For a digital one-stop shop, a simple and efficient link between companies and the state
Competitiveness. Suddenly, this word is at the top of the media and political agenda. And yet, for more than 10 years, we’ve been losing ground on this front, not only to emerging economies, but also to the Germans, the British and the Americans.
Two unambiguous figures: France’s share of world exports fell by 19% between 2005 and 2010, the sharpest drop of any Eurozone country… after Greece; our trade deficit exceeded 73 billion euros in 2011, whereas we were in balance in the early 2000s!
In response to this well-known performance shortfall, numerous reports have been commissioned, and sometimes buried, by successive governments. The current team is no exception, with the much-publicized Gallois Report. The good news this time is that some of its recommendations, including a 20-billion-euro tax credit for businesses, will be implemented as part of the “Competitiveness Pact”. If we add to this the creation of the Banque Publique d’Investissement, designed to support SMEs and ETIs in need of equity capital and bank loans, it would seem that, after a counter-productive tax shock misguidedly focused on entrepreneurs, the idea that growth and employment are inseparable from business success is beginning to gain ground!
As the founder of a start-up that has become a global company with 500 employees, generating 80% of its sales internationally, I remain sceptical as to the real effectiveness of all these measures in a very depressed economic climate. Caught up in the day-to-day running of their business, entrepreneurs lack the time to study in detail the relevance of the legislative and tax measures that have been piling up over the years. Shouldn’t the most effective measures also be the simplest?
To achieve this, there are ideas that are often obvious, but never put into practice. For example, create a digital one-stop shop for all financing and administrative formalities for businesses.
Indeed, by bringing together the Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement, OSEO and the “Enterprise” branch of the Caisse des Dépôts et des Consignations, the BPI will have an exceptional strike force that will enable it to meet financing needs that remain unmet today. However, the creation of an enormous public body bringing together all the tools available to support businesses will not necessarily make them any more accessible: it does not directly address the need to simplify procedures for SMEs, which are often lost in the maze of existing aids.
The idea behind the one-stop shop is to support the various stages in a company’s life through a single, comprehensive and interactive website, where all administrative formalities would be grouped together. Through online documentation, tutorials and procedures, the life of a company wishing to raise finance, export or even restructure would be simplified. And there’s no need for huge investments: like a start-up, the one-stop-shop is a team of a few dozen people to create, support and respond to users.
At a time when the State is looking for budget savings, clever, low-cost, digital-based ideas are just as relevant as mega-mergers. What’s more, this is in line with the inevitable redefinition of the role of the state in our 21st-century economy: a role as facilitator for economic players, putting an end to the traditional opposition between the public and private sectors.
This project is more than just an opportunity. Launching the creation of a one-stop Internet service is also a way of setting an example and showing how the technology sector can be a driver of competitiveness for our economy, by spreading digital uses as widely as possible in our country.
Bruno Vanryb is a French entrepreneur in the digital sector. He is Chairman and CEO of Avanquest Software, one of France’s leading software and application publishers, which he founded in 1984. President of software publishers at Syntec Numérique, he was also vice-president of the Conseil National du Numérique (CNN) until September 2012.