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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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At the end of 2010, we reached a transitional phase on our website environment redesign project. Since the autumn of 2009, we have put online several thematic sites in several languages:
- http://www.choosingmyitserviceprovider.com: Online sales meeting for receiving an instant commercial proposition.
- www.madeinoffshore.com: Catalog of our success stories.
- www.pentalog-speaking.com: Collection of our interventions.
- www.pentalog-jvprogram.com: Presentation of our partnership programme.
- www.pentalog.tv: Access to our video content in a YouTube channel.
- www.pentalog.com: Corporate site in five languages.
- PriceMaker: This function/application is present on almost all our sites. It allows to obtain an immediate quotation for our services.
- Different functions: Chat, Skype call, web callback, online meeting scheduling etc.

These sites are under the responsibility of the marketing department. The “Software & Applications” team of ISD had always provided technical support for the previous versions. For this new generation, we have used a different approach, for different reasons. We have chosen an OpenSource ECM platform with a view to optimizing multilingual content management and industrializing content management. As soon as the sites stopped being just a series of HTML pages or autonomous functions, we decided to build a team consisting of resources coming from the marketing and ISD departments: the Feature Team. This agile approach drawn from Lean Management / Scrum is opposed to “old” practices (which are still used, however) on “component teams” in which the project was divided according to capacities and responsibilities. In this type of organization, there is a team in which each member contributes his own added value. The objective is one and the same for all members: the success of the overall project, not just of the component project.

The objective of this organization was to rapidly develop the expected websites, avoiding to create a separation of responsibilities in which the ball would be passed from one member to another. It was also necessary for the management to get involved to an equal extent in order to ensure that tools, applications and contents were available for the desired period of time and thus better prepare the following stage. This is the moment when the marketing department would be able to autonomously operate the platform for content management.

This feature team consisted of between three and six people, depending on the phase of the project. In order to ensure a permanent follow-up, a daily meeting of between 10 and 15 minutes was organized in order to communicate on the tasks being processed, the tasks to come and current issues. The two (ISD and Marketing) managers participated in more than 96% of these meetings. The weekly meeting allowed to have a more precise follow-up, measured in figures, and to prepare the following tasks. Almost every quarter, we would organize a steering committee in order to present the progress as compared to our initial objectives.

In the end, after more than a year of using this organization and after making a transition in October:
- Despite the strong deadline pressures the team faced, it always remained united, without a single error being reported on any of the parties. The solutions were found together.
- The content integration practices/processes have already been implemented and tested; we didn’t start off with the “delivery”. We have yet to test work units for a maintenance mode, but the data we have already gathered allow us to have a solid basis.
- They know one another well. They will work again together in the future. They are familiar with the organization.
- The change management that would have been necessary for the marketing team would otherwise not have been as transparent as it has been here.
- All resources were allocated to the project for a period between 80 and 90% of the working time. This prevented them from losing contact with the daily activity of their departments. This is an important factor in ensuring transmission of information to the other team members.

What are the elements of success for this type of organization? They are not very different from other types: Involvement of the Management & Customer in the follow-up/monitoring, Choosing the right people (involved/competent) etc. What I would like to emphasize is, above all, the gain in information transmission which, in the end, translates into a smaller workload. This allows to have fewer unpleasant surprises at the moment of delivery in elements where discrepancies are too often noted and which cause irritation.

Can this type of organization be applied to all projects? The answer is obviously NO, although we could try to make it the standard type of organization. We intend to define a few criteria in order to facilitate the choice. The size of the project is one of the elements: when the project is too short, immersion is difficult when mutual knowledge is lacking. When the field of activity is complex, this becomes essential.

Personally, I believe in this approach, as it reduces the areas of incomprehension when the hierarchy is too strong (client / provider). This common work on immersion offers efficient and appealing solutions within the project and team members do not focus solely on their own tasks. I find it useful to continue organizing important information exchanges beyond the specifications phase.

[Episode 04] Reflection on the VDI

Posted on Fri., 7 Jan. 2011 14:10 by Aymeric LIBEAU (497 day(s) old)
Categories: ISD
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