Author and Performance Coach Mark McGregor recently accepted an invitation from Casewise to attend the Casewise France User Conference in Paris.
Day 1 of Mark’s 2 day visit to the French capital was spent meeting with Mega CEO Lucio de Risi followed by dinner with Henry Peret of Forrester Research.
Day 2 was then spent at the Casewise France User Conference where Mark’s prime interest was how the users were really getting benefits from modeling as well as to find out whether Casewise were one of the exceptions to the rule abut UK software companies in France. Here’s what Mark had to say…
Although the group size was fairly small around 30 people (there had been a strike that day in Paris!), there was certainly plenty of buzz about the place. I always find it fascinating to stand off to the side and watch the interactions taking place. Of course I also stand to the side because my French is poor, with speaking something of a challenge; however I do comprehend conversations on this particular subject pretty well.
For me and I suspect others the highlight of the day was the two user presentations from Swiss Life and The Ministry of Education. The latter was one of the most passionate and engaging talks I have ever seen at a user conference. I am sure the Casewise team loved it, not least because the presenter was happy to say how they had previously used and thrown out one of their competitor’s tools and migrated to Casewise. In his eyes Casewise offered a much better Enterprise Architecture tool and provided better support both in terms of service and product than their previous supplier. In his words “Casewise helped to reduce my stress levels and make my life easier”.
I guess he should know what he is talking about. The size and complexity of the undertaking by the Ministry was breathtaking. I have to say as he first outlined their story I was thinking “Here we go again another architecture for the sake of it project”, but by the end I was sold. This team at the Ministry of Education have started to achieve what so many dream of. Undertaking a large scale Enterprise Architecture project but linking it to realisable business benefits that kept all the stakeholders engaged and involved. I for one hope to hear more from them 12 months down line to see if they can keep up the impetus on the project. I am also sure that the Casewise team hope so too! It seems that off the back of this contract there are many other people now taking on Corporate Modeler.
The other presentation that caught my interest was the first one from Swiss Life. Another of those user presentations you just love. One where they talk about what did not work as well as what did. So, what you ask did not work? Well not so much did not work but a lesson for the future was that they realised that they had left it too long before bringing on board the appropriate tools, for them it was Corporate Modeller. I got the impression that analysts had suggested that they should start without tools and then only bring them on later. Although they kept to time, they suggested that this delay could have had a big impact on the project. Certainly I got the impression that some of the impact analysis could have benefited from proper tooling sooner.
Swiss Life were achieving a lot from a pretty small team, they appear to only be 3 people in their core team, yet they managed to capture and describe over 100 processes in very short order. From these they were able to add risks and identify compliance challenges very quickly. Again another of those projects that are being presented half way through, but great to hear how smart people can really make modelling tools work fast and effectively.
So finally, to answer my own question. Yes, it does appear that the Casewise team are bucking the trend and that a UK company is doing very well over there. This is in no small part due to the way Casewise are approaching the market. France as has been said are very people centric, they want to engage with people before they buy and they want to know that people are on the ground able to visit and talk when there is a problem. Before anyone tells me this is too expensive, think differently. The French are less willing to pay a premium for service than we are in the UK, but they also won’t buy without a relationship, so avoiding the relationship is simply avoiding the revenue.
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