After three years of reorganisation and disappointing financial results, Groupe Axime SA, one of France’s top 10 software and systems engineering companies, has balanced its accounts, expanded its national presence and is eying more international business. At the time it was created in 1990 from three companies, Groupe Axime had revenues of between $340m and $500m and 4,000 employees. In slimming down, Axime last year sold its Netsys software products, Sogitel computer systems for estate agents, Axitel banking card technology and ATM banking terminals maintenance subsidiaries. Today, the company has revenues of approximately $322m and 2,500 employees. Its last year-end fiscal results, announced last June, showed a net profit of $5m, compared with a loss the previous year of $13.9m. In its first-half results, scheduled for this month, the company expects to show a profit. Over the same period, the group’s $50m systems engineering subsidiary Axime Ingenierie was devising a three-year plan designed to make [us] more competent than [our] competitors in certain technological areas in order to command prices that will keep [us] profitable, Christian Chevallier, president, told Computergram. Those areas are, of course, the hot-buttons of the industry – client-server architecture, Unix, networks and Electronic Data Interchange, electronic document management, and banking systems and software, among others.
Bankruptcy
Axime Ingenierie is also a logo partner for German software giant SAP AG’s R/3 accounting and business management package. Launched at the beginning of last year, the plan includes three initiatives – national expansion, a quality assurance program and staff retraining. Axime Ingenierie has always been one of the top three systems houses in the north, east and southwest of France, but had no presence at all in the technologically important Rhone-Alpes region, the southeast or the west of the country. The opportunity for expansion into those regions came last September, when systems house Comelog SA filed bankruptcy papers. It was a good-sized company with offices throughout France and boasted 1,000 staff members in 1991, but it had got into difficulty as a result of a badly managed diversification effort. They had something of a suicidal strategy, bidding any price for costly projects, such as a flight management system for Air France and another important project for Credit Agricole, Chevallier explained.
By Marsha Johnston
As far as I know, Comelog finished such projects, but underestimated their cost, sometimes by half. Of course, a lot of companies were doing this; some still are and I think as a result we will probably see more companies fail. At the bankruptcy hearings, Chevallier made a bid only for the southern operations of Comelog. We weren’t interested in the north or the Paris region, he said. Six offers in total were made for the company, some for all, some for just a part, he said. Comelog’s technical expertise in client-server systems and EXA, an integrated banking system developed for local branches of Credit Agricole, also fit in well with Axime’s technological profile. We presented our three-year plan to Comelog’s employees, who had the impression of having got into trouble because nobody at Comelog had had a vision, Chevallier recounts. The company took a vote, which was transmitted to the tribunal. It was an important, favourable element for us. There were even Comelog employees at the tribunal, testifying that it was Axime that they wanted. Consequently, in December, Axime Ingenierie took over Comelog’s southern operations in Lyon, Bordeaux, Nantes, Toulouse, Montpellier, Marseilles and Grenoble, retaining 170 out of its total staff of 250. In 15 days, the staffs were completely integrated, Chevallier says incredulously. It took a year, you know, to put some homogeneity in Axime Ingenierie after the merger of the three companies. Axime Ingenierie’s quality assurance initiative should be completed this year, says Chevallier, as the company awaits certification for ISO 90
00 compliance. Staff retraining is a longer process, he acknowledges, but insists that the company’s skills mix is evolving toward the desired technologies. We’re trying either to hire or train people with the expertise we need, he said. The percentage of our people involved with large IBM systems should continue to decline by approximately 5% per year. Currently, Groupe Axime is strictly a French operation; less than 5% of its revenues are realised outside the hexagon – as the French call their country: look at the shape on the map – and most of those are from big French customers, says spokeswoman Nathalie Lochet.
Telematique
To date, the bulk of its projects that have extended outside French borders involved what the French call telematique, a catch-all term that includes viewdata, voice response systems and facsimile. It also supports a certain amount of systems engineering in Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg. The lack of international aspirations has apparently been more a matter of circumstances than intent, as the reorganised group now has ideas for expanding into the territory of its two neighbours, Spain and Germany. Says the spokeswoman, For the last three years we’ve been losing money and reorganising, so we really couldn’t expand internationally, but now we are looking at those two axes for implanting ourselves abroad. She said the group could possibly announce a partnership agreement with a German services company at its half-year results announcement later this month, but it’s not certain. In Spain, Axime subsidiary ODS will acquire a company with expertise in either engineering or telematique, she said. Groupe Axime is held 62.9% by Banque Paribas, 25.5% by Compagnie Generale des Eaux, with private sharholders having 11.6%. In contrast to the group as a whole, Axime Ingenierie will not venture abroad without doing it in partnership with another part of the group, Chevallier says. Engineering is above all a national trade.
