SCC France, which was established by Sir Peter Rigby in 1975, has been assisting its clients’ digital transition for 47 years while leveraging its IT know-how and innovation. Its cornerstone is the requirement for a multi-brand integrator able to assist clients in selecting, integrating, and implementing the most relevant technology, on an industrial scale.
The company’s technological and business experience, which is a true market differentiator, positions it as a leader working with most technology partners, from multinationals to tech start-ups.
SCC France’s sales have more than doubled over the last 10 years, totaling 2.1 billion euros. SCC is now the 2nd leading Engineering and Technology Consulting (ICT) and Digital Services Company (ESN) in France (Ranking 2022, established by KPMG and Numeum). More than 3,300 people work at SCC’s 14 French agencies, which provide services to more than 6,000 commercial clients.
The Leader
Sébastien Vandervannet is in charge of steering SCC’s transformation strategy, UpSCCale 2025, and making it a reality as the Chief Operating & Transformation Officer of SCC France. Sébastien is responsible for digitizing SCC’s processes and systems and fostering client-centricity throughout the organization. He shares, “The happiest part of my daily routine is definitely the opportunities to celebrate success collectively. As I often say to my teams, they are doing our customers’ satisfaction every day, not me. I am there to set the direction, support them, invent new ways to do it. But our success is their success first, and that of our clients.”
Sébastien is an ESSEC Business School alumnus. He has had the opportunity to work for a number of prestigious companies, including Capgemini Invent, Société Générale, and most recently Malakoff Humanis, where he was in charge of client relations with the company’s 10 million customers and a member of the Executive Committee. He enjoys change, is an expert in customer experience and is enthusiastic about operational excellency (processes and systems).
As Steve Jobs used to say: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”. Sébastien thinks he has felt this deeply inside him. He believes that transforming a company and building a future with its staff is his own fuel. And the technology sector, with its permanent growth and innovation, is a marvelous playground.
Leading the Course
SCC France collaborates with the whole global IT ecosystem, including start-ups and significant organizations, on a wide range of hardware and software innovations (vendors, hyperscalers, software editors). SCC is in a special position because of the long-lasting relationships it has built with those players. However, maintaining a constant capacity for innovation is necessary to stay on the cutting edge of technology and, by extension, of the competition. In this regard, technological watch is crucial for comprehending the main problems and trends that its clients confront and helping them anticipate changes.
Along with technological advancement, the corporation is verticalizing some of its skill sets. Sébastien states, “For instance, we created two new business units, in Education and in Healthcare. This makes it possible to deliver specific business use-cases with a deep knowledge and understanding of both our clients’ specific business needs, and of the best technological response for them.”
Finally, the company’s staff benefit from a very strong program of accreditation and training to deliver the best services attached to products and software.
Exceptionaly Comprehensive Services
SCC’s DNA is built around accelerating customers’ digital transformation processes. Customers believe this business can assist them in effectively and successfully completing their projects. Due to its devotion to constant innovation and development as well as its clients’ understanding of the technology environment, it has had several notable successes.
For instance, the company managed the development of an IT deployment system for a well-known French bank with performance levels considerably beyond those previously anticipated and energy savings of 40%!
Another instance may be found in the French energy industry, where a client of SCC was searching for a partner to help them with a server project that would cost several million dollars. The commercial and technical reliability allowed it to offer customized end-to-end support with strong collaboration between the different areas of expertise.
SCC also supported a major French public-sector organization on backup technologies in order to ensure the maintenance of operational condition of the existing hardware, thus guaranteeing the protection of data while proposing a competitive financial offer.
What a Leader Needs Most!
It is probably not specific to the technology sector, but Sébastien thinks curiosity is one of the leaders’ required qualities ; humility as well. He says, “You need to be humble enough to accept that you cannot anticipate all that is going to happen or come out of the blue, so as to develop the sufficient ability to adapt. You cannot control everything. But you can control your ability to respond; for yourself and for your company. This is key for today’s leaders.”
According to Sébastien, today, soft skills are a true differentiator between skilled candidates. If he could name only one, it would be agility, essential nowadays. He believes being agile is knowing how to meet changes. More than a buzzword, agility reflects one’s ability to move in unknown territory. “In the IT industry, we are constantly being pushed out of our comfort zones. But that’s also the beauty of it, raising our appetite for great challenges,” says Sébastien.
Keeping Values Aligned
Entrepreneurship, professionalism, teamwork, devotion, and diversity make up SCC France’s core principles. It is crucial that those basic principles be lived out on a daily basis if the organization is to maintain a culture of honesty and creativity. The HR appraisal system is powered by it. Sébastien shares, “We are not yet Netflix, which pushed the case on this topic up to assessing their staff based on their alignment with their core values in their daily practices, but we aim for it.”
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is also deeply embedded in SCC’s core values. Its subsidiary Recylea, for instance, is dedicated to recycling tech devices and reinjecting them into the circular economy.
Constant Revolution in Tech Sector
Sébastien, who is 44 years old, was born at the time when PCs began to take over households and businesses. At that time, the instrument, the substance, was crucial. Since then, the world has evolved to an immaterial culture in many areas, including computing power, networking, the dematerialization of media, and most likely, in our foreseeable future, personal computers.
The use of technology as a tool has practically devolved into a commodity, giving way to corporate use-cases with a growing emphasis on customer-centric strategies and customer experience. Sébastien is particularly struck by this. He asserts, “You can no longer just provide a device, customers demand far more than that. They ask for a partner that understands their business and can translate it into the right mix of technology and service. That’s SCC’s DNA, and that’s what makes our success.”
Heading to Bringing Transformation
Upscale 2025 is the name of the strategic transformation strategy that SCC France has unveiled. The goals are to increase SCC’s leadership both in private and public sector, reinforce its footprint among large and medium-sized private businesses, deliver modern infrastructure and workplace solutions with high added value, and improve talent attraction and retention. SCC France is reevaluating its portfolio of offerings and positioning as part of its transformation initiative, depending on its historical drivers while also creating new assets in expanding markets (e.g., Cloud & Cybersecurity). It is also taking into account the prospect of using targeted acquisitions to supplement its extremely strong organic development.
SCC is already established outside of France in the UK, Spain, Romania, and Vietnam. This network of geographies allows the company to serve companies throughout Europe and beyond, either onshore or with the support of its in-house delivery centers in Romania and Vietnam.
Written by Steve Sanchez.
