Explosion of data and document volumes, growing complexity of solutions related to their processing and management, data opening to integrate these solutions… so many client issues and daily intervention areas for Océane Consulting Data Management, a Digital Services Company (ESN) and Pure Player Integrator and Publisher for Dematerialization & Digitalization.
Sébastien Guillaume, Technical Director, exposes and explains the technical and technological challenges to be met in a market in " perpetual motion " that requires a " constant renewal " of expertise.
How long have you been with Océane Consulting Data Management and what is your role within the company? Could you briefly return to your professional background?
Sébastien Guillaume - I joined Océane Consulting Data Management in August 2013, and I lead the Technical Department of the company around two objectives: to technically support projects with our team of experts and to define offerings and partnerships for the coming months and years. I started my professional career in 2000 in development focusing on Integration, Telecoms and Networks, then quickly moved into the worlds of ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and BPM (Business Process Management) at Atos Origin, Sword group, Astone Solutions and now Océane Consulting Data Management. The opportunity came in 2003 when I started integrating EMC Documentum and IBM FileNet solutions for CAC 40 clients in the oil, gas, banking and insurance sectors. ECM and BPM are competencies that are not really taught in school or university; these are so-called "niche" markets. Over several years of experience, I have acquired strong expertise in different products and various solutions but also in their integration into clients' Information Systems, their deployment and the definition of architectures. I have also evolved towards other solutions such as Alfresco or Nuxeo by combining them with dematerialization and portal solutions. Developing your expertise and becoming a specialist in technical solutions is built step by step in the field.
What are your areas of expertise and preference? How does one become an expert in such targeted technologies and solutions?
SG - My skills and preferred areas are oriented around the definition and implementation of complex architectures, the integration of ECM or BPM platforms and solutions based on enterprise data management. The integration of products and platforms in the enterprise is also an area in which I have significant experience.
To become an expert in very targeted and specialized technologies and solutions, you need to be curious, attentive to technological developments, innovation and constantly expanding market solutions. We work in a mature market but in perpetual motion. Expertise is therefore also in constant renewal.
You speak of constant renewal of expertise? How do you manage technological monitoring and knowledge updates?
Interaction with the experts on our technical platform, the technological monitoring we conduct daily, and the training and workshops provided and organized by our organization play a key role in our ability to always stay abreast of technological developments. It is essential to constantly diversify your expertise and not limit yourself to the strict scope of solutions favored by the company as partners. We must constantly build competencies and expertise in many related areas such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) or managing very large volumes, two subjects that occupy a central and transversal place in all our activities.
Monitoring is an important component in our action plan, but we try to advocate a targeted approach to monitoring directly related to our business areas. Theoretical monitoring has no place in our company. For certain subjects, we approach solutions and technologies as potentially integrating into our service and solution offerings. We then enter into a process of knowledge acquisition, estimation and validation of certain technical and functional aspects, group exchanges and then reporting. This processing framework will be increasingly generalized over the coming months. Based on feedback, we can concretely decide to invest, train or propose these solutions on projects or to our clients.
Can you tell us about the major challenges your clients face and what types of missions and projects you work on?
SG - Our clients face several intertwined problems that constitute our most recurring intervention areas: the explosion of data volumes to process, the management of growing solution complexity and interoperability or an assumed opening of all their data to integrate solutions internally and externally. For our clients, it is about offering new services while ensuring the availability, accessibility and security of their data.
I work with the company's technical experts on the implementation of solutions designed to manage high volumes of data (several TeraBytes to PetaBytes) within the framework of complex architectures (global architectures, clouds, automated deployment, service and data management scalability, multiple distributed storage…).
Another recurring intervention area is the evaluation of solutions in place at clients through technical audits and recommendations. This is an essential phase for making the right choices and proposing sustainable and scalable solutions to our clients.
Finally, migration and platform version upgrades, with partners such as Nuxeo or Bonitasoft, are also central topics.
By the way, I want to mention that we go beyond French borders with projects in Europe (Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden…) or internationally (Saudi Arabia, South America…).
How does a technical audit go with a future client? Can you describe this key step for us?
SG - The technical audit is often the result of solution malfunctions (errors, performance, obsolescence…), questions about the reliability of a tool or a lack of client expertise. The solutions implemented require expertise and experience feedback that allow the integrator to anticipate potential malfunctions.
It can happen that the solution is not deployed and configured according to best practices, that specific implementations do not comply with best practices or that the solution generates errors or experiences slowdowns in use. In this context, we intervene with an audit to diagnose, evaluate and propose improvements and corrections with an action plan. It is not uncommon for an audit to highlight unsuitable configuration (hardware/software), an empirical construction of the solution or sometimes the development of already existing functionalities (created through lack of knowledge).
The duration of an audit is in the order of a few days, 3 to 10 days depending on expectations, and aims to clarify the client on the situation, improvement and correction options and their implementation.
Do you consider yourself an evangelist in your profession and in your expertise?
SG - Evangelist, I'm not sure, I consider myself more as a reference for my colleagues and our clients. They can rely on my skills and I particularly enjoy sharing my expertise through training, presentations (conferences, webinars…) or direct exchanges by video, usually.
What do you like about OCDM? How do you explain the seniority of some employees?
SG - Exchanges, interactions, freedom and flexibility in organization are strengths in my view. Many companies communicate about their employer brand, which is very important. On our side, to talk about our employer brand, we emphasize the people and employees of Oceane Consulting Data Management. Others will use the term Team-Building while we prefer to emphasize the term conviviality. This type of culture cannot be decreed or commanded. The seniority of a significant part of our employees comes from this corporate culture nourished by each and every one and a form of freedom in the actions carried out daily. The other element is mutual support, which is an essential point.
CENTRALIZING BBVA'S DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT VIA A SINGLE PLATFORM
Focus on the BBVA project with Sébastien Guillaume, Technical Director of Oceane Consulting Data Management.
BBVA is a Spanish bank based in Madrid that has assets and operations in Spain, Latin America and the United States. I have been working on this project for 4 years, the objective of which is to completely overhaul BBVA's document management which was fragmented across several solutions implemented over time, without overall coherence. The idea is therefore to centralize the Group's document management through a single platform. However, BBVA has 120,000 employees, 40 to 50 million customers and assets of 800 billion. All this has an impact on the project's issues because BBVA manages tens of billions of documents, so we're talking about enormous volumes.
The stakes are therefore multiple: the global and multi-site scope of the project, the volume of data to manage in Petabyte. Given this, it was essential to choose a platform capable of supporting such document volume but also and above all a scalable platform able to absorb future development both in terms of document volume and customer numbers. Nuxeo was chosen because this solution perfectly meets these two imperatives.
This project is representative in the field of document volume management, a complex and recurring subject that concerns all companies. On such a project, it is essential to rely on the team of experts and the partners we have been working with for a long time , like Nuxeo. My expertise is of course to propose solutions but above all to explain pedagogically which is the best and most efficient. This mastery of existing solutions is due to training and constant technological monitoring. We must also train the client on the proposed or preferred solution so they can project themselves forward, this is an essential point. So we make the link and the bridge between the client and the solution provider(s), as in this case between BBVA and Nuxeo. It's certainly complex but fascinating both technologically and humanly.
