At a time when many companies are outsourcing their services abroad, having a technical hub based in France that brings together all expertise in one location is a competitive advantage. This is the case of Océane Consulting Data Management, a digital services company (ESN) integrator and publisher, Pure Player in Digital Transformation. Kamel Azeg, Operations Director, provides an overview of the strengths and assets of this organization that makes it possible to combine performance, team cohesion and skills development around flagship and targeted expertise.
You head the technical hub of Océane Consulting Data Management based in Brittany. What makes this hub a strength and a singularity in your sector?
Kamel Azeg - This technical hub located near Rennes is a real singularity while many of our competitors outsource their services abroad at low cost for sometimes questionable and approximate quality.
It is the internal organization that flows from this technical hub that constitutes a real strength for our company. Indeed, all human resources - 30 employees - and technical resources are available in the same place. In our sector, this is a singularity that creates strong company value. It is clear that our hub generates rich professional interactions, strong team cohesion and proximity between our employees that positively impact the quality of our interventions with our clients. This hub promotes community living and we benefit from a quality of professional and human life that is rather rare in our sector. The seniority of most of our employees speaks for itself. Many employees also have a social life and connections outside the office.
What are the organizational assets of this collaborative and centralized hub in Breton territory?
KA - Our collaborative technical hub constitutes added value and a strong proposition for our clients because they benefit from a set of diverse and cross-functional skills brought together in one location. This generates fluidity and agility in the management of our projects and the completion of our missions, with, as a result, undeniable gains in terms of delivery time, budget and optimal management of peak loads.
Our organization also allows us to target quite varied services ranging from large AMM (Application Maintenance) services to fixed-price projects lasting several months. Or even expertise services of 15 to 20 days for clients with development needs or intervention requirements on specific points. Not to mention, of course, support for upstream missions: technical audit, solution selection… Our organization creates flexibility that allows us to adapt to the organizational mode and specific requests of our clients.
What are the flagship expertise on the hub?
KA - Our flagship expertise stems from expertise in document management and information carried by the document. We are experts in Hyland-Nuxeo solutions (content management expertise) and Bonitasoft (expertise in Business Process Management, BPM). One cannot be without the other. These two high-performance solutions have a common technical foundation: Java for the back-end and JavaScript/TypeScript for the front-end. These are two fairly similar tools. Java and JavaScript technologies are well established in the entity, which allows us to carry out significant and large-scale support missions. We also master all major operating systems on which we will work such as Linux or Windows as well as the most commonly used database management systems. Through technical capillarity we are today developing a digital offer including custom Web solutions, B2B portals, UX/UI…
Our expertise therefore lies in our ability to propose partner solutions with which we work and on which we have developed strong mastery. Our expertise also lies in our strong ability to integrate these partner solutions into the existing information systems of our clients, sometimes in very complex scenarios.
Why did you target these technologies and solutions?
KA - It is basically a technological choice because these solutions meet a large part of the needs of our clients and prospects both in functional and technical terms. Hyland-Nuxeo and Bonitasoft solutions are very high-performing, notably their significant load capacity and their easy interactions with other applications.
The choice of these partners was therefore made according to technical but also relational criteria. Humans and exchange are important dimensions both with our partners, internally and with our clients. We have a relationship that goes beyond a simple commercial relationship with these historical partners. We can discuss with them and we are in regular exchange, we therefore approach the pre-sales phases with peace of mind. And most importantly, we share common values. The 4 values of Océane Consulting Data Management are autonomy, expertise, friendliness and customer satisfaction. At Bonitasoft, the 4 key values are collaboration, excellence, transparency and merit. We are therefore on the same wavelength because these values meet and complement each other. These values are not just words, these words are anchored within our company, in our organization and our processes. For example, annual evaluations are carried out with us through the lens of these 4 values.
Q - What benefits does this targeted expertise and these solutions offer?
KA - We position ourselves only on requests and projects that call upon our expertise. Consequently, we are pursuing a strategy of selecting calls for proposals and projects upstream in order to prioritize qualitative interventions on which we have strong expertise. We therefore have a clearly identified positioning, without scattering, which generates long collaborations with our clients as a general rule.
We win 3 out of 4 calls for proposals because we position ourselves either on new offers linked by capillarity from clients who already trust us, or on mastered offers (notably the Hyland-Nuxeo solution) with many references.
Q - How do you maintain a high level of qualification on technologies that evolve and change so quickly?
KA - Océane Consulting Data Management invests heavily in its technical experts through training. To meet as many issues as possible and growing complexity of requests, it is essential to have as many skills as possible and especially to keep up with technological developments so numerous in our sector. Between 2 and 3 minimum trainings are offered each year to all hub participants around the technologies and solutions of our partners as well as those specifically requested by our clients.
Training through capillarity also plays a very important role, that is the whole strength of the technical hub, interactions are possible at any time, junior staff can for example call upon colleagues who have greater seniority.
Workshops on specific technical points take place throughout the year, this is continuous updating anchored in the daily life of the hub.
Finally, I would like to emphasize that maintaining and developing qualification depends on retaining teams and employees in the company. This makes it possible to create a space where it is possible to flourish, to progress, to develop skills together and to feel good. A setting where it is good to be and to evolve!
