Mondher Ayadi is the founder of the French group NUMERYX, specialized in IT engineering services and continuing training. Managers met him during a recent visit to Tunisia to tell us about the group’s achievements as well as its ambitious projects. Interview.
Tell us about the start of Numeryx. How did the idea of creating this company come to you?
The story of NUMERYX began in 2012 when I created, in collaboration with the Cynapsys group, the company Cynapsys Technologies. This adventure crowned a career of several years within major firms such as Siemens or Altran. The company, offering services related to web & application development and digital transformation, managed to establish itself on the French market, notably in the banking-insurance, automotive and energy sectors. In 2018, the company officially became NUMERYX. A year later, we created our Tunisian subsidiary. From the start, we chose to focus on people by giving major importance to our employer brand. It is a pillar on which we want to rely for the development of the company.
What are Numeryx’s activities?
At the beginning, NUMERYX’s activities were mainly oriented towards services, notably consulting in the field of information systems. Information systems consulting and architecture experts were our initial capital. This allowed us to have a significant foothold in the French market and to forge several partnerships with major groups such as Atos and Capgemini. Since then, we have managed to develop new skills in the industrial sector by focusing on the link between digital and industry, notably through the Internet of Things (IoT). With this orientation, we were then able to cover other areas related to software publishing and SD-WAN network cybersecurity. This rapid evolution means that today we are a company with more than 200 employees. NUMERYX has also managed to develop new activities such as training, Research & Development and also Innovation as part of our long-term vision.
Why is a services company interested in training?
In a constantly changing world, training is essential. And at NUMERYX, we chose to develop training with an operational flavor closely linked to companies’ needs. Today, we see a real market need to train in the fields of cybersecurity and cloud, as well as in new approaches such as the agile method, DevOps and DevSecOps. It is for this reason that we created Numeryx University, which recently obtained the Qualiopi certification granted by the French government. Numeryx University currently has a catalog of more than 140 courses that are not only intended for our clients and partners. As part of our managerial approach, we also make them available to our employees so that they can stay at the forefront of technology and steer their career plan and their progression with us. Our courses are available both in e-learning format and remotely.
Do you also do research & development?
Indeed. R&D gives us the opportunity to focus on future challenges on which we can position ourselves. This is currently the case for cybersecurity. We have thus managed to develop a next-generation firewall, which we named Asguard, based on a new patented filtering technology, developed in-house. This firewall is currently being certified by the Agence nationale de sécurité des systèmes d’information (ANSSI) in France. We plan to put it on the market during this year 2022; this firewall has reached TRL6 maturity, which allowed us to offer this product to our clients with the aim of carrying out proofs of concept. And I am happy to tell you that the benchmarking of this product revealed much more interesting performance than similar products offered by the competition. Beyond this firewall, we are also studying the possibility of opening up to other R&D axes related to the security of the Internet of Things.
Why this interest in R&D?
This activity has allowed us to have a significant presence in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in France. We are therefore part of FrenchTech Paris Saclay and the Systematic competitiveness cluster. NUMERYX is also a member of the Agence nationale de recherche en technologie (ANRT), which has allowed us to be involved in thesis work with research laboratories and universities. In this sense, our collaboration with Inria on topics related to the next-generation firewall was very successful. We have also just launched a new project in collaboration with Université Versailles Saint-Quentin centered on Artificial Intelligence applied to cybersecurity. And that’s not all! This rich Research & Development activity plays an important role in our human capital enhancement strategy.
These ambitious projects indeed make it possible to retain our employees by offering them a motivating environment conducive to innovation. And I believe this is an important element to allow our employees to project themselves into the future.
How do you deploy your vision of human capital enhancement?
Our company’s heritage lies in its human capital. It is these skills and the way we organize them that allow us to deliver offers and solutions that meet market needs. For us, establishing the employer brand is a daily objective. To do so, we spare no communication effort, both internally and externally. The development of human capital, I am convinced, is the key to allowing the company to move beyond the SME stage and become a mid-sized company (ETI) and, eventually, a group.
How is your business developing?
We managed to double our revenue between 2017 and 2018 and achieve a 50% increase between 2018 and 2019. In 2020, we maintained our revenue despite the crisis. And in 2021, growth resumed and we were able to improve our revenue by 15%. The company has also strengthened its presence by multiplying offices in France: besides Paris, we are present in Normandy, in Le Havre, and, since the beginning of the year, in Rhône-Alpes, in Lyon, not forgetting our Tunisian subsidiary that we created in 2019. Today, NUMERYX Tunisie has two premises in which we are adding a delivery center and the R&D hub.
We would like to thank the whole team of Managers magazine for the quality of the exchange: https://bit.ly/3h9G9jv. It was a very interesting and enriching experience.
