Comexposium
24.2.23
Number of employees
900
Sector
Event
AirSaaS users
53
Favorite feature
Notification panel
France's leading event organizer and operator of major trade shows such as the Foire de Paris, the Salon de l'Agriculture, the Salon de l'Etudiant, the Salon de l'Auto, as well as food and fashion events... and even specialized business meetings such as the Assises de la Cybersécurité. The French events group is growing fast, with over 150 events for professionals and the general public, and 69 brands in 22 countries.
Having arrived in a context of high technical and managerial debt, with major data projects, Stephan sought to avoid the traditional pitfalls of the relationship between IT and business units.
In this context of digital acceleration, the key challenge was to act and collaborate quickly. This meant that the IT department and the business units had to constantly adapt to the changing environment. For Stephan, this type of organization is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve with Word, Excel and Powerpoint!
During the pandemic, Comexposium's core business came to a halt. The event industry expert took advantage of the situation to reorganize both the business lines and the IT department.
As part of the reorganization of IT and business units undertaken during the Covid crisis, one of the main areas of focus was IS/digital issues, and in particular the project sheet.
The answer provided was to better structure the framing and follow-up sheets.
Stephan began by creating a portfolio using Excel, with a project sheet containing the weather forecast, costs, expected gains and so on.
These Excel sheets and PowerPoint reports couldn't answer the question: where do we stand? What are our priorities? And finally, they didn't manage to involve both the business units and the executive board.
It was at this point that Comexposium looked for a digital equivalent to the project sheet. They weren't looking for a complex all-in-one tool, with too broad a scope, such as budget, project, planning, application mapping, etc. - not an IT department ERP! Just a digitized portfolio with project sheets. And automated project reporting features.
The integration of AirSaas was carried out in two major phases: the first involved IT and business units, and lasted barely two months. And now a second phase involving general management.
For Stephan”the key is to provide relevant information and have the means to make it live as we go along, because we don't need to wait for a steering committee or project committee to meet to communicate what's going on.”
As the CIO reminds us, the challenge of involving business units in projects cannot be solved by a tool alone, however useful it may be.
Nevertheless, Comexposium was able to take advantage of the tool's implementation to define key roles and prerogatives for each project stakeholder.
Alongside the tool, four steering bodies and associated rituals are organized:
IT Committee, Business Committee, Management Committees and Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs).
Comexposium has set up two types of meeting within this body, an operational committee where they work only on production issues, incidents, operations and support, and only on the operations of each project.
The second committee is organized every other week. Here, the teams work on AirSaas, with more of an “IT” point of view. It's worth noting that one of Stephan's best practices is to ask the teams to update the tool the day before the committee meeting.
“In our IT committee, we go directly into AirSaas to review the points of vigilance, successes and decisions to be taken on projects.”
These meetings are verticalized by major business line: sales, marketing, finance, etc.
All business unit managers are involved in using AirSaas and qualifying projects. One of their prerogatives is to use the tool to update key data shortly before the committee meetings. The aim is to have an IT/Business/Sponsor team on every project.
In this meeting, things are different: Stephan works on demand, and thanks to Airsaas' tracking system, he can provide an up-to-date view in real time.
In this meeting, two aspects are targeted as a priority: the evolution of the budget and prioritization with the Chairman according to the business case.
The quarter business review (QBR) ritual is now managed with the support of Airsaas. Anything that isn't up to date in the tool can't go through QBR.
Ease of use! With AirSaas, we avoid having to deal with the ERP side of the IT department. Simplicity is the tool's big pro.
Today, the tool enables Comexposium to carry out project governance, program management and, soon, cross-functional management. Interfaced with Teams for communication, and with a project planning management tool such as Wrike, Jira or Asana, this hub gives them a global vision from strategy to execution, and has become a “must have” for CIO/Sponsor/CEO teams.
Depending on the day, I enjoy two features. The first is the complete portfolio view. What I really like when I get to it is to have all my project files in a single Kanban view. It's great to have all the projects at my fingertips, along with the various business committees! There's a real sense of organization and direct visualization that helps you find your way around.
The other feature I'm thinking about is the alerts feed at the top right of AirSaas, on the little bell🔔. This is where I find the upward flow of all alerts, and it's really my favorite feature. Seeing the little green dots answers the question: What happened today?
This was easy enough to evaluate. We looked at the time spent by the external PMO, who was taking 2 to 3 days a month to consolidate the Excel portfolio file and report on the status of project execution in a PowerPoint, at the risk of forgetting the important decisions to be made.
Compared to the price of AirSaas licenses, we have a clear return on investment.
What's more, the PMO's time is now used to drive the committee work process and create a dynamic around the solution!
I think that for the time being, there's one small missing piece. It's the ability to make cross-functional reports on several projects. Either at program level, or at cross-functional level. Indeed, when we produce our Record of Decision (RID) at the end of a business committee versus a project, that's what I'm missing today. However, we can get around this by creating a cross-functional project. I've noted that this feature is included in the roadmap communicated by the software editor on its online users' club.
A graduate of the ISIMA engineering school, Stephan began his career at the Loxam group, where he became head of the IT department, helping to accelerate the performance of the information system. After three years in the IT department at Mazars, he joined SCC France, where he coordinated the transformation of information systems. In 2019, Stephan Boisson joined the Comexposium group as Group IT Director. Since then, he has been involved in the company's growth and internationalization strategy, as well as the implementation of tools to enable the hybridization of work.
« On cherchait un outil simple et pas usine à gaz »
DSI adjoint Chambre des Notaires de Paris
“Il y a bien entendu un grand nombre de risques au sein d’une entreprise, dont le fameux risque financier. Néanmoins, le risque IT et le risque cyber sont devenus, en quelques mois, les risques numéro 1 de la liste.”
CIO
