Disruptive technology boosting SMEs’ competitiveness across the B2B sector
Up until now, each time a company responds to a request for tender, they are required to compile and supply a considerable number of certificates and documents. Then, in the event a contract is signed with a client, the supplier must share updated certificates for the client to verify. Such a process is time-consuming, expensive and impacts upon competitiveness.
A new European-side interoperable platform
ALG(opens in new window), a French company based in Lyon, made a name for itself by providing the French market a concrete solution – Attestation Légale – to the problem of managing the compliance of subcontractors in the construction sector. ALG started its project OnceForAll(opens in new window) with the aim of contributing to building a simplified, secured and digital Europe that benefits businesses and impacts upon European SME’s competitiveness. “To achieve this goal, we worked towards three main deliverables,” explains project coordinator Clément Blondelle. First, to provide the European market with a document management platform able to meet the requirements of several European countries. Second, to define an open standard of interoperability with our European competitors to offer their customers the opportunity to share their administrative file across Europe and finally, market this unique solution in two target countries: Germany and Spain and then the rest of Europe.
Highlighting the project’s impact
“By the end of the project we are able to say that we have achieved our main objectives and we are confident in the fact that ALG is now well positioned to achieve growth and pursue its vision to drive innovation to increase the competitiveness of SME’s in Europe,” confirms Blondelle. The coordinator adds: “We built from scratch a new platform, we established an unprecedented partnership with the leader of pre-qualification in Germany and we engaged several Spanish platforms in the creation of a national committee on interoperability.” Regarding the platform, “we have built one relying on a micro-services architecture which enables the continuous delivery/deployment of large, complex applications. It also allows an organisation to evolve its technology stack,” explains Blondelle. Micro-services drastically promote the independence of life cycles, whether in design cycles, development cycles, or deployment in production.
The future of OnceForAll
“The OnceForAll project became a company project allowing our European SME to adopt the mentality of a European champion,” notes Blondelle. He further adds: “We intend to capitalise on our project’s success to accelerate the development of our brand ‘OnceForAll’. The platform we have built is based on a functional architecture that will allow us to offer our users a high-performance product that can meet their expectations. We already have a list of new features that we intend to develop over the coming months.” The project also intends to build on the unprecedented partnership with Zertifizierung Bau GmbH (Zert Bau), the leading certification and pre-qualification body for the construction sector, operating across Germany. “We agreed in the autumn of 2018 on the creation of a joint venture in Germany which would be responsible for marketing our solution in this country: OFA GmbH,” confirms Blondelle. At the end of December 2019, ALG's advisory board approved the company's name change to OFA, a way to further embrace the Lyon-based sme's European DNA.
Keywords
OnceForAll, SMEs, B2B, secured and digital Europe, document management platform
