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REPORTS OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
8
REPORT BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Operating procedures
Business operating procedures
The Group has put in place a quality management system (QMS) which
is available on its Intranet in France, the United Kingdom and Germany,
the three main countries in which it operates. The QMS – which is a
key repository of information on quality for the Group’s operations – is
also applicable in other countries that are significant for the Group’s
business. It includes a map of business processes and a set of related
procedures and instructions. The quality managers use this system to
carry out periodic audits aimed at assessing whether the applicable
quality standards are being respected.
Pre-sales and client contracts
Pre-sales and client contract processes are defined in the QMS.
Before any bid is submitted, an internal decision-making process takes
place on whether or not to actually respond to the client’s invitation to
tender. If the decision is positive, a technical and commercial bid is
drawn up and is then subject to validations concerning its technical,
financial, and legal aspects.
Performing services and reviewing ongoing projects
Contracts are managed by project managers. Monthly reviews are
organised, at an operational level, for major fixed-fee projects, involving
an examination of the project’s technical status, costs and revenues, cash
flow curve and margin on completion. In addition, within the Group,
a task force (essentially made up of operations managers) conducts
periodic project audits covering all of the Group’s business units.
This project management system has been rounded out
via
the creation
of the Project Management Community, which now provides a forum
for around 500 of the Group’s leading project managers to exchange
ideas, share experiences and achieve continuous improvement. Assystem
also has a Project Management Institute, which was created at the same
time as the Project Management Community with a view to strengthening
the project culture within the Group. The Project Management Institute
provides a specific and structured training programme each year,
facilitating the development and assessment of project managers’ skills.
In 2015, a new training course on “Earned Value Management” was
added to the Institute’s catalogue.
The risk analysis procedure created in 2013 has now been fully rolled
out across all existing offerings and contracts. Training on this procedure
is provided to some 50 project managers every year.
Project reviews are also organised on a quarterly basis at the Group’s
head office in the presence of the CFO & Deputy CEO and the Executive
Vice-President in charge of HR development. These reviews relate to
projects that represent amounts exceeding a defined threshold (which
varies depending on the scopes and countries concerned) as well as
projects that have specific characteristics or are exposed to specific
risks. They are used to examine the technical and financial progress
of the projects and to update the assessment of associated risks, and
where required, to draw up appropriate action plans and determine
the ways and means to implement them (both for clients and in-house).
Human resources, recruitment, and payroll management
Human resource requirements are determined by line management, and
the corresponding recruitment procedures are defined and managed
by each country’s Human Resources Department. Overall budgets for
remuneration increases are managed at the level of each operating
entity and each country and are reviewed and validated by the
management team.
Administrative procedures
Sales
In France, investigations are carried out before any client account
is opened in order to ensure the client’s solvency (supported by a
monitoring process to alert the Company to any major changes in
solvency). All client accounts are covered by a debt recovery procedure
based on tailored reminder scenarios.
For this purpose, the Company uses client account and debt recovery
management software in France. This software is used at various stages of
the billing process as from when the invoice is issued: pre-reminders before
the due date, reminders, identification of late payments, identification of
disputes and monitoring of their resolution, inventory of promises to pay
(and verification of invoice payments at the specified dates).
Similar procedures, adapted on a case-by-case basis to the specific
businesses and countries concerned, are implemented in the Group’s
non-French entities. Consequently, the measures and procedures put in
place to prevent client risks and to improve the effectiveness of trade
receivables recovery allow the Group, as far as possible, to limit bad
debts and ensure good generation of operating cash flow.
In addition, the Group has strict internal rules that apply to all consolidated
entities and which stipulate the revenue recognition procedures for the
various types of activities and projects (mainly time and materials, work
packages and fixed-fee projects).
Lastly, the Group has drawn up reinforced General Terms and Conditions of
Service, which are systematically integrated into the bids it submits to clients.
Real estate
If new premises are required for particular operations, a statement
of requirements is drawn up by the operations manager concerned,
which is then validated by the head of the relevant Business Unit and
forwarded to the General Services Department at Group and/or country
level for processing and examination of the corresponding business
case. The executive management team is then responsible for analysing
the project and validating the size and cost of the premises selected.
The Procurement and General Resources Department then participates
at various stages of the negotiation process in order to ensure that
leases are effectively tracked, in France, and where necessary, in
other countries. Regular budget reviews concerning premises both in
and outside France are carried out so that information can be regularly
exchanged between the General Services and Management Control
Departments and that data on existing premises can be updated and
current and future projects analysed.
Delegations of authority
The principles applicable to the delegations of authority put in place
meet a three-fold objective:
●
to raise the awareness of operations managers about their
responsibilities in terms of health and safety;
●
to create a power of representation for the Assystem Group for the
benefit of operations managers;
●
to set a precise framework within which operations managers exercise
their authority (including the possibility of sub-delegation).
The delegations mainly concern commitments directly related to
operational areas (hiring of consultants or sales managers, signature
of client contracts, dispute management, etc.).
Bank signing powers are only partly delegated, in France and abroad,
and for limited amounts.
ASSYSTEM
REGISTRATION DOCUMENT
2016
167