STERLING, VA--(Marketwired - October 21, 2015) - Pierre Baudoin is the CEO of abas Ibérica, located in Spain, and abas France. He started with the company in 2001 -- the year abas Ibérica joined the abas AG partner network. We sat down with Pierre to learn more about his role with abas Ibérica as well as to get his thoughts on what it means for abas to be a global company.
Question: Can you speak about your specific role with abas Ibérica and abas France, as well as the roles each company plays within abas' global network?
Answer:
As the CEO of both abas Ibérica and abas France, my role is to provide strategic oversight and maintain the health of both businesses. For my day-to-day duties, I am very involved in organizing our sales department and coordinating all marketing activities. I truly enjoy getting to have a hand in these customer-focused processes.
abas Ibérica joined abas AG's partner network in 2001, and abas France came in a few years later. Both of these regions are key growth markets for abas as a whole, and they're our fastest-growing markets in Europe. As the oldest partner in the abas network, we're critical for serving these non-German speaking markets.
Our connection with abas AG and the rest of our international partners gives us an advantage in these growing markets. Many of our competitors in the enterprise resource planning markets in Spain and France have not reached the level of maturity that we have in terms of our internal processes, products and philosophy. We're really setting the benchmark for success in both regions. Additionally, our success provides abas a model for future expansions into new regions.
Question: How is the global nature of abas a key strength for the company? How does that benefit the customers?
Answer:
We are a global company, and we serve global customers. Even though we're an ERP company and our customers are in a variety of different industries, they have many of the same complexities and challenges that stem from running a global operation as we do. We can relate on a close level to them. In Spain and France, most of our customers are headquartered here but have their production processes or subsidiaries in other countries.
It's not only a question of being global, though. When you think of Microsoft -- they're a global company. We're more than just a global company. We're a collaborative network of specialists in our offerings and the industries we serve.
That's the real benefit here. We aren't competing with one another, with the U.S. going against Germany, or Germany against us. We collaborate with our abas partners and we work together to benefit each other. By extension, we're doing what's best for our customers.
For example, if one of our customers in Spain needs to expand production to China, we can get our Chinese partners involved to give the customer better service. All the while, we're working together to make sure all parts of the customer's business are running seamlessly. The thing is, we know we can't compete with each other's local expertise, so we work together and have great collaboration. Lots of global companies compete among themselves, and it harms the customers because their vendors seem to have two separate, self-serving goals.
Another important point is that being a global network of partners gives us stability, which is also good for our customers. They know that when they work with us, we'll still be around in four or five years to provide service and upgrades. During the European economic crisis, we were able weather the storm because we had strong ties with the rest of our partners. The crisis affected Spain and France greatly, but we still grew because of the strength of abas as a whole.
Question: Can you talk about the impact of the recession in Southern Europe and how process and infrastructure improvements like ERP can position a company to be stronger when the economy bounces back?
Answer:
I do have a good example of this: Right around 2007-2008, we started working with an automotive supplier here in Spain. June 2008 is considered the beginning of the crisis in Spain, and at that time, this company had about 200 employees. We completed the implementation, and soon after the project was done, they lost over 100 employees.
Speaking with our contacts at the business, we've learned that the abas ERP system played a big role in helping the company make it through the crisis. This is because our system made the company more flexible. The system was designed to run a company with 200+ employees, but they were still able to use it effectively even though their staff was almost one-half of that during the worst years of the crisis.
The client told me that abas gave him the flexibility to reduce redundant staff members. The system automates a lot of the processes, and the company could run smoothly even with a reduced staff since the system could do much of the heavy lifting.
Also, abas ERP is very competitive when it comes to maintenance costs. We made two or three upgrades for this client during these crisis years. Remember that this company ran into some hard times -- just like in the U.S., the Spanish automotive industry was among the most-affected by the recession. Our cost-effective upgrades gave them the benefit of maintaining their system and operations even when many of their competitors were going under.
I'm proud to say that this client is still with us and is steadily growing back to its pre-recession size.
abas is an innovator of ERP solutions for mid-size businesses aspiring to be leaders in their industry. We use our 30+ years of experience to deliver exactly what our customers need -- software that is agile, intuitive, sustainable for the long term, and that works anywhere around the world.
Find out more about abas ERP on the web at www.abas-ERP.com, on twitter at abas USA, or on Facebook at abas-USA.
Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2015/10/15/11G067751/Images/Pierre-187658456119.jpeg
Contact Information:
Contact:
Caroline Gerenyi
