Philippe Seguin reports on annual results, customer prospects and new offerings

How do you analyze Generix Group's recent annual results?

Philippe Seguin: "The uncertainties were so great and the difficulties so numerous a year ago that we would have signed up for such a balance sheet with our eyes closed! Our worldwide revenues are virtually unchanged, at more than 80 million euros (-1%). Nearly one third of our revenues come from consulting and services, which increased by 36% in North America. 

At the end of the fiscal year, despite a still very difficult health situation, Generix Group even set a new quarterly sales record at €21.4 million, up 5%.

In terms of revenue breakdown, our software publishing activities remained stable in SaaS (at €32 million) and in maintenance (€18 million). They have increased by 54% in licenses (to €4.2 million).” 
 

What are the prospects for development in your various markets?

Philippe Seguin: "SaaS business is taking off again! Faced with extreme fluctuations in activity, which has contracted sharply in some sectors and has increased dramatically in e-commerce, food processing and logistics, customers are finding SaaS to be the ideal tool, "elastic" at will, to adjust their information systems to variations in their activity and to adapt their strategy. 

More and more customers are choosing our Generix Supply Chain Hub platform. A world leader in the food industry has chosen to use the WMS modules of our platform for five additional warehouses in Russia. In Spain, a leading DIY retailer has chosen Generix Group for four new warehouses. This trend points to a return to double-digit revenue growth as of fiscal year 2021/2022. 

The Transportation Management Systems (TMS) segment works in cycles, and right now we are in a buoyant phase. The health crisis has increased the turnover of many transporters. In companies that were still using spreadsheets, the return on investment for a TMS system is so fast that it is clearly in our favor.

Another factor in the shift is the need to unify transportation supervision, which is often managed through several software programs. Finally, our customers increasingly want to measure their carbon footprint. All this accelerates the adoption of a global platform like ours, which combines transport, warehousing and docks.”

Are there other factors involved in this dynamic?

Philippe Seguin: "Yes, clearly. The market benefits in particular from the generalized dematerialization of invoices, with a regulatory framework that is evolving favorably in this direction. In this area, the major clients are acting with a cascade effect with their SME suppliers. Our offer has been completed to meet this need and digitalize the entire invoicing chain, including the smallest structures. 

Electronic data interchange and omnichannel also form an increasingly vast and diversified ecosystem, interconnecting in real time flows between our customers and their suppliers, customers, partners, administrations, etc.

Our customers appreciate the fact that they can select and add to their management systems à la carte, opening them up quickly, securely and easily to new contractors or partners. Meeting this need is a powerful differentiator from our competitors.”
 

Can you tell us about the France-Export entity, created in spring 2020?

Philippe Seguin: "This profit center represents more than 60% of the group's revenues and brings together our activities in France, Central Europe, the Middle East and Asia. As the creation of the entity coincided with the first containment, we had to adapt: the entity was able to switch very quickly to a totally remote mode, for all its functions, to be able to deploy all the projects signed before the beginning of the pandemic and also to transform new ones. Our teams have managed to maintain their activity completely, with production start-ups carried out entirely remotely.

Our customers have thus been able to see that, even in situations as sudden as they are chaotic, we are able to keep our commitments, at their side. We will use this feedback to keep the best of both remote and face-to-face approaches in our deployments and interactions with them.”
 

What new dynamics would you like to see in the short term?

Philippe Seguin : "We are returning to our pre-Covid ambition and objectives. Our investments and product launches will be sustained in this new fiscal year 2021/2022. Our pre-sales teams are already very busy and we are keeping our two annual BEYOND webinars for presentations of our new offerings.

We are also strengthening our value proposition in several areas :

• The supply chain, with greater versatility in managing all resources (employees and their skills, equipment, partners) while infusing predictive analysis.
• Programming interfaces, with new APIs to facilitate collaboration in the extended enterprise, real-time consultation of inventory at our customers' partners…
• Delegated services. Depending on the choice of our customers, we can intervene on all or part of the desired functional evolutions, from their development to their commissioning and evolution, including corrective and preventive maintenance and service level supervision.
• Finally, in terms of internal organization, we offer our employees and recruits an à la carte work mode, with one, two or three possible "floating" days of telecommuting per week. This is an essential element of retention and attraction.

Fiscal year 2021/2022 is an opportunity for Generix to enter a new growth cycle, at all levels.