Matthieu Pasquier, CEO Société Générale EBS: We should all invest in a global environment driven by innovation and performance

With over 20 years in Societe Generale and various roles in SGSS operations, covering the perimeters of Johannesburg, Nantes, Luxembourg and India, Matthieu Pasquier, CEO of Société Générale EBS talked with The Outsourcing-Today about the company’s focus on business development and innovation, as well as the effective investment in education.

In the past eight years, SG EBS’ evolution has been paved with many achievements, from reaching 1,000 employees due to an accelerated growth in just 3 years, to being ranked among the 10 largest shared service centers in Romania, a sector which attracts more than 7 per cent of the working population in this country. “Even in this climate of change, where the economic environment is not that easy to predict, we have managed to deliver an average year to year growth of 20 to 25%, reaching at the end of 2019, 2,500 employees,” Matthieu Pasquier says.

For 2020, the company plans to continue their development through hiring new colleagues and through actively contributing to the digital transformation of Societe Generale Group.

Scaling solution deployment across major business lines

The Romanian market offers great opportunities for the business to further develop and to maintain the constant growth rate – in order to support the strategic and digital transformation of Societe Generale Group. According to company representative, the strengths of Romania as a country helps the company to achieve their business objectives especially because of the high value talent pool available. “These professionals have many skills, know a lot of foreign languages and are ready to work on big, challenging projects,” Matthieu Pasquier says. The company sees a strong point in the talented people’s pool, due to their skills, knowledge and involvement. “We will continue to invest in human capital and offer our colleagues all the opportunities needed to further develop and together with them, SG EBS will continue to grow, become an excellence center for the entire Group and build a better and sustainable future.”

According to the CEO, being a a service company, Société Générale EBS is at the point of entry for their onshore partners looking for solutions to their business challenges. “We are global and we have the ability to be transversal and to deploy solutions at scale across major business lines of the Group,” the SG EBS’s CEO adds.

Data Analytics is the key lever for a sustainable business

 As data started to become the key lever for a sustainable business, the race for all companies is to harness the insights in their data by developing their data science capabilities. As the SG EBS’s CEO states, “it’s not enough to have a lot of data you need to know how to use it, what to extract from it and how to apply this information into our work. This approach will include analyzing big data to find insights, forecasting and optimizing strategies into business and operational systems.”

The focus on data management leverages a bigger focus on cyber security and new security trends by investing in great IT specialist. The company’s CEO anticipates that this year will be more than just about new technology, it will be about new solutions/ products or apps. “It’s quite clear that all of us can invest every day in an environment driven by innovation and performance, which translates into: quality of service, continuous partners’ satisfaction, a capacity to deliver quality and an ability to adapt to all trends or changes that technology brings in our industry,” Matthieu Pasquier adds.

In this respect, innovation defines the evolution of the solutions offered to clients. These days, innovation is a pervasive concept and it defines wide aspects and segments such as coding languages, actual products and every new item that appears on the market has an innovative component, solution or technology. At SG EBS, the strategy is to do more than just enable the specialists to invent something new, it’s to help them develop a different mindset, a new way of looking at things that can transform even the simplest task into an innovative one.  According to the company, this way of thinking will have a long-term effect, will offer our employees the opportunity to rediscover their daily activities and constantly transform their work environment into a better one.

On the other hand, the company’s innovation strategy is to bring value to their partners by offering solutions to their business needs. “We can do this either with new technologies that we manage internally or by connecting with the local ecosystem. For example, we have been working with start-ups to set up solutions using virtual reality,” says Matthieu Pasquier.

To instill the focus on innovation and creativity on SG EBS’s professionals, the company started this year with a very important tech event called Tech Days, dedicated to solutions designed to bring banking and business services to the next level of technology and innovation. The project was a joint event developed in partnership with BRD Groupe Societe Generale. SG EBS’ professionals had presentations on electronic signature solutions, software applications inside vehicles, Machine Learning solutions, Cybersecurity topics and Cloud Architecture, Electric Car-Sharing services solutions, big data, quantum computing and other captivating and innovative topics.

Supporting education

 In February this year, Societe Generale European Business Services announced it launched the ”We Care Together” financing program, aimed at supporting projects developed by non-governmental and non-profit organizations in Romania and offering financial support worth a total of 200,000 Euro.

“Our main goal is to build a sustainable future together with our colleagues and partners. We want to act for the benefit of individual and collective interests, creating the right conditions for the emergence of certain initiatives, which will bring important and sustainable changes to the Romanian landscape and which will help disadvantaged communities. We hope that many NGOs will apply for the first edition of this funding program,” said Matthieu Pasquier, CEO of SG EBS.

According to a statement of the company, the financing program targets two types of projects focusing on professional integration (Projects that support vulnerable people to integrate into the labor market) and integration through education-focusing on educational projects catered to children or young people in a vulnerable situation.

The first SG EBS funding program aims to support the initiatives created by NGOs in the fields of professional integration and education and comes as a natural continuation of the company’s commitment to have a positive impact on society and the environment by supporting vulnerable communities. Through the “We Care Together” program, SG EBS hopes to boost creativity, performance and responsibility, but also to provide financial support for the implementation of actions that will shape a more inclusive future. An essential component of the proposed programs should be volunteering, as SG EBS wants to involve its employees and give them the opportunity to play an active role in the evolution of the projects.

 Matthieu Pasquier, CEO of Société Générale EBS: “It’s not enough to have a lot of data you need to know how to use it, what to extract from it and how to apply this information into our work. This approach will include analyzing big data to find insights, forecasting and optimizing strategies into business and operational systems”