“A cross-functional view of CIO activities…”

Many of my irritations are now a thing of the past, thanks in large part to Abraxio! :

• Chasing after a multitude of different, out-of-date Excel spreadsheets, trying to work out who has spent what, what is in the Opex or Capex register, etc.
• Spend time on budget simulations to know where and how to optimize
• Trying to justify why IT teams are supposedly so expensive
• Helping teams with perfect technical mastery to move away from a “do it yourself” posture and step back to look ahead to the future.

It’s a bit like the story of the right meeting at the right time!

When I took up my post, my Roadmap was very clear: transform the CIO from top to bottom so that it could support and accompany the Group’s strong growth ambitions…

I knew we needed to double the IT budget, but I also knew I’d have to justify to my Presidency how each new euro invested would contribute to the Group’s success. And so it should.

I had to move fast, and spending days in Excel trying to run simulations was out of the question. I chose the platform – which took into account my vision of things and my needs – and imposed it on the Teams, telling them that we were going to use it to build the CIO’s Budgets and track all expenses.

Then Covid came along and turned a lot of plans upside down… And Abraxio saved my life in many ways, not least by enabling me to react and adapt without ever losing control.

I manage my entire Budgets in Abraxio , from preparation to Tracking. This has several advantages:

Firstly, in an ETI like ours, the decision-making cycle is very short; we can’t afford to wait for the quarterly reforecast to review priorities and make the necessary budgetary trade-offs. It’s often within the hour that everything is decided, and Abraxio gives me this extremely rapid capacity for analysis and decision-making.

To illustrate my point, when the^1st containment incident occurred and employees had to be equipped very quickly with laptops, I was immediately able to identify which Projects to stop in order to make this investment possible, to share the impacts, the induced breakdown in Opex and Capex management… I was able to quickly make the expected decisions and explain them to my Management.

Another benefit: Abraxio makes budget planning incredibly easy. 4 clicks are all it takes to prepare a new financial year and take over the entire Budgets database. All OPEX – Operational Expenditure, which is renewed annually, is automatically extended. All that’s left for me to do is focus on the Build and the new items. To put it another way, thanks to Abraxio, I’ve shortened my budget preparation process from 3 months to less than 2 weeks.

Abraxio also lets me easily delegate Budgets management. In the summer of 2021, we unfortunately suffered a major cyber-attack that mobilized all my efforts. I entrusted our executive assistant with tracking all our IT spending. Thanks in particular to the bulk invoice import function, she very easily took over, in total autonomy, and all my Budgets are reconciled.

The next steps are already mapped out:

With the growth of the Teams and the integration of our IT subsidiary, I no longer have the time to carry out detailed project reviews. So we’re going to capitalize on the Projects module to steer our portfolio. This will give me instant consolidation, which will make reporting much easier, and enable me to know exactly where we stand at all times.

And then I dare to hope that we won’t have another major hazard, and that we’ll be able to get down to the nitty-gritty of tracking expenditure to identify new levers for optimization.

Unquestionably time savings, by greatly simplifying our processes! Knowing instantly where we stand, being able to arbitrate in real time, speeding up and automating repetitive or low value-added tasks, so we can put our energy where it’s needed and expected, on transformation.

The 2nd undeniable advantage is the controlled delegation to my managers and, above all, the change of attitude this brings. It’s very concrete: I free up their time so that they can focus on business value, rather than spending 30% of their time tracking invoices. This undoubtedly improves performance. To sum up, I often say that they’ ve “gone from brawn to brains”.

Finally, what I particularly appreciate is the Abraxio Teams’ ability to listen and take our needs into account: there’s a real exchange of views and ideas, and they know how to meet our expectations, adapt, and what’s more, very quickly… Working on a modern platform with a real speed of execution and updating, that’s very appreciable.

A final word in conclusion?

Without Abraxio and the transformation it has enabled me to bring about in my CIO, I wouldn’t have been able to have the level of discourse expected when talking to my Chairman. We’d still be on the ^first step, trying to understand and qualify our IT spending. Thanks to Abraxio, I have a cross-functional view of the CIO’s activities at all times, so I quickly know where and why to invest, and we’re already in the phase of implementing this investment plan.

*This testimonial represents feedback gathered at a given moment, in the professional context of the interviewee at the time he/she held the position mentioned. His functions and scope may have changed since then.