Interview with Pascal Rellier, co-founder of Go&Dev

Pascal Rellier, why should young companies use Nearshoring?

 

P.R. : Si vous vous référez à n’importe quel manuel théorique qui traite de l’outsourcing, vous constaterez une véritable unanimité; les objectifs principaux qui poussent une entreprise à « outsourcer » sont en général :

• Lack of in-house resources, given the complexity of technological developments,
• Cost reduction,
• The need to refocus internal skills on business-related projects,
• The need to increase service levels (e.g. 24/7 support)

As we read these lines, we understand perfectly why nearshoring is perfectly suited to the constraints of small companies and start-ups in the seed phase: the need to retain equity capital, the need for flexibility… Furthermore, we note that the application development phase (for example) corresponds to periods of great stress for founders; this is when everything comes into play.

At Go&Dev, we’ve seen promising young entrepreneurs who were completely absorbed by the problems of software development, and therefore failed to anticipate the crucial issues of short-term business development.

At Go&Dev, we strive to convince these young entrepreneurs to practice SMART sourcing, and to refocus value-added activities “on shore” (on French territory) by deploying IT development activities “near shore”, in our production center in Rabat, for example.

Is it really so difficult to develop an application in France?

 

P.R.: I’d give you the Norman answer: “It depends! For very large companies, no! But you have to understand that the digital revolution is such a challenge that many CAC companies are over-investing in digital technology for fear of being left behind. As these same companies have virtually unlimited financial investment capacity in these areas, they are absorbing an astronomical amount of human resources.

Even so, France is asserting itself as Europe’s digital nation?

 

P.R.: It’s true, and we can see that our schools are producing engineers of a remarkable level. The problem is that they don’t train enough of them. And once they’ve graduated, young engineers don’t want to do code, they want to be consultants, project managers and the best of them want to move into finance.

As a result, we’re witnessing a shortage of digital talent that won’t disappear overnight. The problem is not unique to France; we’re witnessing an almost similar phenomenon in the United States, where civic initiatives are promoting learning to code among young people as well as senior citizens.

Start-up founders are not sufficiently informed about the shortage of IT talent, and look for local solutions, whereasthey have access to perfectly adapted, cheaper and more flexibleresources in Morocco, for example.

How can we help young entrepreneurs?

 

P.R: We need to be able to convince SMEs and start-ups that it’s in their interest to focus on outsourcing to create added value, in other words, SMART sourcing. Start-ups need to focus not only on the upstream UX-UI-functionality definition process, but also on the commercial side.

All their energy should be “sucked” into their Business-Development by implementing transformative marketing and sales processes. Let’s not forget that a start-up founder has a thousand things to do.

Not only does he need to develop his application and attract investors to accelerate, but he also needs to move as fast as possible in his GotoMarket. If development isn’t an entrepreneur’s area of choice, it’s best to free himfrom technical constraints, with financially rational solutions, so that he can refocus on other key issues, such as developing his business and finding investors.

What does Go&Dev’s version of smart sourcing involve?

 

P.R.: SMART sourcing integrates the use of new innovation paradigms, such as theuse of private cloud services and the integration of mobile applications into daily processes. In addition, we use agile management methods (DevOps) whenever we “onboard” a project locally.

Our engineers in Rabat have followed curricula equivalent to those of French developers, they all speak French, and are all aware of the opportunity to collaborate on French digital projects. We want to create a transparent partnership with young entrepreneurs, based on a clear understanding of their needs – that’s the mission of our Parisian consultants – and a quest for excellence in technical and functional implementation – that’s the mission of our Rabat platform.