Partie 2 : Retranscription écrite de la VRAI KEYNOTE « All Employees call » du DG ATOS Yves BERNEART devant les 100 000 salariés le 9 nov 2023 [100% exclu-blog]

2023 11 09-Group All Employee Call

Hello and welcome everyone.

I’m Constance Arnoux from Public Relations and I’m going to be your host today for this all employee live with a brand new format.

I’m pleased to welcome with us today on stage our Group CEO Yves Bernard.

Hello Yves. Thank you for being with us.

I know there has been quite a lot in motion in the group since our last all employee meeting. We have a new president of the Board. We announced our Q3 results, we confirmed that 2023 plan and we welcomed a new anchor investor in the group.

So I know everyone on the call would appreciate an update from you on these strategic topics. Let’s start maybe with where we are now and where we want to go in the coming weeks.

Well, thanks Constance and again thanks for setting this up. I know it’s under the sponsorship of Paul and this is a great moment to exchange together and we’re going to have questions also I understand. So that’s really nice.

Exactly.

First of all, I’m again to repeat extremely pleased to have joined the group. I discover fantastic talent, fantastic leaders fantastic teams and as well talking to clients talking to partners, I see the I would say challenges around but I will come to that.

So opportunities are extremely clear because if I look to all the offerings we have all of them are kind of rotating to the new whether they are in Tech Foundations or Eviden for the group. It brings me pride because it would have been extremely hard to accelerate the strategy if we don’t have so strong offerings right across the board whether it is infrastructure, desktop, the tech services piece, the cloud, the digital, the critical systems as well the high performance computing and security. And there is more to come.

That’s a good thing that what I saw whenever I talked to someone said yes, but I’m working on this. So I think that that’s really good to see that we are not only doing what makes sense for today for always being ahead of the curve when I heard what we do for Quantum computing, for example, I see that we are ahead of the market. So that’s really nice. Of course there are challenges and I’m not everyday taking that surprise, but sometimes there is surprise coming. So I’m taking all of them they by day and try with the team I was with Philippe and Nourdine just together as a team. So that’s a bit also my style you know I want to really and I hope you’ve seen that listen a lot in order to take the appropriate decision as a team and not like someone coming and say we should do this and this. No, it would never work.

There’s been some changes in management. You may have seen that at the board. And there are some changes as well within the board and it’s like in every team we need to rotate. So look at that as something that makes sense. We always need all of us, myself, I came in, rotate and we want to step up be outside of our comfort zone. So it’s part of the normal things we do. Second point to say where we are on Q3. So we announced the result, the most important message othe result is that we confirm what we call the guidance which means what we’re going to deliver by December for the full year.And this is what is most important is that we must deliver on those guidance and it’s not like my job or your job or a management it’s everyone, we all of us know what we have to do to deliver whether we are in sales in delivery, in any role, we have a role to contribute to deliver the guidance which is around sales, revenue, profitability, etcetera. So when you are on an account you what has to be has to be done.

And with that there is no risk attached to it in the sense that people may say is it too challenging to achieve. I think if we focus correctly, client are choosing us or people and our expertise. So it’s about fronting and moving in front of clients, what are our skills and then they move on, and work with us and whenever we had issues, I’ve been stepping in on a few accounts because clients were questioning, oh what about the strategy and we have answers, we have financial stability that we created with our CFO.

And therefore the future is secure and we have a strategy for the more mid term, long term that you all know that we are executing. So really focusing on closing 2023 as planned and then we are planning to for 2024 a bit already. The other thing I mentioned it a bit before and I think is to your answer it’s good to close on it is to your question is we are already in the new. So when I listen to the team on what we do for example in Gen AI, this is a fantastic program the GenAI program. We will talk about it today, I heard and when I look around that we are bringing new 3 new scaler when you look to the startup program. And this is essential because you need to show to client not only you bring the best partner but as well you bring all the startup, the ecosystem around to have a full end to end solution and therefore that’s what I believe with all of this.

We have the opportunity to make a real big impact across the globe, across all client portfolios, so with this, I think we just need to understand that it’s not just an individual thing. We all have to be good in what we do, but it’s a team thing. So we all have to work together across the two entities, across every entity. We need to cross sell and cross deliver. I said we need to empower people, which doesn’t mean you know, we delegate everything and then there is no discipline. It’s about empowerment. So you can innovate but as well be super disciplined in the operation, in the way we deliver and ensuring that we all go for one mission as a team. And I think that’s my feedback to your question Constance. Thank you were talking about what’s new in the group, I think the latest news and what is on everyone’s mind today is Onepoint becoming a lead investor in Atos.

Onepoint is a technology consulting firm in Europe, as most of us know, and last week they announced a 9.9% share capital in Atos maybe questions for you. Was that a surprise? Is it a good news? And most importantly does it impact our plans for the group? OK, well that’s a good question because it just happened indeed. So first of all, before that, I don’t know whether you read, but we see that a lot in France, some minority investors who are sending not always positive messages and we heard things.

This is a very positive investor who came in right because the positive message that he believes in the company because it’s an individual who is called David Layani who is owning Onepoint. And he has put his own money on it. So I talked to him and he really trusts the strategy we have set and the asset that is the Atos group with Tech F and Eviden. So it’s a demonstration of trust, so we should receive it as a very positive message.

It’s a very good sign for investors, meaning all the others say, oh he has done that, maybe that makes sense for us as well and when I did the the roadshow with Paul Saleh our CFO, we had a lot of investor feedback who were you know in the way to come back and reinvesting etcetera. So there is a wave, a positive wave, of investor around I believe. It’s my belief. It doesn’t impact our strategy.

Absolutely not, and we already communicated with the assembly, with the separation etcetera. So obviously as we speak today when talking to them, we are we keep executing, we are getting the agreement with EPEI as you know for Tech F before Christmas. So we are on it. We were just discussing about it before. And it’s important to really acknowledge that having an investor like him, it’s important because it’s what we call anchor investor, right anchor investor and it brings stability right and some others will step up, I believe it’s a bet, but we’ll see what happens.

So we discussed with them and like recently 2 weeks ago with the leadership team, we said we need to have much more partnerships like for example with the software partners. To go to market together, Microsoft, Amazon, Google we going to reinforce our partnership, As well with Salesforce, Servicenow, SAP but all those like Oracle also but as well with strategy firm. You say it’s a technology consulting strategy company and Onepoint was part of that list like others like on SAP, we could have more partnership and it’s not related to the fact that they are investing but for sure we can discuss about investments like our teams. in India connected, why not, we could work with Onepoint on some delivery jobs. You know, we’ll see. But we will discuss for sure as we plan to discuss with others.

Thank you.

So positive welcome.

Thank you for your insights and definitely lots going on, a lot in motion in the group at the moment and speaking of motion, let’s move to our first guest today with us as time is passing by quickly I’m welcoming with us Nacho Moros from the major events team to discuss the technology operation center for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Hello, Nacho.

Hello Constance, hello Yves, it’s great to be today with you from Madrid live.

Very good.

Maybe a first question for Nacho

Sure

So well naturally obviously we are all going wait for those Olympic games to come. So I very much welcome you to be able to discuss that today and I understand historically we have been involved with developing games. I understand I’ve been watching that from the outside world as well looking how great you are doing and it was for me extremely impressive to see it even I didn’t know the inside of it which I’m sure is extremely complex. So I really want to come and see what you do over there to really realise the level of complexity and the achievement you deliver. So the obvious question is I want, and I guess all of us, we want to know more about this critical operation center and how overall Atos is supporting the games so first question.

Fair question.

A few weeks ago we open officially the technical operation center which is located in the headquarters of Paris 2024, so that the TOC is the control and command center for the technology that supervises all the 63 competition and non competition venues you may say it’s the IT center for everything we do for the games and Atos being the IT integrator we are are making the link between everything happening there.

We leveraged the TOC coordinating more than 140 managers from Atos that are controlling all day operational locations and to give you an idea of the dimension of this of this facility, it operates during the games on 24 by 7 basis and looking over more than 2000 experts from Atos and from the other 14 IT partners.

Excellent.

And I know by the way it works because I already booked my tickets for the family

What I understand Nacho and thank you for sharing that, because that’s a tremendous team working on this and Nourdine the other day was explaining to me what we do, but talking to you directly now will get even more insight So I understand that with each Olympic and Paralympic Games we always raise the bar. So what’s new new this time for Paris 24? OK, well, first we need to adjust, adapt our systems to the large flow of data that we will process Just keep in mind that we are delivering more than 150 applications to Paris 2024 This games is more connected than than the last ones and but we still need to deliver the and set the results quicker than ever. It takes 3 milliseconds to distribute any data that is happening in any competition to the broadcasters and public webs, websites and media.

These days the clients are more demanding in terms of quantity of data and availability of the data and to give you another example, in a few weeks we will open the accreditation system where we will manage more than half a million of applications and this system is integrated with the local security agencies because will be the visa to enter in France for all people participating in Olympic and Paralympic Games.

OK. Very clear. Thank you, Nacho.

That’s great. Great work and thank you, Nacho and teams.

Maybe we’ll let you Nacho get back to it and get ready for the games. Maybe Yves. Let’s move on to another hot topic at the moment in the group, GenAI.

Our next guest with us today is Jen Anderson from the UK, who works everyday with our clients to leverage the power of GenAI. Hello, Jen.

Hey Constance, Yves.

Thanks for having me here today.

Oh, thank you so much. Should I ask a question.

Well, I’m very interested about Gen AI again and I know from what I heard that Atos has been involved from the early days on it you know, being a pioneer in AI innovation and maybe we should talk more about it by the way, externally, because I think what we do is brilliant What I want to know more around, you know, the Gen AI acceleration program. So if you could tell us a bit more about this initiative so we all learn from it and we can leverage. What does it mean for our clients in particular?

Yeah, absolutely. So this program is the latest chapter in our story about AI innovation and it’s about setting up our customers on a fast track to generative AI. So if you kind of think about it, it’s like a co-pilot for their genAI journey. So we’re not just handing them like a road map, but it’s a partnership working together and helping to navigate at every turn. So this consultative led approach that we have means we sit down with our customers and we really discussed their business challenges and pinpoint solution that can work for them. So this our five genAI accelerators which are part of this program really enhance and expediate this process so they range from industry accelerators which are faster value, repeatable use cases, builder accelerators which really advance development to help build and embed new genAI products.

We have these model accelerators which really help fine tune and customize and create GenAI models with leading technologies and platforms like public clouds and for those customers who are looking for greater performance from their models, we are really uniquely placed to have this performance accelerator which really takes the advanced computing required from this from our own supercomputers and then our final accelerator is our security accelerator and that provides end to end security consulting integration and operations and including in that is our AI Cyber mesh which is powered by GenAI and all of these accelerators of course are underpinned by our responsible and ethical approach to genAI. So I guess for our customers it’s just really means that they can really rapidly get on board and harness this transformative power of GenAI.

OK, cool.

Jen I have time for another question

OK, so maybe that last question because I know we have other questions from across the globe, Jen, so especially from clients what’s there was their feedback, how do they react when present our approach? Yeah, I mean, absolutely Yeah, I mean there’s absolutely, there’s a huge interest from our customers and generative AI because it’s been such a huge trend for the last 12 month and our customers are actually really keen to get started on this journey. It is an assent market So we have a large number of engagements but starting from really early stage and great engagements right up to the kind of production solutions. There’s lots of common use cases we see, our knowledge management we know that loads of organisations have knowledge scattered across multiple sources and this can lead to major losses. So we have our own industry accelerator knowledge pilot which is an excellent solution for this and we’re using this on one of our customers already, aerospace customer, which has seen like huge productivity gains in maintenance where their engineers can really access that material quickly.

And also hyper personalization and we know this has been used by another one of our customers Estee Lauder to really get to know their global customers by being able to really see what feedback they’re getting from their customers and personalized market campaigns. So I guess the biggest gains our customers really are seeing so far is this increased in efficiency this hyper-personalisation at scale and also leads to like increase innovation.

Excellent. Thank you, Jen.

Thank you and thanks for your work. Yves, you ready for us to move on to some questions from my colleagues now. Yeah, sure. Thank you.

We always have lots of questions from our colleagues and today for that we’re going to go live to India with our colleagues there and Aditya Hirlekar from marketing and communications.

Hello Aditya.

Thank you Constance.

Hello Yves and all colleagues around the world. I have a room full of people here who are eager to ask you questions, so let’s get started.

Hello Constance. Hello Yves.

I’m Giri from the Global Brand team. India is a market with tech talent. I wanted to know what are your plans on retaining this talent? I see a lot of restructuring happening in India at the moment.  Thank you for that question because.

Everyone will testimony in every leadership discussion I have is that India as a team not only to deliver but to be fronting client is at the core of the strategy. And if today you see some a bit reducing etcetera, us we are under leveraging India. So we can only grow in India, there is no other option now right. So it’s so growth.

Not only specific from India, but growth for everyone as a business is the way to develop career opportunity for everyone and obviously in India wherever city we are. so a lot to come in terms not only of volume of work but as well in time in terms of type of work taking more and more responsibility as we go across a different clients, also expecting that you develop skills on the new technology because it’s not about the recent work in India and because it’s more basic work, absolutely not, every technology we heard before like with Jen on GenAI, obviously we need to develop those capabilities in India immediately at scale and then I wish, as I said, through our leadership roles to empower the team in India to take much more responsibility in front of clients. So if you package that up fantastic opportunity for all the team in India as well as the others, but specifically in India because we need to scale.

That makes sense.

Hello Constance, Hello Yves,

This is Preeti from Digital App practice. So you have talked about uniting around common goals of the company so what would be the goals for us in 2024?

So thank you for the question. Common goals is key and if you are at a client, leading your client, you need to leverage all the company. So we must front the client as one and sometime maybe for the separation we are changing this. No, we need to be coordinated to frontline meaning also cross selling.

We have fantastic offering whether it is infrastructure management, desktop management, all the tech services work, we have all cloud, digital critical systems, High Performance Computing and as well cyber. All of that needs to be at every client. So if we don’t operate as one team, it’s impossible to do it. So we must do that. And the last message in terms of priority – but you will see when we prepare FY24 precisely – is we’ve been managing a lot, you know, working on the separation driving the cost, optimising things. We’ll continue that but we need to focus much more on the, you know, the sales to grow the business much more than what we do today, because that’s the easiest way to fix margin issues across the board and at the same time, again and again being the best in the operational discipline, operational excellence in the way we do the work. So, much more focus on growth but keep focusing on the operational excellence so you’ll see more of those three things I mentioned in the FY24 expectation. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, good afternoon. I’m Pratima Kulaye, I’m the CD for Humana. The question I have for you is: I mean in the past 18 months we have been seeing a lot of changes in the management, in the strategies, so what would be your message to all of us going forward on the overall stability of the organization?

I mean, changes, I guess my arrival is part of the change, but I hope you will see that as a positive change, the way I operate with the management team – in particular with Paul who is there or our CFO Paul, Nourdine, Philippe and the others leading every region – we are working as a team and I think as a unified team I can bet you it’s a unified team and I think that helps to bring the one Atos together in front of clients. At the same time the strategy remains. As I said, you know we are working on the separation and we are also ensuring that there is no, of course, competition between the entities. So we are, as we speak, simplifying that communication to have much more collaboration across the board, across entity, but within every entity. Sometime we don’t leverage the other offerings we have at the client and I think that’s a miss. So we absolutely need to leverage as I said earlier in this call, all offerings together and again and again, in this strategy, I am putting much more emphasis on growth because I believe not only with the current offering but the new offerings we are building, that’s the way to step up as a company.

I would put much more emphasis to everyone. I talked about the operational discipline and we need to be disciplined, of course, everywhere. That you all know that. But client focus, ensuring any responsibility you have and you have Constance, you are facing the market with the investors and others, all of us, we are in the market and I want to ensure as we shift to 2024, because that’s a bit the question as well finishing this year and starting next year, that we’re going to put much more emphasis for every of us to be fronting the market either we are leading your client, we are leading delivery, we are leading and offering all of us must frontline so we want to spread our capacity all across.

Because it’s only when you front and when you discuss with client that you can drive growth and incremental business and it’s independent from the location where you are, whether you are onshore or near shore or offshore – that’s the term to be simple – in every location you have to have a client connection plus in addition with the partners. Again and again we’re going to create much more intimacy with the partners in order to collaborate with clients, and I want to re-emphasize that responsibility for all of us independently from where you are.

Thank you. Hello Yves, hello Constance.

I just heard that you said that we need to increase our sales because we need to get those values. So my question is, are we planning any new strategies to get those business so that we can stay and be at the top of this competitive market? Right, yes.

So thank you for the question.

I’ll try not to repeat myself, but I said first we have fantastic offerings that exist. We need to bundle them as much as possible for example high performance computing with a AI LLM we need to bundle and from the R&D activity of clients to automate their research, right. It’s not just about the machine, it’s not just about gen AI, it’s together and then you can put security in it, right? And then you’re gonna run the infrastructure at the same time and then you can start building cloud solution around it to leverage the data of it so so how can we bundle?

Everything that exists today to bring value to client and if we don’t have the skills we’re going to do and create partnership with strategy company who can help us to bridge the gap because we can’t do sometimes everything. In particular all the industry skills, so we’re gonna need to structure that. As I say with the partners, if you are super well connected with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, SAP Salesforce ServiceNow just to say the top six, working with them at the early stage with clients to co-innovate together makes a difference. We’re going to put much more on phases to be ahead of the curve as I have been saying like we work on Quantum we work on the latest AI solution for Microsoft. We are putting AI in desktop management.

I saw an airline manufacturer recently.  It makes the difference. So we have to be in the new technology everywhere we operate, a bit ahead of the curve while we sell the things that exist, because only if you show to client what will be next, they say OK if I buy what exists today, I know those guys would bring the next to me immediately by design as part of the contract. So showing that we do innovation every day is essential for the future. Thank you.

Maybe one quick last question from India.

OK As time is running by. All right, so quick answer then.

Exactly. OK. Yes.

Thanks for your help Constance.

I’m Poonam Kadam. I joined as a campus graduate and I’m truly excited to be the part of this organization. So what would be your advice to our campus graduate as we start out our career? Maybe a that’s a personal question. I started as a graduate in the tech industry and I believe elsewhere or here it’s a bit the same is we are here to get a great day every day and be always as much as we can outside of our comfort zone, so always not stay in your area of expertise but always look to what can be next in terms of technology you could work on and maybe your manager will say I don’t like that you shift from that technology to another, but if that makes sense for you.

That should make sense for us. So be proactive as well in terms of responsibility. Sometimes we leave people in their responsibility and they are stuck in that, so you need to voice over and say I’m ready to take the next step. Well, I want to be ready and I want to take some challenges outside of my comfort zone, so always be ahead of the curve to stretch yourself and proactively also not only to develop your career, but proactively propose to clients. When you are in the scope, you say hey client what if, et cetera, you know, so always.

Looking outside of the boundaries that people may create around you. That will bring not only for you as an individual, an accelerated career, an exciting days every day, but as well the full teams around you and the company will accelerate. So if we all do that one over 100000 people every day, I think it’s going to be an accelerated moment for all of us. So not only for you as individual, but as a team, that would be my advice, right.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. One last question very quick one.

Yes, I’m just going.

Thank you for these answers and I will ask the question when will we see you in person in India. Yeah, the second time people are asking me. So I think it will be early 2024. I will try to find the right moment. If you welcome me there, you agree on the date I will come. It’s super important for our strategy so I know what you do in person and I can contribute and help and coach you as well to give my insight. So I will come.

But I know I want maybe also to thank you in advance for the visit but also thank you to stay late tonight, it’s a bit earlier for us in Europe, so thank you for being there. And I know I’ve been living, if you may know, in Mauritius for seven years, so I’ve been celebrating Diwali 7 times with my friends. So I wish you a great Diwali coming soon.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you everyone in India.

Thank you for your question and thank you Aditya for your help. I wish we had more time for questions, but unfortunately it’s time to wrap things up. Maybe you have a few closing words for us Yves.

What I want to say, I want to say thank you first to you Constance and I know Paul and all the marketing team to set this up. I know it’s remote, it’s live, it’s maybe a new format and for me, it’s essential that we engage.

Of course it’s very short, 30 minutes, so you must see that’s I had more questions by the way, we didn’t have time and I will try to spend more time with teams again and again and again. I want to listen a lot. I’m not coming with any solutions any predefined ways of doing things. I listen a lot in order to decide as a team, I’m extremely engaged and and I’ve seen very much people who have been engaged whoever have been meeting either remotely or here in Paris but I will spend more time like I say going to India.

So I just wish you wish you the best. Thank you for connecting and keep being engaged. I am extremely confident on the future [Ndlr: c’est sûr qu’il va pas dire « on va faire faillite dans 6 mois »!].

Some people may question I am confident on the future. We have the right strategy. We have the right offering and most importantly not only clients and partners, but the best people in this company. So wishing you as the last question was coming. What should I do, right be proactive be entrepreneur, drive the future for for yourself and for your team that will drive the future of the company. So ping me anyone whenever there is a right format or whatever so I can listen and engage with all of you as much as possible.

So thank you.

Sounds like a good plan. Thank you Yves and thank you especially everyone for joining today. We’ll make sure they’re recording of today’s session is available as soon as possible for our colleagues who could not attend the meeting today.

And again, one warm thank you to all of our guests who are here with us today and to my co-host, Yves. Thank you. Thank you

Thank you, Constance.