From Syntec Informatique to Syntec Numérique

How do you unite the team?

Transforming a small organization is both simple and complicated. That’s why it’s such an exciting human adventure, since the main architects are the men and women who make up the team. So priority number 1 is human resources management.

At Syntec Informatique in 2008, employees were often torn between the demands of the directors and the hierarchical authority of their General Delegate. This situation sometimes created misunderstandings in the directives received, when they did not form a coherent whole.

The first priority was therefore to establish a clear and arbitrary hierarchical management structure. The Managing Director has the final say, and is responsible for steering the ship on the course set or redefined by the Board of Directors.

Very quickly, this enabled everyone to focus on their missions, with the feeling that there was a captain in charge of overall operations.

However, this tight control by the CEO had to leave room for everyone to take the initiative, make a difference and realize their ideas. The right to make mistakes in good faith was therefore recognized as a necessity to encourage initiative-taking and agility.

Each employee then felt able to make autonomous decisions based on his or her level of expertise, without the risk of being punished for taking excessive liberties.

The rule was simply to explain one’s choices, acknowledge one’s mistakes, discuss them collectively to learn from them and, above all, avoid repeating the same thing over and over again!

The expertise assumed by our staff and this new agility were very quickly perceived by our members, who quickly benefited from the new quality of services developed by the syndicate.

This has enabled everyone to take pride in belonging to a recognized team of experts, and to rediscover the pleasure of fulfilling their missions and catching up with their colleagues.

This positioning soon gave us a real sense of collective pride when the first successes were achieved.

What’s the operational plan?

Transforming the organization was one of the team’s successes, but we also needed an action plan to transform our relationship with Syntec Informatique’s members.

As for any company, a plan describing the strategy for the next 3 years was drawn up and then adopted by the directors. At the time, the plan had 4 main thrusts, including the development and professionalization of member services, the promotion of their professions, the grouping of the various players in the IT sector into a single trade association, and greater direct involvement in paritarianism.

How do you consolidate everything?

This method was then applied as part of an AFNOR certification project: Quali’op, in order to consolidate its recent achievements.

It was then necessary to organize the various domains of the union, which has since become Syntec Numérique, in order to obtain the quality certification proposed for professional associations.

It took a year, and it was an arduous task because, while aligning the union’s processes and procedures: administration, physical and telephone reception, internal and external communication, governance, organization of meetings, dues collection, preparation and monitoring of the budget, institutional relations, expertise watch, supplier management, human resources management, etc., it was necessary to continue running the commissions and committees and providing services to members.

This approach has been a real success. Every process is simplified, clarified, documented and traced.

What’s more, every year employees volunteer to audit the different areas themselves, and AFNOR checks to confirm the operational excellence acquired and recognized today atSyntec Numérique.

This has strengthened the team’s individual and collective pride, and enabled us to step up a gear when opportunities arose to expand our membership and services.

How would you sum up today?

• More than 2,000 member companies (600 ten years ago)
• A membership rate of 1 to 2 companies per working day over the past 3 years.
• 98% retention rate
• Financial resources restored with a budget more than doubled.

Syntec Numérique’s voice is now heard loud and clear on all issues relating to the digital industry and its professions. It is heard in the defense of its members, in current debates linked to the uses and digital transformation of the economy, and more generally in all issues involving digital and human activities.

And for me, as general delegate?

Leading this transformation has been an exciting professional adventure for me. As a businessman in the sector, I discovered the world and workings of trade associations with these characteristics (see episode 1).

Taking responsibility for Syntec Informatique in the midst of turmoil in 2008, making and sharing a diagnosis, defining a strategy with elements of operational methods, carrying out the transformation while creating, imagining, inventing and concretizing new ideas, will ultimately have transformed me too!

Laurent Baudart,

General Delegate Syntec Numérique