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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.
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On Thursday, 29 September, in Paris, I attended an event about Drupal. Its main topic was “Create tomorrow’s web” and it was organized by CapGemini.

The plan was as follows:
* Drupal global approach by Dries Buytaert – Creator of Drupal and Acquia’s CTO
* Presentation of migrations towards Drupal by Christelle Picq – Voyages-SNCF.com Technology’s ISD (Information Systems Director)
* The e-commerce context by Justin Ziegler – PriceMinister’s CTO
* The evolution of e-commerce by Denis Lafont-Trevisan – Director of CapGemini’s “Centre d’Excellence” for Digital Business Solutions in France
* Presentation of Drupal Commerce by Frédéric Plain – CommerceGuys’ CEO

Beyond Dries’ interesting presentation of the advantage companies can get from choosing Drupal and Christelle’s presentation regarding her implementation on the Voyages-SNCF sites, the implicit topic of this seminar was “Drupal e-commerce”. We are in the middle of Information web practice development, but we are only just beginning to scratch the surface of e-commerce development.

Frédéric talked about the position of DrupalCommerce. After two years of development, the Drupal Commerce team released its 1.0 version. They are clearly favoring e-commerce sites requiring various services. They haven’t tried to provide an out-of-box tool, but a very open solution relying on Drupal values (reliability, performance, scalability, etc.).

Justin & Denis took turns to outline e-commerce history and trends. In France, people were somewhat accustomed to e-commerce use thanks to the past “Minitel” success. Then, Anglo-Saxon companies (Amazon, EBay, etc.) became household names and shaped the practices of meeting expectations by offering dedicated solutions. However, the OpenSource ready-made solutions like those provided via Magento, Shopify and PrestaShop were essential for e-commerce mass adoption. In this context, an OpenSource solution is a synonym for agility.

The e-commerce trends are as follows:
1. The Internet user is active, well informed and gregarious: The average e-commerce website visitor no longer has linear behavior (selection, registration, purchase). He already gathered information on what he wanted via social networks, locally, on the brand’s website, etc. His will to make a controlled purchase shared with others simplifies neither the process of drawing new customers nor that of retaining existing-ones.
2. Brand and relationship digitizing: The brand name can no longer rely solely on its reseller network to promote its product. Before placing an order, the future buyer is very demanding when it comes to the accuracy of information available for buying a product and of the answers he receives. This wealth of information (videos, description, experience sharing, etc.) is essential for converting visitors into buyers.
3. Technological and usage breakthrough: The breakthrough in purchasing practices (complex cycle, frequent feedback, m-commerce, etc.) is obvious. On the other hand, technologies like node.js, NoSQL and HTML5 herald a new generation of platforms, with a decisive break from the previous-ones by pursuing performance, processing concentration on servers (mobile cloud computing) and new user experience capabilities.
4. Mobile and pervasive Internet access: There is a significant rise in the number of purchases made via mobile devices (Smartphone, iPad). Creating a mobile version of a shopping website has become a must. We have pervasive access to online services, as they are available in various settings (in the office, at home, while mobile, etc.).
5. Cross-channel, complexity and volume: The times of the unique customer contact channel are over. There are many contact channels nowadays: the web, mobile channels, physical shops, social networks. The complexity and the amount of information to be managed increase when taking all these channels into account.

There are 3 e-commerce services management lines to be taken into account:
1. Focus on customer experience: The practical elements of the website must be perfect. High quality websites (elegance, navigation, clarity, clear reference points) are in great demand among users. The website visitors are lost if the site fails to catch their attention or is perceived as unreliable.
2. Rhythm and upgradability: An e-commerce platform service must be constantly improved in a noticeable manner. The improvement of the shop’s range of products and services guarantees the development of customer loyalty.
3. Agility: As user practices change rapidly, it is essential to implement an agile organization which could immediately adjust to new requirements.

The Drupal platform use amounts to 2% of Web platforms. However, it is an emerging technology for front-end web platforms requiring a high ramp-up and reduced development time. It is a fact that the community is very active (12,000 modules, 1,300 themes), and this quality ensures its endurance and independence. The creation of an e-commerce building block emerging from regrouping 2 teams (US + FR) emphasizes the ambitions relating to the platform and its community.

In an attempt to make a quick list of Pentalog’s running projects, I can tell you that almost all the e-commerce projects are in PHP. This is also Cap Gemini’s excellence centre’s trend. Our future projects concerning our activity are in PHP as well. Our choices are confirmed by the trends: our front end is in PHP and our most often used transactional part is Java.

If a company decides to sell its products online, this can be easily achieved by using pre-packaged solutions. Insofar as there is strong competition in your sector, the shop’s and products’ graphic quality, the wealth of information, its exposure (SEO) and ability to adjust to user practices are essential factors for maintaining a high level of quality. One must be aware of the fact that the improvement cycle and, therefore, of investment in the platform is a relentless process. It is definitely the price of success.

Posted on Mon., 3 Oct. 2011 12:16 by Aymeric LIBEAU (228 day(s) old)
Categories: e-commerce
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