Bruno JOSEPH

Netasq is a software company providing UTM security appliances & software and delivering €18m of revenues.

As Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board I enjoy assuming control over and advising on company strategy & directions.

Sometime so relaxing to look after other CEOs doing their own jobs!

Rhapso is a software company providing both Packaging and Printing industries with vertical, ERP like, business software.
This company has been funded by VCs and has experienced a compounded double digit growth over the last 5 years.
Through aggressive growth, both internal & external, the company aims to become a European consolidation hub in the course of the next few years.

My first mission: as COO, company turn-around which has not been easy but was really mandatory to save the company.

Then I became Rhapso CEO: strategic direction, acquisition spree, direct grip on sales development, financial control, shareholders' relationships …

This new phase experienced by the company is of course bringing in much higher satisfaction!

For this intermediary period of time, I drove Consulting + Mergers & Acquisitions projects in the financial software industry.

XRT was a an independent software company of 400+ staff, delivering €44m of revenues, listed at the Paris Stock Exchange, operating 7 subsidiaries abroad (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Belgium, USA, Brazil).

Full responsibility over the company (strategic direction, global sales, financial control, relationship with the French working council, M&A, offshore …) from a very operational perspective: frequent travels to affiliates, meetings with key accounts.

Main achievements:
i) reorganization of the company and optimization of the overall efficicency
ii) profitability: 2005 has been the most successful year since the company inception (1983): €7m & 15% Net Income before Tax.
iii) ability to generate a strong stream of cash-flows : net cash of €5m in 2004, €30m in 2007. No debt.

Whole company sold, partly to Sungard, partly to Sage (global price tag of € 95m which represented x3 what the company was worth at the stock exchange when I joined in).

The kind of measure we all run after :): the sense to have delivered against expectations!

Reuters (before its merger with Thomson Financials) was an English corporation with 17 000 staff, delivering £4 billion of revenues, listed in London with offices in more than 100 countries.

With the completion of Diagram acquisition by Reuters (Software division) my first priority was to ease the team integration into totally different corporate governance rules.
I focused afterwards on shaping & executing a sales strategy (targets were very large companies as well as banking institutions) and leading a pan European team of ‘Sales specialists’ selling our software to dealing rooms.

Main achievements:
i) actual evangelization of an highly front office centric company with Corporate Treasury & banking back office products: deals closed in France, Greece, South Africa, Algeria … A feeling just like moving the frontier west; highly exciting !
ii) while Reuters was losing 35% of its global revenues, achieve stabilization of revenues generated by this business line (£75m in this geography).

I firstly concentrated on driving sales activities regarding Key Accounts. Afterwards I extended my responsibilities to managing the relationship with our customers from a global standpoint.

Key achievements & responsibilities:
i) part of the executive committee I contributed to establish the company strategy
ii) 35 professionals reporting into me, including 25 consultants and 6 sales reps. I have been personally involved into the closing of large deals.
iii) leadership of a division servicing 160 large accounts (corporations as well as financial institutions). Revenues of 50m French Francs; 6m Operating Income.