Pentablog: The european offshore, nearshore and right costing blog

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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.
Offshore/Nearshore: news about the web strategy of Pentalog

Pentalog has just launched a major web communication plan, first based on the achievements of the different versions of Pentalog.com. The current version 3.5, derived from the 3.0-one, was designed in 2004 and has generated sales amounting approximately € 15M. Moreover, as I was saying when we launched it, Pentalog.com is not a website but a marketing policy.

When we launched it, we used to have 10 years of experience in selling services and then sought to increase interaction between prospect buyers and the CVs of our employees (the key sale document within software engineering companies). Therefore, we had to increase the number of prospect buyers. Our commercial databases now exceed 20,000 email addresses of professionals in our industry. We later proceeded the same way with our recruitment ads and a database with CVs of developers (20,000 today). We were successful and we employed 90 people in 2007 and 130 in 2008. But we believe that our total capacity is of 700 recruitments, only for Romania!

Still, the web has changed and version 2.0 has gone through there. Older approaches were not obsolete, but they were no longer sufficient. It became necessary to find new things to attract and seduce. Thus, blogs have joined Pentalog.com, upgrading it to version 3.5 that we are currently using. The web policy of Pentalog was enriched with a galaxy of new tools: chat rooms, pentablog.fr, blog.biz, joblog.ro, joblog.vn, joblog.fr, jolog.biz, Peoplecentric.ro, tools.people-centric.ro. We should also add a much greater appeal to videos. The number of monthly visits has reached the honorable figure of 50,000, which still represents more than 1,600 visits per day, while we are not exactly talking about services for the general public!
The investment multiplier has worked perfectly, since we’ve gone from an annual sales figure of € 2 million to € 10 million, without an increase in sales force, or 400% in 5 years. The concept was worthwhile. The total investment for all versions, including People Centric, probably did not exceed € 150,000 for a 100-times higher sales figure. To this we must add the operating budget for version 3, which is € 150 000 / year, or 750 000 for the entire period. Investment + operation are 16 times lower than sales.

And I am not talking about performance in recruitment which, through a well-oiled process, allowing very precise targeting, allows the recruitment of 70% of the employees identified by our branch managers. Totaling all costs of the Pentalog structures (including myself), we reach a budget per employee that is 33 times lower than the average 60% in our industry, despite the cost of a powerful Datacenter, continuous training, trainees, branch openings and… a growth of 60% per year. Pentalog.com is the key of our global BM.

In August 2008, we announced our expansion plans. We have considered growth models, schedules… but now we need tools! Let’s go forward towards the Pentalog 2010 web concept!
This week one of our esteemed colleagues visited us and we have opened our heart to him to work together on this new concept. We want heavy stuff and multipliers again, although we are aware that this is getting more difficult than in 2004. He will help us leading this version change, to ensure consistency of design, to assess and prioritize ideas.

We want the 2010 version to take advantage of the following:

  • Achievements of Pentalog, in terms of online sales of intellectual services (that is simple, we are still the only ones)
  • Achievements of Pentalog, in terms of electronic business files for our customers (shopping cart, order, catalog, everything must be considered)
  • The use of video in cognitive processes (higher sensitivity to the story verbally related by a person)
  • Achievements in terms of web 2.0 interaction, call/contact center of our recruitment policy

    • We will also launch two sites in addition to the existing Pentalog portal. The first-one will establish the shortest route to a decision to purchase IT services / consulting. The second will be completely dedicated to the JV creation strategy of our expansion plan “30-2013″.
    The investment should be roughly compared to what has been done in 2004. However, the large appeal to videos could significantly increase the operating budget.

    Stay tuned. We will tell you more by the end of June.


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