background, are humble, particularly open-minded and have strong entrepreneurial will associated with high-level financial culture. At the heart of IT innovation, VCs are major actors that cannot be ignored and every single start-up goes into a fund raising process at very early stages. It is almost an industrualized process here in the Silicon Valley.
The People Centric solution and business model we presented encountered a lot of enthousiasm, in an area where HR scarcity makes recuitment and retention a very hard job. The problem is even worse in the US and espacially in the Silicon Valley than in Western Europe. Attracting and keeping the best talent is very costly and despite high salaries and retention bonuses, workers go from one company to another, looking for different experiences to finally end-up creating their own companies. This is someting normal here. So, this environment is very stimulating for the ones who have ideas and ambition, it is also extremely competitive.
Apart from that, let us not forget to underline that the local climate, wines and friendly and relaxed atmosphere makes this place even more attractive for a future entity of our IT outsourcing company
About offshoring, for now we have not been told any surprising things about local habits, the presence of Indian giants and the maket evolution. We will get back to this later, we still have to meet some other experts in that area to get a better insight.
As we have already been considering the idea for a while now, perhaps this is the right moment for Pentalog to take the first steps forward… The western part of the USA is of interest to us in more than one respects: given the success of Pentalabbs, our business incubator, how could we not consider doing business in the world’s leading innovation centre? The Silicon Valley is home to Hewlett Packard, Apple, Intel, Sun Microsystems (recently bought out by Oracle), eBay etc. Numerous IT giants have established their headquarters or technology parks in this area which hosts 6,000 high-tech companies and some of the most prestigious universities in the world. This is a great breeding ground for entrepreneurs, high-level engineers and financiers; in short, a complete ecosystem which facilitates the emergence of products, services and innovative business models.
Pentalabbs wishes to identify opportunities for collaboration with other innovative companies in such fields as e-commerce, recruitment and software engineering.
People-Centric, Pentalog’s spin-off incubated by Pentalabbs, provides its clients with a range of tools dedicated to recruitment, available in SaaS mode, and whose components can be made available as white-label products. This start-up, which is both a web recruitment agency specialized in the IT sector and an editor of HR solutions, enjoys a resounding success, especially with French IT companies, and is getting ready to export its business model to other countries, as well. Finding partners for selling its solutions on the US market is one of the opportunities that Frédéric wants to look into during his visit to San Francisco next June.
On the other hand, opening a Pentalog branch office in the USA is also a possibility. This could be an entity specializing in a certain technology, a type of service or a particular sector. We will see what can be done depending on the meetings and local interests and specificities…
This could also be an opportunity to make a trip to Canada, where the French-language, high-tech environment and the presence of Eastern European expats turn the country into another serious candidate for the development of Pentalog’s activities in partnership with local associates. If any of the Romanian, Moldovan and French citizens who have relocated to these Anglo-Saxon regions is interested in our projects, they are asked to contact us as soon as possible.
Pentalog Vietnam, the Group’s first Asian office, created in 2008, currently employs 60 people making up several teams which will continue to grow and develop their competencies on the short term. Pentalog employees in Hanoi are involved in major customer projects, as well as in the activities carried out by Pentalabbs, our innovation and incubation structure.
After having become more than an offshore production centre for our European customers, Vietnam is also opening doors towards a nearshore market in the Asia-Pacific region, another growth leverage for the Group. We have already launched a concrete prospecting campaign in Japan, which will be considerably strengthened over the following weeks and months. These projects will require all our attention at local level and we are going to need further support in managing the office on a daily basis. Tuan, our young Office Manager, with whom we made contact on this very blog a little more than two years ago, has successfully built and trained this wonderful team for which we have great ambitions. He will now continue developing it, but in a different manner, by finding new customers and partners for Pentalog Vietnam. He will take over commercial activities for the Asia-Pacific market.
This is therefore a call for applications: if you are Vietnamese and familiarized with European culture (or vice versa), if you have several years of experience in project management and IT outsourcing, if you have already dealt with HR issues, then you might be our future Office Director in Hanoi… You can write to us at jobs.han@pentalog.fr!
Two weeks ago, I travelled to Stockholm, and then to Oslo, together with a delegation of Romanian IT companies and ARIES, the professional association representing the companies of this sector in Romania. For Pentalog, this is a first concrete approach of a geographic area that we have been interested in for a long time. We established contacts with big companies and Fred has just travelled to Stockholm to meet other people. There are real opportunities here that we can benefit from.
I visited, among others, the headquarters of two major local companies which are first-rate players on the international stage: Ericsson (that we are well acquainted with), at the heart of the “Wireless Valley” that the Swedes are proud of, and Telenor, the fixed and mobile telephony operator, ranked first in Norway and sixth worldwide, in a pleasant setting by the water… What I distinctly remember is the speech which clearly focused on innovation and internationalization. Of course, in small countries with low populations, markets are rapidly saturated, and export and continuous innovation are the only means that enable a company to develop, assert itself and last.
Ecology, technology, civic and social engagement, gender parity in company management seem to be the pillars of the Scandinavian business environment. There are many women who occupy top management positions in prestigious local companies. This is a good enough reason to flatter the feminist side that every woman nourishes within herself! At Ericsson, the Vice-President in charge of marketing is a superb high-class blue-eyed blond woman in her forties, who well embodies the image of Nordic business women This is rather cliché, but it is true! At Telenor, we were told that women make up for 40% of the Board of Directors, which is not exceptional, it is simply the law. The woman Vice-President who received us is endowed with a firm grip and charisma, which are consistent with the company’s philosophy. They have eliminated walls and paper to the greatest extent possible. The objective is, on the one hand, to facilitate human interaction and communication, thus boosting creativity in each employee and, on the other hand, to support the use of new technologies in every aspect of the daily professional activity. I saw intelligent communication equipment in their meeting rooms that I thought only existed as prototypes… Therefore, R&D, M2M, social networks, emerging and international markets were recurring themes in the meetings I attended during my stay. Actually, I thought about Pentalabbs and its employees who would have probably been in their element here.
Moving towards more general aspects, I had a slight feeling of disorientation in Sweden and Norway, not as much as when I landed in Bangalore this time last year, but enough to feel its presence: at 2.30 p.m. on leaving my hotel room, I was frightened to notice that it was almost night. I once read that Scandinavians are the greatest European antidepressant consumers, despite living in a social and economic environment envied by many… A taxi driver in Stockholm explained to me what chemical, physical and psychological consequences the lack of light has on the human body in winter. But, on the other side, everything here is about modernity, aestheticism, cleanliness and public spiritedness. In one week, I didn’t see any dog droppings, shabby bistros or worn building facades. Contemporary art is present everywhere, from company headquarters to clothing shops. Everything is harmoniously designed. People pay everything by credit card: bread, packs of cigarettes, subway tickets. They really seem to be ahead in many respects. My only regret was that no matter how much I watched out for Lisbeth Salander at 7 eleven stores, which are present everywhere in Stockholm, I didn’t get the chance to see her coming out with a few frozen pizzas under her arm…
It has been two years since Pentalog opened an office in Hanoi, Vietnam. The group had reached a point when it needed to complete its offer with „extreme low cost” services. At the time when we carried out the location study, we had to choose between Vietnam and China. Our final choice was determined by Vietnam’s more apparent cultural and linguistic resemblance to France and the certainty of having an easier access to high-level resources. The gamble has paid off, as today we have 60 collaborators in Hanoi, all English speakers, half of them speaking French as well, who are working for customers like Altadis (Imperial Tobacco Group), as well as for innovative projects within Pentalabbs. At present, we consider that our Vietnamese positioning, which is low cost but offers engineering services of high added value and which benefits from the entire Quality system and organization implemented at group level, could also represent a satisfactory response to Asian nearshore market expectations, especially to the Japanese market.
According to Gartner, the Japanese outsourcing market registered a 4-billion-dollar sales figure in 2009, more than half of which is represented by embedded software development services. Japan’s providers are especially Indian and Chinese, of course, but the Vietnamese market share (on 3rd place after the 2 giants) is on the rise, while that of India has been decreasing since 2007. Vietnamese IT providers are working for Japan in particular, but their services are often limited to testing. It is in this respect that we can stand out from local competitors: we are capable of providing high-level development services (IS and embedded systems), within large projects.
Opening an office in Japan won’t be a piece of cake. This is the first time we are going to face such a cultural and linguistic gap. But our past experience, both multicultural and multilingual (French, English, Romanian, Russian, German, Vietnamese, Hebrew etc.) will be a major asset. We are going to have to quickly identify a future local associate, with a double cultural identity, either European-Japanese or Vietnamese-Japanese, and with a genuine entrepreneurial motivation. We are launching our research right away.
Mircea, Frédéric and I spent a few days in Poland last week in an attempt to find a nearshoring solution designed to accelerate our development in Germany and Austria. We made some interesting discoveries in this country: high-level training, a large number of students, a great deal of whom speak German (at least when compared to Romania), professional interlocutors who are all very good English speakers, a highly dynamic economic environment.
In Wroclaw, 700,000 inhabitants, the country’s 4th largest city, 700 IT & Management graduates of the Polytechnic University enter the labour market each year, in addition to the one thousand graduates of the Faculty of Electronics (telecommunications, hardware specializations etc.). The University of Wroclaw even has its own incubator which has supported the launch of no less than 130 start-ups during the last 8 years! The city hosts a Nokia Siemens Networks R&D center which employs 1,500 people (the largest in Europe), not to mention the presence of players such as Volvo IT, IBM, Google etc. That is impressive… In Warsaw, Samsung has recruited 400 young graduates from the Faculty of Electronics and IT in less than 3 years. The partnership policy of the university in relation to the business world efficiently prepares its students for their entry on the labour market, through the work carried out for example in a laboratory created together with the local branch of Germany’s T-Mobile.
As Fred explains it in his article, nearshore outsourcing providers tend to draw closer to their clients, geographically speaking, in order to better understand and get involved in their strategy and fields of expertise. Within this context, speaking the same language is all the more important and justifies higher prices in countries like Poland or the Czech Republic. Administrative easiness (Poland is a member of the Schengen area), which allow Polish engineers to carry out missions on site in the German speaking area, is another reason why Germans are willing to pay a higher price. Actually, the obvious cultural proximity sometimes gave me the impression I was in Germany. And it may very well be that there are French speakers in this country, as well.
You will therefore have understood: Pentalog was rather seduced by the Polish alternative in terms of nearshore outsourcing. Certain elements are still to be analyzed in more detail, but in a few weeks we should be able to make a choice between a first Polish office and a fifth office in Romania, which could also join the Schengen area in 2011… We have therefore embarked on a new Eastern-European adventure
Pierre-Jean, Mircea and Thomas are sending us news from Frankfurt:
“Rund um den Globus” – “All around the globe” is the title of a recent article published by “IT Director”, one of the most important magazines of the German IT-business sector.
The globalization of production capacities in the IT development field is pursued not only in India, but also in countries such as Egypt, Romania, China and Vietnam. The conditions offered by Romania, the youngest member of the European Union, which has a legal framework matching our Western European standards, as well as low-cost resources, are ideal for companies that wish to optimize their IT budget while maintaining a very high level of quality. Even though cost reduction can reach up to 60% of the development costs in Germany, it is important to consider the quality of developers involved in nearshore/offshore projects, as well as the data/IT security level. It is in the purely economic interest of large nearshore/offshore outsourcing providers to ensure the best service with a maximum level of security. The best approach is to begin with a European law contract with a competent relevant court from the client’s country. This is precisely what Pentalog High Tech proposes to its French and German clients and it is for this reason that we have had the honour of publishing this interview in the IT Director magazine.
About IT Director: IT Director is a monthly magazine published by MEDIENHAUS Verlag. This publisher is part of the leading press of the German high tech sector and has exclusively targeted the IT business industry for almost 20 years.
Germany is the second IT outsourcing market in Europe and its demand will continually increase in the years to come, considering the evolution of its demography (see Frédéric’s article on this subject). Pentalog is about to assert its position on this market which has the reputation of being difficult to conquer, with a sales figure of over 2 million euros expected for 2010. We must now find solutions in order to meet even more efficiently certain demands that we do not always find easy to fulfill with our current resources and offices, especially when German-speaking staff is required. Poland, with a population of 38 million inhabitants, an economically dynamic member of the EU and part of the Schengen area since 2007, could be the destination that could support our development in Germany. We could also envisage commercial propositions towards Denmark and Sweden.
Frédéric Lasnier, Mircea Popa (manager of Pentalog Deutschland) and I will therefore travel to Poland from the 20th to the 22nd of September. There we will be looking for German-speaking IT engineers, we are going to try to obtain information about IT university faculties, the main nearshore players etc. Contact us if you think you can help us.
A few words on the LABS, the innovation structure of the Pentalog Group, which is currently being set up… The Labs is designed to generate innovation to the benefit of long-term value. Its activities are centered around a group of three deliverables:
Proof of Concept: the demonstration model of the feasibility of an application project, accompanied by detailed specifications
Target Architecture: the technical file, guideline of a future development of a high level application
Business Case: the file containing the team organization and the analysis of project costs, as well as its capacity of return on investment. This complete file, that we shall call the LAB File, must enable to carry out projects in complete security.
The LABS team must be compact, experienced and responsive, consisting in dynamic experts, endowed with a high level of creativity and ingenuity.
3 Senior Project Managers: be they technical or functional, their role will be to propose all the ideas, organize and prioritize them, highlight them in the POC, propose a robust architecture and, finally, estimate the potential production cost.
2 high caliber Architects: they will have the difficult task of proposing the best architecture, but also a first estimation of production. One of them will be more focused on the database architecture and system sizing; the other will rather deal with Front End architectures and application connector technology.
3 Senior Developers who are Interface Experts: these people will have to deliver the POC in record time, paying particular attention to the end user ergonomics.
2 Business Analysts: they will have to stimulate the production of ideas, organize and formalize them so that they may be comprehensible and “marketable”
The whole team will have the possibility of interacting with other players of the Group, the Technical Department in particular, as the latter will be able to make numerous contributions based on its past experience and the Incubator’s research capacities, but also because the first two subjects are of general interest: productivity management and competence marketing.
There are still vacant positions left and, therefore, if any of you is motivated by one of these posts, you should contact Frédéric Lasnier as soon as possible!
2010 has seen the launch of new online marketing and sales tools designed by Pentalog. You may have already read about www.madeinoffshore.com, www.choosingmyitserviceprovider.com and www.pentalogspeaking.com. The web 2.0 is indeed a bustling and challenging environment for companies, which need to adapt and evolve fast in order to integrate and take advantage of innovations and news concepts. Pentalog is therefore in the process of reorganizing the content of its corporate websites as well. Among important changes done recently, I would like to mention the reorganization of our service offer on the www.pentalog.com (English version) and www.pentalog.biz (German version) websites: our services are divided into 3 business lines:
The corporate website now offers more visibility on our activities and has become even more transparent on our expertise. In the scope of Pentalog’s web-based sales strategy, our aim is to provide potential clients with as much online information as possible, thus helping them to carry out an effective preselection of potential providers.
The website dedicated to international partnerships www.pentalog-jvprogram.com is also being enriched. We recently integrated a map showing various outsourcing areas Pentalog is studying to establish new offshore subsidiaries. By clicking on the countries colored in green, you will be able to see the places we visited, with related information and links. Some additional changes are coming soon…
Elaborate your Offshore project with the European leader in Offshore Outsourcing!
… This is what could be Pentalog Labs’ leitmotif. The team which is currently being built and whose main actors cannot be revealed yet is working out its organization and method of communication. We can already tell you that four projects are in the process of being launched. They are organized around three main points:
competence management and marketing
project and productivity management
a third subject which is still open and which will be defined according to our current and future clients’ and partners’ needs. This-one may be focused, for instance, on software edition.
All these projects, as well as future ones, will have a common goal: go from technology to innovation and from innovation to long-term value. They will consist in delivering POC and services which have a very high added value. Pentalog Labs is meant to be a technological and business excellence window.
Through its IT activities, Pentalog enters in contact with numerous experts in various fields, which gives it access to a large sphere of creativity. We intend to use this asset in the best possible way, within an incubation strategy which will allow us to increase the benefits of innovation projects that we are going to launch, and to use once again new leverage in order to ensure continuous growth and a stable leadership.
Therefore, the Labs will certainly be closely linked to the partnership approach of the development strategy of Pentalog Group. Innovation is not a product of chance, as it requires investments, commitment and organization. Capitalizing on expertise, the pooling of our force and talent together with those of our future partners which will bring innovating projects, this is what will make the difference. Start-ups, grow-ups, entrepreneurs, investors are all possible partners for developing synergies. Together with them, the Labs’ high level team will soon be able to meet the challenges of “planetarization” for the creation and intelligent use of the technologies and business models of tomorrow.
Good news does not stop coming! We have just learned that Pentalog has been chosen for the first round of selections to represent France at the European Business Awards 2010, which aims to promote excellence, good business practices and innovation within the European business community. The selection was made from amongst 7000 companies studied… from large multinationals to SMBs, including gazelle companies .
Pentalog is already a member of of the French fast-growing company association “Croissance Plus” and has been integrated into the classification of the European Deloitte Technology Fast 500 in 2009. We also have participated in several “strategy” competitions recently. With the European Business Awards, we could still receive an award at the European level, for having maintained our strong growth in these times of crisis and for the effectiveness of our business model.
10 minutes to answer 10 key questions and get a quotation!
Several times lately we mentionned Israel on Pentablog (From Amsterdam to Tel Aviv and Israel my entrepreneurial dream), and today we can reveal a little more about it to you… The negotiations with our future associate partners in Tel Aviv have led to an agreement to launch our commercial operations there. We will rely on two very experienced people who have the ambition to do at least as well in Israel as Pentalog realized recently in Germany (€ 2M in sales barely 2 years after the creation of the subsidiary Pentalog Deutschland). Our expectations from this market are as high as opportunities are numerous.
Administrative issues related to our establishment are being finalized, the launch of the web site pentalog.co.il, the first e-marketing operations are imminent. Efforts to make us known to the Israeli IT community are already under way, through social networking. Our first lead has arrived already; it has started strong, with a development project for a large international organization.
Israel is one more string to our bow, and will contribute to consolidate our international position with a direct presence in the heart of this business community and in a renown high-tech center, with a strong culture of innovation and of entrepreneurship: third source of world-wide companies listed on the Nasdaq, after the U.S. and China, in sixth position (per capita) in obtaining the Nobel prize, No. 1 in the number of start-ups. This very young country with turbulent history is fascinating and will surely have many new things to teach us.
In addition to Israel, there is not less than 3 other countries in which we are preparing to launch new operations in the near future. We are now able to generate and multiply very quickly all kinds of opportunities to produce and sell outsourcing services with high added value in the world. And it is by establishing strong partnerships in complementary geographical, economic, technical and cultural environments that will ensure further sustainability of our growth and globalization strategy and. We will not stop here!
Pentalog will be an exhibitor at this year’s CeBIT in Hanover Germany, the largest trade show in the world dedicated to the IT sector. In 2009, during a year of an especially acute economic crisis, this event drew nearly 4,300 exhibitors and more than 400,000 visitors.
In the context of a continuing crisis, companies will need solutions particularly profitable. As a global player, Pentalog will offer our prospects IT solutions in Nearshore, in the Euro zone, as well as Offshore in the Dollar zone, to particularly competitive rates. Many French, German and Austrian companies have already been convinced of the irreproachable quality and the excellent support services offered by Pentalog in regards to the exceptional value based on quality-price.
Through its IT development centers, Nearshore and Offshore, Pentalog offers ideal conditions for outsourcing of research and development activities for its customers. The organizational and technology structure established for this purpose can provide many services:
• Software development
• Development of E-Commerce tools, product development
• Development of embedded systems
• Third-party application maintenance, third-party validation
• Research and Development
• Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
• Infrastructure Management and Technical Assistance
• Testing & Debugging
95% of our 430 Pentalog employees are English-speaking and have graduated from the best local universities. We invite you to discover our services: Pierre-Jean and Mircea will welcome you at the stand B56 in Hall 4. Feel free to visit them!
Contact us for free tickets to this trade show and arrange an appointment on site with: Pierre-Jean CAYZAC.
From 2nd to 4th of March 2010 in Nuremberg, for the second time, Pentalog will be part of the exhibitors at Embedded World, the largest exhibition in the world, dedicated to embedded technology. This event draws nearly 700 exhibitors, and 17 000 professional visitors.
Since 2007, Pentalog has considerably expanded its embedded activities for projects in software development, maintenance and quality assurance. Major customers like the european leader of bluetooth technologies or ST Ericsson have placed their confidence in Pentalog and 70 of our engineers are working in Romania and Moldova on complex projects in the field of telephony and energy management.
The objective of Pentalog for 2010 is to continue to develop this part of its activities in embedded engineering throughout Europe. To optimize and accelerate this development, the group is seeking to create partnerships similar to the joint-venture Pentalog Technology created with Ausy, a French IT company, in Brasov. Embedded World 2010 will be an excellent opportunity to identify potential partners amongst the IT companies specializing in embedded services.
Come discover our embedded engineering services, but also our services in information systems, Business Process Outsourcing and our low tariffs. Mickaël and Thomas will welcome you at the Booth 121, in Hall 11. Feel free to visit them!
I never thought one day of attending business meetings wearing snow boots… In Russia, it is common. And rare are the few people who do not wear the fur hat, it is THE essential accessory for your survival on the streets of St Petersburg as well as in the Ural countryside in winter. There are hats for everyone, of all colors, leather, rabbit skin, felt, with brilliants, pearls, but in any case, always something that goes with your coat! Going up Nevsky Prospect in the early morning, amid all these people wrapped up in their own way, going to work with a firm step, reminded me of my literature courses in highschool, and the grotesque characters that Gogol portrayed in a satirical tone in his St. Petersburg Short Stories, which I reread at the moment of this trip: Akaky Akakyevich Bachmatchkine, petty official shivering in his worn coat on the way to the Ministry (The Overcoat) or Major Kovalyov who awoke one morning without a nose (The Nose)…
In Perm, after we had been introduced to the ritual of tasting the “Ruski Standard” (remember to drink only half of your glass and then leave it on the table is very rude to the person who invited you to drink), Denis and his colleagues talked to us about survival skills in the taiga, that we (thankfully) did not have the time to practice. Besides these very good moments that made me completely forget my prejudices about Russian austerity. Anyway, our friends both in Perm and St. Petersburg demonstrated to us their strong commitment to international development and improving their technical and business skills from every point of view. This was an encouraging attitude when thinking of creating a prospective partnership in this country, despite the past legacy which seems to continue to weigh heavily on professional relationships. One entrepreneur explained to us how he launched his business at the time you could read signs saying “No business is no good” in the streets. Today the dream of Russian entrepreneurs is to do business with France, Germany …
Fred spoke of the language problems in his post; it’s true that the use of English is not yet systematic amongst IT engineers. But after thinking about it, overall I didn’t feel any more difficulty in communicating than I did in India, where people spoke English well enough but with a “local” colored accent and with various expressions which I didn’t have the habit to use. I will not speak of French language (the “Alliance Francaise” courses in Perm seemed to be attended mostly by young women from well-to-do families) but on the other hand we met German-speaking people, which is an additional positive point. The language problem is of course less obvious in Saint Petersburg which is a doorway to the Western world, a very cosmopolitan and modern city of 7 million inhabitants, with 120 universities and engineering schools. It is probably the 2nd largest city in the world for engineering outsourcing, maybe even the 1st when compared to Bangalore in terms of the percentage of the population going to university.
So in conclusion, many interesting things to think about after this trip, both in terms of SAP, as well as embedded systems or the opening of new markets in Scandinavia. We were really impressed by the people we encountered. Russia almost seems an obvious choice for the future development of our business and the presence of Pentalog. These projects came at the right moment; the France-Russia year was inaugurated yesterday in Paris… We will return with great pleasure to these frosty regions, but so welcoming!
Just a few words… to tell you about my recent trip to Chisinau, Iasi and Brasov. It’s been a while since I have had the opportunity to visit with my Eastern European colleagues. And I had not yet seen any snow in France this year (2009). Here, I was not disappointed.
It was an opportunity for me to discover the superb offices in Chisinau that I had not yet seen and got acquainted with a part of the friendly Marketing Team with whom I shared a delicious “Christstollen” brought by Pierre–Jean from Frankfurt. In Iasi, I attended for the first time a Romanian Pentalog Christmas party, full of laughter and emotions during the exchange of gifts… Meanwhile, the trip between the 2 countries had to be improvised in the Romanian style by car, in -15 ° C weather, in the snow, with lots of folklore and it was fun! And in Brasov, I finally met the mysterious team of secret agents with whom I have worked with the past few months, you know, those who hide behind the Pentablog press review, spying on our competitors and looking after the e-reputation of Pentalog. Thank you for the fur hat, I will think of you when I’m in Russia!
After 3 days of meetings in the Bay area, we can now confirm there are definitely interesting opportunities to be seized for our business here. We are already about to make 2 offers to companies we met and we had promising discussions about setting up a local Pentalog entity.
