Customer satisfaction and continuous process improvement are at the heart of Julien Mellerin's role as Project Director at Océane Consulting Data Management, a pure-play digital services company (ESN) specializing in Dematerialization & Digitalization. How can we create and sustain a climate of trust throughout a multi-year contract? How can we maintain optimal quality levels over the long term? What if clients were to become partners through achievements and over time?
How long have you been with Océane Consulting Data Management and what is your role within the company?
Julien Mellerin - I joined Océane Consulting Data Management in May 2018. I hold the position of Project Director, which revolves around several key areas: supporting our clients in achieving their project objectives, ensuring compliance with our commitments, participating in the organization of our delivery team and embedding it within a continuous improvement process.
Could you briefly outline your professional background?
JM - I currently have 20 years of experience, with 10 years dedicated to developing expertise around off-the-shelf and custom-built portal solutions: marketing sites, Knowledge Management, intranet, extranet, online stores… Following a Validation of Prior Learning (VAE), I obtained a Master's degree in Computer Science and Management. Then for 5 to 6 years I worked at the intersection of functional and technical expertise and project management on both the implementation (MOE) and client (MOA) sides in the ECM (Enterprise Content Management) field at a large service provider. Since joining Océane Consulting Data Management, I have specialized in managing DMS/ECM (Document Management System/Enterprise Content Management) projects and specialized solutions (custom developments).
How does one become an expert in such targeted technologies and solutions?
JM - At some point, every organization must address how information, content and data are distributed and preserved. I acquired this expertise throughout my career. When I worked in the portal solutions field, this question already arose since that business requires interconnecting various ECM solutions ranging from DMS to business process management solutions, to name just a few. So I had the opportunity early on to work on several of these technologies as part of major projects, notably for a well-known transport company with 60,000 users and a mutual bank with 75,000 users.
What are your areas of expertise and preference?
JM - As mentioned earlier, I have historically and initially had expertise in portal solutions. Over time, this naturally expanded to ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and its corollaries: BPM (Business Process Management), DMS (Document Management System), archiving… After several years in software engineering roles, I developed an appetite for everything related to continuous improvement, organization, implementation of methods, in short, project management and direction. I arrived here through a passion for quality work and customer satisfaction. The goal being to achieve win-win objectives with our clients.
What are the major issues your clients face and what types of missions and projects do you work on?
Primarily, we work on updating or overhauling solutions on aging systems that have been developed haphazardly over the years. We work on projects to digitize business processes involving either documentary content or other types of business or technical data. We very often encounter clients with a tangle of unwieldy solutions that generate dysfunctions. Our role is to remedy this to move toward better information management, both functionally: the right information to the right person at the right time; and technically: performance, security, costs…
Our greatest challenge often lies in properly understanding user requirements from the outset. Needs can vary depending on different departments and business areas. So we help them understand one another internally and then translate their needs into a technical response suited to everyone. Our broad specialization across the different aspects of ECM - BPM, DMS, archiving, connectors, portals… - allows us to do this.
For example, over the past 10 years we have implemented a processing and dematerialization chain for UFF (Union financière de France) administrative documents, which today contains between 30 and 40 million documents. Another significant example is the "Man Overboard" project for ANFR (Agence Nationale des Fréquences) which involved implementing and maintaining processes for registering maritime radio equipment and vessels, or the FCS application for the same client enabling radio frequency and station control. Their database represents several hundred gigabytes excluding documents, so you can imagine the technical challenge!
Software and solution updates to more recent versions are also a recurring topic, particularly Nuxeo version upgrades. This partner solution has drastically evolved its ergonomics for optimal performance. The performance gains are there, but it is essential to support users through these changes.
Finally, we provide many corrective maintenance missions (addressing dysfunctions, managing obsolescence…), evolutionary maintenance (adapting solutions to new business, technical or regulatory needs) or interconnecting complex information systems (DMS, BPM…). The connectors we design enable scalable interconnection of the various components of our clients' Information Systems.
What is a technical audit like with a prospective client? Can you describe this key step?
JM - Over the years, our clients have often built their Information System without necessarily having time to step back and look at its overall picture, and therefore anticipate future developments and needs. This is where a Technical Audit becomes truly valuable. It typically lasts 5 days on average and includes requirements gathering, functional and technical analysis of existing systems, stakeholder interviews and development of recommendations. Following a Technical Audit, we are generally asked to implement our recommendations. This is a critical step that provides strong momentum and acts as a genuine booster for project development.
Do you see yourself as an evangelist in your profession and expertise? JM - That term seems a bit presumptuous. I would rather say that we have a strong ability to build relevant and effective conclusions and proposals based on listening to and understanding our clients' issues. This involves constant self-questioning, an aptitude for translating the needs of different stakeholders and permanent technology monitoring to stay as close as possible to client demands. We arrive at our clients' sites with extensive experience and solid expertise, proven methods, and we build specific and tailored solutions alongside them.
How do you manage technology monitoring?
JM - We are fortunate to have an integrated technical team and therefore work with experienced colleagues who are aware of technological developments and innovations that move very quickly! To my mind, they are the best vehicles and assets for ensuring constant technology monitoring and supporting our clients toward suitable and effective solutions.
How do you implement the Service Level Agreement in multi-year projects?
JM - First, we need to evaluate the volume of annual requests and their level of complexity by agreeing with our clients on pragmatic criticality criteria. We also need to define each party's responsibilities. From there, we establish in a contract or quality assurance plan the different types and levels of service: hours and days of operation, response and resolution times, request volumes, expertise levels, communication channels, frequency of monitoring and steering meetings, responsibility for deliverables and actions (using the RACI matrix for example, a communication tool allowing visualization of each person's role in a project and thus answering the question "Who does what?"). We have also recently equipped ourselves to automate the prioritization of requests based on their criticality and which can be submitted by multiple clients to the same Expertise Center. This allows us to handle requests more efficiently.
What specific services do you offer in this type of contract?
JM - We offer corrective and evolutionary maintenance services, operational services such as platform health monitoring, audit and consulting services to name a few.
We also wish to develop our offering around testing to propose a range of modular tests during compliance checking phases, which may include: functional tests, integration tests, performance tests…
How do you respond to multi-year project requests and how do you maintain optimal quality levels over time?
JM - We rely on capitalizing on methods, organization and solutions to avoid reinventing the wheel for what has already been done. It's about building on existing solutions while adapting them to the client's specific needs. We also successfully capitalize on lessons learned both within our teams and with our sponsors and users to fully embrace an ISO 9001 approach.
What types of clients do you work with in these contracts?
JM - My largest client over the past year is certainly ANFR (Agence Nationale des Fréquences). We have worked across a broad spectrum of areas: the financing aid request application for mobile and TV reception, maritime radio equipment and vessel registration applications, licensing applications and training for Maritime Radio equipment, frequency and station management and control applications. We also implemented solutions designed to be rolled out across our client's entire Information System with the implementation of a centralized Turing test (Captcha) management solution and will support them in initiating their continuous deployment pipeline…
We have also worked for the Niortais Agglomeration Community on a major DMS project used by local authorities and Water and Sanitation services, as well as on intranets - for the City of Niort and the Agglomeration Community - with a significant version upgrade and upcoming migration.
We should also mention the long-term project with SAFT, which had already selected Nuxeo when we were first approached and which we have been supporting since 2016 to evolve the solution and advise users on deploying its use internationally across all production sites.
There is also UFF (Union financière de France), which is a major project I mentioned earlier.
How has Océane Data Consulting Management managed to evolve its organization to handle multi-year contracts?
JM - Our organization by expertise centers is a definite asset as we work in interaction depending on each project's specificities. Daily exchanges between Project Managers and Center Managers, weekly, monthly and annual workload monitoring, support for project teams by the Technical Management to carry out targeted interventions are also key elements for managing multi-year contracts. Not forgetting of course capitalization, our continuous improvement approach and incorporating lessons learned.
Furthermore, we apply methods such as IREB (requirements engineering), ISTQB for testing, and pre-framing methods that improve understanding of expectations, facilitate decision-making and reduce the risk of scope creep while securing timelines and budgets. Training also plays a major role.
Why do these multi-year contracts hold such an important place within the company?
JM - They represent over 50% of our business with an equitable mix of clients from both the private and public sectors. We therefore have a broad range of references capable of resonating with a wide variety of prospects.
These contracts hold an important place because we record a high renewal rate due to strong customer satisfaction. We often speak of customers but we primarily seek to build a partnership relationship rather than a simple client/supplier relationship. Engaging in a multi-year approach facilitates the client relationship, improves the quality of our advice and the way we technically respond to their needs.
What drives customer satisfaction in this type of contract?
JM - Listening, regular exchanges, service quality, respect for our commitments, our ability to identify win-win solutions and demonstrating our commitment over time are imperatives in long-term contracts. Experience proves to us that we know how to meet these challenges!
