Three questions for ...
Patrice Demay
Member of the Management Board - Director of Commercial Development France
What is your view of the future, following the two-percent decline in your business in France in 2009 ?
P. Demay : We could not escape the impact of the downturn even if, in terms of volume, we showed in 2009 that our business model stood up well during a recession.
Over the past few years, our clients’ needs have become more complex. Whether we are capable of responding to their demands will determine how successful we are in the future. Organic growth will resume in France in 2010, because we were able to hold on to our human resources during the crisis, while at the same time continuing to make capital expenditures. Accordingly, we should be in a position to take full advantage of any turnaround in our sector.
The Syntec Numeric industry association is expecting growth of around 1 percent in the industry and, as in the past, we will do two or three times as well as the rest of the sector.
You mentioned more complex needs. How is your company responding to this ?
P. Demay : Our clients seek to rationalize their capital expenditures and are looking to work with partners who can contribute significant technological and methodological value added . The golden age of technical assistance is vanishing fast to make room for that of comprehensive solutions.
We have capitalized considerably on the transformation of companies’ operations since the early 2000s. Today, we have become a stakeholder in this evolution. We have developed an approach to support our clients, known as the Extended Enterprise Improvement Process, or EEIP for short.
Our consulting role starts as soon as the process is initiated and we keep adapting our role to the specific needs of each situation. The outcome is a complete line of services, with clients able to choose the specific work units they need from a list, as their project moves ahead. This approach, which we keep improving, has won over many of our customers.
Do you plan to do any hiring in France in 2010 ?
P. Demay : We never stopped hiring staff, even though we took on far fewer new consultants in 2009 than in previous years. If the market keeps improving as it has since September 2009, we’re likely to hire several hundred consultants in 2010.
We expect this to be complicated by the fact that, in an increasing number of areas, there is currently a shortage of consultants with the right expertise. Fortunately, we continued to invest in the development of those skills during the recession and are going to be able to deal with this situation.
We’ve been very closely involved in our profession for several years. We work with schools and associations to promote careers in engineering and to attract students to our industry. I myself serve as the Syntec Numeric vice president for ICT.