The portrait of an innovative stakeholder from the Pays de la Loire region
28/01/2012
As an engineer by training, Pascal Mounier's career has composed two different periods. After learning about project management, he founded CERIS in 1999. CERIS now has 120 staff and provides services to pharmaceutical and chemical companies.
Can you describe your core skills in a few words?
In 1999, CERIS had just 8 staff – today, it has 120! The original plan was to found a national-scale engineering group and to position it as a supplier of high-added-value services in complex sectors, with the ability to work outside France. Our original strategy was to create a medium-sized company and not a large group of companies. The CERIS group's business activities revolve around three axes. The first is healthcare; we supply engineering services to the industry (e.g. sanofi, Servier and Glaxo), hospitals and laboratories (research and quality control projects). The second theme is sustainable development and the third is industrial IT (automation; mainly). Our development around these three axes involves all aspects of engineering - from design to contracting. The CERIS Group is a holding company with six subsidiaries in France (CERIS Ingénierie, Elix, Gaudin Ingenierie, Cir2d,M2ES Technologies and Paysage de l’Ouest) and one in Algeria. Each subsidiary focuses on a core business activity, with services in the fields of healthcare, the environment, industry and infrastructure.
Who are your customers?
Well, multinationals (like sanofi vaccines, Abbott, Boiron, Urgo, Servier and L'Oreal) but also the Institut de Cancérologie de l’Ouest cancer institute, the Grimaud group (Vivalis and Filavie), Biomatlante and a certain number of university medical centers. In the field of sustainable development, we also have some local authorities as customers.
How have you acquired such prestigious customers? Don't you have any competition?
Above all, we've worked hard to get ourselves known. We sell services that no-one else does. We also sell a broad range of services, extending out to expert analysis. We're atypical. We adopt a global approach to an industrial project; we're able to deal with the process itself, its environment and the building that goes around it. We get involved a long way upstream: organizational analysis, logistics, qualification, process optimization and so on. Our size is one of our strengths and gives us flexibility; we are able to take on work in Sri Lanka or provide assistance to a cyclotron supplier in Ankara, for example.
How do you see CERIS in the future?
At present, we have 120 staff. In 3 or 4 years' time, we'll have to have doubled in size to reach the first milestone that I set myself. That means internal and external growth that matches our development sectors. Our business model will stay the same and we shall have to maintain our level of skill. In France, the engineering market has not yet consolidated - it's still evolving, with around 27,000 companies in the marketplace. The market is poor because little added value is being created. The engineering industry's performance levels will be proportional to its ability to invest in research, although that research has to be funded!
What are your key success factors?
It wasn't at all reasonable to create an engineering company from modest beginnings and then dare to do what we've done. Our ambition sometimes exceeded our abilities and we've taken some very high risks. But we've tried to hold onto our dreams. I prefer to call it a "corporate career", rather than "success", because we've also had a number of failures.
How did you create a competitive team of staff?
The crucial point was our ability to keep our best managers. Recruitments for strategic positions were often due to a serendipitous meeting or an opportunity, although we do also let people develop over time. The management team is able, stable and motivated by growth of the company and, doubtless, our profit-sharing scheme.
What are your corporate values? What is your corporate culture?
The corporate culture is a dimension that we've always taken into account. The notion of "values" is a cornerstone. We drew up our professional code of conduct in the early 2000s – it was the basis of a company seminar and never a marketing tool. We have sometimes chosen our values over economic factors. Our foremost value is to be fair to our staff, our customers and our shareholders. When someone joins CERIS, they know that we have ethical standards. In my opinion, a company is not a company if it doesn't have values!
What advice would you give to a budding entrepreneur?
Never stray from your dreams. Ambition is what drives business creation. Make you get the rights advisors but the ultimate decision is down to you.
What you are expecting to get from Atlanpole today?
I'm hoping that Atlanpole will help us to become better known and raise our profile. Atlanpole can also help us to keep our regional roots and stay closely involved with local networks.
Contact at Atlanpole: Anne Guillemot