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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: COO - Vice President Business Development
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.

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: Office Manager Hanoi
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.

Will we still be talking about IT offshoring in 2016? 36 hours of reflexion on the future in Chantilly, at Château de Montvillargenne, together with Virginie and Eric.

I don’t have an answer to this question. On the other hand, I know that the number of engineers available or in training in the so-called developed countries won’t be enough to meet their resource needs. Offshore outsourcing could become so common that the words “offshore” and “nearshore” will have completely disappeared.
Germany is looking for 200,000 engineers and scientists before 2014. This will be a massive appeal that could destabilize certain economies. Therefore, in this context of declining demography, of inexplicable abandonment of scientific and technical professions and of near deflation, the use of offshore resources could witness a dramatic increase. Countries like Germany, Canada, the USA or others will be looking to “import” these highly skilled emigrants.

Almost two years ago, Eric, Virginie and I met in Brasov for 36 hours of reflexion on Pentalog’s potential progress before 2010 and from now until 2013. Two plans were developed. The 14-2010 plan is in its final months. It has proven our ability to conceive a near future, to understand our strengths, our qualities and to implement series of rational actions in order to achieve an objective. We will exceed it by 15-20% in terms of sales figure. Leaving figures aside, we are satisfied with our good shape because JVs are reinforced, Pentalog Deutschland is a reality and is performing very well and with the fact that our strategy in Germany is recognized by the most important companies. 60 Romanian engineers are already providing services to our German clients on a daily basis. Very prestigious projects are being prepared. We had also decided there to open our Vietnamese office which now has 55 collaborators, provides services for 5 French clients and takes over a part of Pentalog’s internal developments.

The 30-2013 plan was a different and very innovative exercise for us. We listed growth concepts that could be taken into account in order to reach this figure, among others the launch of new JVs. We also enumerated our long-term weaknesses and started to work on them. Training witnessed a great boom, especially for management staff, in countries that are often criticized for their poor management abilities.

We have reassessed our former long-term plan, which therefore becomes our short-term plan. This means that we must consolidate it, materialize the actions to be carried out and recalculate it. I would like to let you know that by 2013 we will have opened at least one more office in Romania, one undoubtedly in Maghreb, a second one in Vietnam and will have made commercial propositions in new target countries. Among others, we must absolutely include the high German demand into our growth plans. Thus, we could soon have to open offices in Poland, Estonia or elsewhere. The current French and German offshore market is still in its early stages. I have been stating for a long time that the offshore volume in outsourcing will easily exceed 15% and could even reach 30%. Demography and abandonment of the scientific field will play a much more significant role than cost reduction in this process. We confirm our intention to continue to grow by 30% a year while making as few acquisitions as possible.

What about 2016? A change in methods, financing, products and services, in identification, briefly – in strategy. Acquisitions could play a greater role. Like offshore, the word “cloud” will have almost disappeared… because we will find ourselves surrounded by it. The Pentalog Group will still have to have a future. Will it reach a sales figure of 50, 75, 100 million or 1 billion euros? Virginie, Eric and I are going to present our thoughts to the Board of Directors. It is up to the members to offer their feedback.

What I can say is that growth and profitability will continue to be our main preoccupations. In the context of a European resource shortage, we will therefore have to rely more than ever on our productivity and more and more on innovation.

Posted on Mon., 16 Aug. 2010 12:06 by Frédéric LASNIER (18 day(s) old)
Tags: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria
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Jeune Afrique dedicates an article to the offshoring in Maroc

I answered the questions of a Jeune Afrique journalist a few weeks ago and I found his article. Although I share many of his conclusions and confirm that Pentalog will soon embark on a tour of North Africa, for the obvious linguistic reasons that one can imagine, I would have insisted, however, on the fact that the offshore outsourcing market is not represented ONLY by France. If we take a look at our Moroccan colleagues’ sites, the “reference” page is self-explanatory. Virtually all of them have ONLY French references. The competition with the important offshoring countries can only be supported by a single client country. It will not be possible for Morocco to find uniquely in France the reasons for its large investment plan. Moreover, not collaborating with countries that are ahead of France in the O&O field is to deprive oneself of the best customer experiences. Morocco will even find it difficult to take off because of this and will drag along this monocultural image for a long time. Multiculturalism is an essential part of globalization, a substratum of the O&O. The offshoring corporate buyer is naturally “globalized”.

Wider use of English is indispensable in North Africa. I would also gladly add German to my list. Coming from Paris or Frankfurt to Casablanca or Tunis is exactly the same thing. We are well aware of the fact that we boost our German business by appointing a German-speaking project manager here and there.

Finally, as usual, and I have already stated this somewhere else, I think that the studies carried out by companies delegated by the states which are interested in the O&O market have no value at all. Wait a few weeks and Gartner will produce a study which will show that Tunisia is less expensive than Morocco, and then Romania will be next with McKinsey…


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Posted on Tue., 13 Jul. 2010 14:13 by Frédéric LASNIER (52 day(s) old)
Tags: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria
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Meeting with the French Ambassador in Bucharest: is there a connection between a language and corporate culture?

Surprisingly enough, Henry Paul and I had never met face to face. He had been described to me as a man of culture, but the person that I met is completely up to date with Romanian economic affairs. Of course, I talked to him about the constant efforts made by Pentalog in teaching French to its employees, like I always do when I meet a representative of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In all our offices, we provide constant foreign language training, French being the main language taught. 80% of Pentalog employees speak fluent French. In Romania, this figure rises to 90%, making Pentalog the most dedicated company in this respect, all sectors combined.

Being particularly sensitive, as an ambassador, to the language question, Mr. Paul showed me the connection between the language of a company and its identity, reminding me that, at a time of crisis, the most resilient companies are the ones with the strongest company culture. The recent Pentastock festival, celebrating 5 years of Pentalog Moldova and 10 years of Pentalog Romania, has made a deep impression on people in this regard.

He asked me what I thought about the importance of the French language in asserting the culture of Pentalog. I had never asked myself that question. Then, after reflecting on the matter a little more, I attempted an answer. We are an international company which was founded in France. It is, therefore, a French company, and French is the language of all management bodies. Encouraging and supporting its development is not only a commercial imperative, but also a true question of management. French is a political and diplomatic language; it doesn’t simply express our decisions, it “envisages” them and projects a larger meaning in minds. Is this far-fetched? Is it a discourse serving the French interest?

The answer is no. Not having a filter or linguistic intermediary between management decisions and the people to whom they are addressed or those who must apply them helps to build a common culture… Translation doesn’t convey the whole meaning. Isn’t this blog, where each article is first written in French, another expression of this company culture? Would it be the same if we wrote articles in English first? You will not be surprised to find out that the second country in terms of the number of people reading the French blog… is Romania :)

In order to prepare for this article, I asked my Romanian friends and colleagues a few questions. For them, Pentalog is probably a more international company than its local competitors. Using Molière’s language is enriching for the entire management system, which thus necessarily becomes multilingual. This choice of not having to use English as an official language determines us to speak several languages. Considering the hundred collaborators who don’t speak French and the nature of our events and meetings, we regularly use English and Romanian internally, as well as German, including in meetings with French people. I have just seen Eric passionately hold a meeting in Romanian (Romanian can only be spoken passionately). We do not use Vietnamese and Russian for professional communication, even though they are spoken by numerous employees in our company. Moreover, some of our collaborators also speak Hungarian, Hebrew, Ukrainian etc.

A company which speaks ONLY English is naturally not multilingual and will not be able to easily adapt to new markets and their cultures. I doubt that it will naturally be more open than a company which has chosen to keep its original language and to recognize the languages of the national and ethnic groups that it consists of and to which it targets its production.

Therefore, I will answer unhesitatingly to Mr. Paul’s statement. He is right. Preserving and developing the original language of a company strongly contributes to asserting the company identity in a business world which would like to speak only English. This becomes an essential distinctive symbol among everybody. This desire of the business world doesn’t lead to efficiency. It is too simplistic and doesn’t broaden people’s minds… which is what the business world and the international stage need the most.

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Posted on Tue., 22 Jun. 2010 8:14 by Frédéric LASNIER (73 day(s) old)
Tags: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria
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Press review week 50/2009

- Global IT spending to rise in 2010: Gartner (04 December 2009, CRN)
- IT Outsourcing: Legal Mistakes That Can Cost You Big (03 December 2009, CIO)
- Why Benchmarking Cloud vs. Current IT Costs is So Hard (03 December 2009, CIO)
- Twitter Alternatives That Are All Business (04 December 2009, CIO)
- What to consider before outsourcing functions (01 December 2009, Business Africa)
- IT infrastructure outsourcing on the rise (06 December 2009, Offshoring Times)
- Defizitsünder: Deutschland und Frankreich bekommen Frist bis 2013 (02 December 2009, Handelsblatt)
- Hightech-Branche blickt optimistisch ins nächste Jahr (02 December 2009, ZDNet.de)
- Gartner-Markttrends 2009: Die gefragtesten SaaS-Angebote (04 December 2009, CIO)
- Software-Entwicklung: Agile Industrialisierung (04 December 2009, Silicon.de)

Press review week 46/2009

- The Other Side Of Outsourcing (02 novembere 2009, Forbes)
- Technology doesn’t isolate people: U.S. study The survey was sparked by a 2006 study (06 november 2009, CIOL)
- Industry to develop cloud computing code of conduct (04 november 2009, itnews)
- Indian outsourcing companies eyes Latin America (04 november 2009, Offshoring Times)
- The next step for Twitter Lists — Entire countries (4 november 2009, Techcrunch)
- Anwender kennen ihre Sourcing-Kosten nicht (02 november 2009, computerwoche)
- Outsourcing-Umsätze in Europa fast halbiert (02 november 2009, CIO)
- Wie sieht die IT nach der Krise aus? (02 november 2009, computerwoche)
- IT-Nachwuchs will weg aus Deutschland (05 november 2009, CIO)

Offshore / Nearshore: The Geopolitics of IT

In a conversation with one of our JV partners last week we spoke a bit about the geopolitical and strategic nature of offshoring. For a few minutes, we considered the global outsourcing map.

We came to the conclusion that the “Eastern Europe” demand was responding to social and cultural issues and kept both parties between protectionism and competitive relocation.
“Asia” is mostly a matter of cost reduction, when constraints of time shift, flow of goods, people and culture are not obstacles.

I am stating here what has been obvious for years. Besides this simple mapping, which already requires the construction of a complex network of production units in order to be exhaustive, I realize that there are also regions with specialties that are related either to old technological specialization of these countries, or to a perfectly contemporary desire to develop their business portfolio.

Let’s say that among the offshore countries, everybody does business data processing but not all in the same way:

- small countries in Eastern Europe (Slovakia, Czech Republic, the Baltic Countries, Bulgaria, Moldova) are mostly involved in small projects. They are often strong enough to support an innovation process or small maintenances. Few human resources often lead to prohibitive cost levels (except Bulgaria and Moldova).

- large countries in Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Russia. They have the power to build project platforms with dozens of collaborators (including more than 50). But they are also involved in small projects. They often have a catalog with important specialties, whether in infrastructure or large applications (SAP, Oracle, BO, ETL …). This allows them to exceed the standard typology of usual offshore development project (Java / Dotnet +1 DB).

- Asian countries inspire us by their ability to upload hundreds of collaborators but worry us because of functional aspects and communication.

In embedded computing it is much more complex because very few countries actually do it when the demand explodes. Choosing a production area in this respect is not easy because the client often requires a high level of expertise. I’m saying EXPERTISE AND NOT JUST EXPERIENCE. This expertise is often acquired by participation in projects in the industrial field of reference for each client.

So where can we make embedded aeronautics? Of course where we build aircrafts: in Russia, a bit in Ukraine and Brazil. But the Indian policy is also starting to be successful, because from now on there are real capabilities. However, be careful, because on this market, membership to NATO may be decisive.

Where can I make embedded telco: where we have been strong in telecom for a long time. In Russia, Romania, India, Poland.

What about automotive? Romania, Poland, Russia… and India.

In conclusion, wanting to offshore or nearshore today, is no longer enough, because the promise of cost reduction does not satiate contractors anymore. Offshore countries had to specialize, to become more professional. Nevertheless, we cannot achieve progress without a thorough analysis of the national logics of competitiveness and excellence, that are developed both on the legacies of the past and on development policies.

In this context an offshore/nearshore player will determine its choices based on the offer he intends to deploy. One has to admit that, to date, only India offers a full specialties chart; Russia is not far behind. On the contrary, both have serious problems when working in too precise areas or when the communication process becomes complex, including, for example, round-trips between client and suppliers, or the understanding of specifications written in other languages than English, many years before offshore outsourcing.

For all these reasons, I conclude that the offshore world is forced to make choices dictated by what I call “geopolitics of service supply”. I don’t know how one can be a complete low cost outsourcer nowadays, without having offices in Europe and Asia. This seems to be the minimum requirement. Yet, several units on both continents may be necessary in order to have a portfolio of specialties that tend to be exhaustive.

I think it is an early analysis of this constraint that allowed Pentalog to dig a gap with its competitors. We have first implemented it at the scale of Romania-Moldova, and later on in Asia. The benchmark hasn’t not finished yet. Romania is not the nearshore of Sweden (we will therefore go to Petersburg and Riga), India requires compensations in engineering when we sell them Airbuses (therefore we will think about India), the explosion of BPO could bring a smile for Morocco… ITO, BPO, EDO, are never-ending stories!

AVERAGE PRICE REPORT (DAILY RATES)
2nd quarter 2009

460
137
175
91
256