A team thriving on autonomy: the enterprising spirit of the Salesforce agency at Akkodis

Bertrand Rousset: Salesforce Agency Director

When he joined Akkodis in 2010 as a consultant in a Solution Architect role, Bertrand already had experience of deploying Salesforce in big international companies. Looking back on the early days at the agency, he explains: “Akkodis invested in Salesforce technology, and we got several people working on this project. We then chose to capitalize on this knowledge and expertise, structuring and packaging this service offering with a view to rolling it out to other customers. I am now in charge of this activity, which employs over 120 people in France and supports more than 50 customers.”

As the agency’s manager, Bertrand keeps his finger on the pulse of the business: ensuring profitability and headcount growth. “My daily concern is to keep downtime under control,” he adds, “so that every consultant is busy on a project and fulfilling their potential within the agency. ”

Profitability is not the only factor that comes into play when he talks about managing his agency. Bertrand passionately believes in people. “The team is clearly the strength of the practice, as it covers a wide variety of functions: sales, HR, technical consultants, sales and management.” Multi-skilled, the Salesforce center of expertise operates independently and cross-functionally, allowing them to work with the support of local agencies when they need it.

The practice has become a real hub of expertise, setting Akkodis apart from more generalist digital services providers. It can now challenge integrators and pure players and target new markets.

Speaking of future projects and areas of innovation, Bertrand pinpoints the team’s ever-growing standing that they can continue to build on. “We're gaining a strong reputation in cloud-based services and in a wide range of business sectors, as a result of various projects we've successfully completed. I can mention the education sector, where we have digitized the student application process to colleges and universities, saving schools’ time on administrative tasks. Or the building sector, where we help customers to digitize their construction sites, for example by coordinating technicians on site.”

 It's a high value-added offer that's rare on the market. Several promising and stimulating projects are currently in the pre-sales phase, demonstrating the added value of the Akkodis offering.

Timothée Chatelet: Business Systems Analyst

Timothée was already familiar with Salesforce when working for a pharmaceutical client. What drew him to Akkodis in February 2022 was the expertise and reputation of its Salesforce practice.

Today, he is working as a business systems analyst on the How to manage my construction site solution. He appreciates the trust he receives: “We have senior consultants on this project who let you work independently. This means you can make a lot of progress and at the same time avoid getting bogged down on a more complicated point that demands expertise.”

According to Timothée, the unique feature of this project is that they were able to build a generic package and a custom solution for the client at the same time. This achievement will have repercussions for other Akkodis projects. “We quickly realized how innovative this approach was - both for our team and for our industry as a whole. Online resources on this subject were pretty scarce. Clearly, our work will be beneficial for similar projects in the future.”

When commenting on the highlights of the project, Timothée emphasized the importance of being able to translate customer needs into Salesforce solutions. So how does this work? “The starting point is often 'this is how it works in the existing tool'. At that point, I suggest a new solution to the customer and I put it in place. When you manage a building site, you need to verify the supplier's certifications before you can issue a contract. We created a screen flow that calls up a web service on another platform to check that the certificates are up to date. If they are, the user can issue the contract, otherwise a message is displayed saying that they can't proceed.”

The team can leverage the advances in Salesforce technology to meet these challenges. As new features are deployed, what used to be impossible becomes possible.

Timothée enjoys the opportunity for continuous learning and the technical challenges he faces every day. "As it's a vast and complex project, I've obviously learnt a lot. That's in large part what makes it so rewarding. I've realized that finding solutions for business needs is very challenging - and I hope I'll be able to do the same for future projects.”

Inspired by the work of Bertrand and Timothée? Want to work on engaging, rewarding projects like this? To find out more about our first-class opportunities for career development, get in touch today.