Meeting the needs of the PME

THE CHALLENGE OF THE INTERNET FOR BUSINESSES

Microbusinesses and SMEs have become connected businesses in need of simple and efficient applications in increasingly varied fields such as mobile working, videoconferencing, switchboard services, and on-line ordering and delivery. Such companies usually do not have their own IT departments and therefore must use the services of operators to provide close and responsive support.

Bouygues Telecom and its subsidiaries Keyyo and Nerim have these good listening skills as well as the technical expertise to meet their declared goal – that of gaining more than 10% of a market segment still dominated by Orange.

A UNIQUE DIGITAL SYSTEM

These acquisitions send out a strong signal to the sector,” says Luc Perraudin, CEO of Keyyo Communications. “And they increase our investment in the BtoB1 market.” Keyyo employs 170 staff and has a portfolio of 15,000 customers, including law firms, consultancy firms and estate agents. “Our offer has a strong digital focus and therefore perfectly adapted to the needs of small businesses. Large companies demand more made-to-measure solutions. But in terms of small businesses, you’re dealing with a mass market, requiring automation and “all-in-one” solutions, which is exactly what Keyyo offers.” Founded in 1998, Keyyo is growing fast and its management had been looking for the backing of a big group. It began life by selling fixed telephony solutions, and then gradually adjusted its offer as the need to converge fixed, mobile and internet increased. To achieve this, Keyyo leveraged its highly-advanced web technology that was developed in-house.

“This unique system processes all aspects of customer management, from prospecting clients, to service configuration and to billing”, says Christophe Sollet, Keyyo’s EVP, Technology. In just a few clicks, customers can purchase the services they need, whether fixed or mobile telephony, telephone switchboard services, broadband internet, etc. “This is important because not all small businesses have their own IT departments. It’s easy to install and use”, explains Luc Perraudin. The team of 20 developers is constantly fine-tuning the tool in order to meet the demands of the largest possible number of customers. “We act as both a developer and an operator, which is fairly rare on the market today”, adds Christophe Sollet.

CUSTOMER SERVICES

This highly-automated system lets customers manage their solutions on-line. It also spares in-house teams the more administrative tasks so that they can focus on customer services, which is a major component in the strategy of Keyyo, Nerim and Bouygues Telecom Entreprises. “We needed to choose companies that share the same fundamentals and DNA as us, particularly in terms of the customer experience”, underlines Pierre-Antoine Thiebaut, Head of operational marketing and communication for Bouygues Telecom Entreprises. Founded in 1999, Nerim is also a benchmark player on the BtoB telecoms market. An unusual feature of this other Bouygues Telecom Entreprises subsidiary, headed by Pierre Amann, is that it offers BtoB hosting services, a niche expertise that complements the existing network and services offers. Here too the aim is to ramp-up growth, especially on the back of Nerim’s 10,000 customers. But also to leverage Nerim’s wide-ranging expertise, which ranges from the cloud using public and private servers, up to the development of made-to-measure BtoB applications. Another similarity between Keyyo and Nerim is that they both offer multi-operator access, even though the longer-term objective is to focus increasingly on the fixed and mobile offers of Bouygues Telecom Entreprises. Synergies to generate growth for all.