Interview with Meja - Consulting firm

Our interview with Pierre Erra, co-founder of consulting firm Meja

"Hello Pierre, please start by telling us about your company:

Hello, my name is Pierre Erra and I'm co-founder of the digital transformation consultancy : meja. Our job is to help our customers implement digital and information systems transformation projects. We support them from a business point of view at every stage of a project: from the definition of the digital strategy, to the operational implementation of a system, including the associated change management support.

Meja is a young consulting firm. We set it up two and a half years ago with my partner Wadii Moustatir. We strive to adopt a method and rigor that are as demanding as, if not better than, those of the very big consultancies; and at the same time we benefit from a certain flexibility and agility in our operations that means we're always bringing innovation to the table.

Meja now employs a dozen consultants specializing in three business sectors: education and training, government and local authorities, and healthcare. 

It's been a year since the first containment, and a lot has happened. Can you give us your opinion on the impact this health crisis has had? From your customers' point of view, has there been any change?

From a practical point of view, when I started out as a consultant, I was very mobile: I used to spend my time on trains, and now I spend my time on trains. Now, all my work is done at home or at the office. From a relational point of view, we make a point of continuing to work closely with our customers, even though the contact is undeniably different when it's done remotely. Everyone's talking about upheavals and very long-term changes, but I don't see it that way...

The crisis has shown that face-to-face training is not an obligation. For me, it's more indicative of the strength and maturity of the organizations we support, or unfortunately their weaknesses. Containment has highlighted the weaknesses of organizations that were a little outdated and found themselves very deprived from one day to the next, due to their rather "old school", authoritarian way of operating, where management was synonymous with face-to-face control. On the other hand, other structures more suited to management by objectives - through projects, by empowering employees - worked better. Clearly, remote management requires greater trust, and is not based on hierarchical control. 

Have you sensed a change in customer demand? Have needs evolved?

I haven't seen any upheavals in my projects. But there was a considerable slowdown in order intake and sales activity. All projects that had not been launched were frozen, and ongoing projects continued - but in a different way. On the other hand, customers have expressed a need for support in learning to work more collaboratively and less hierarchically: more horizontal management.

How have you adapted to this situation internally?

The announcement was certainly brutal, but we were lucky enough to work collaboratively on web tools within meja, so the switch to total telecommuting had no impact from a "tool" point of view. It did, however, give rise to a great deal of reflection at meja.

In our consulting business, we have two major aspects: we don't sell a person, we sell expertise, know-how and training. It's this human aspect of exchange that has been hard to maintain. We've changed the pace of our meetings and tried to keep up this mutual support, by playing remote games. Everything we do in the company becomes a collective adventure. People talk to each other, they share. But all that will never replace the strength we had in the classroom. We're going to try to maintain a fair balance between on-site work and telecommuting.

Do you feel any change in 2021? With the resumption of postponed projects. Is the market recovering, or is there still a lot of uncertainty?

Of course, I felt this tension at the first containment, even though ongoing projects were not totally halted. Since the end of the second half of last year and the start of 2021, we've returned to a more normal rhythm, with new projects being launched. We're back to sustained sales activity, in response to new needs.

Has there been a more profound change in the consulting approach? In the business as such? Or was it just a parenthesis?

This is not a parenthesis. There are induced changes that we won't be going back on, such as telecommuting. There are going to be fundamental changes, but they won't call everything into question. We thought that with freelancers we could have disintermediation and that consultancy firms would no longer exist, but in the end we realize that this has not been the case.

Nor do I believe in a completely fragmented consultancy tomorrow, with freelancers behind their screens. I believe in the strength of a company, of a structured firm that acquires knowledge, capitalizes on knowledge, exchanges best practices and trains its employees; something that freelancers don't have.

You've made this approach work remotely. Does this make you want to go international? Could this be an opportunity to expand the market?

 On my scale, I'm not yet considering international expansion, because we're a fledgling company, so we've got plenty of room to grow in France.

What advice would you give to a future founder?

The fundamental question is what you bring to the customer. You have to be confident in your strengths, have convictions and not hesitate to take the plunge. It's not very complicated to set up a consultancy. On the other hand, you need to be very humble and have clear ideas about the project and what you bring to it. It's also important to be flexible enough to accept that you'll also have to depend on the market and its needs; you have to be able to readjust your project.

You have to work in small steps. When you're starting out, you have to aim for what's attainable. And references, assignments, etc. are things you acquire over time as you start to make a name for yourself. The hardest part is the beginning.

What we did and what worked was that our first customers were cajoled. We didn't think about profitability, and we gave our all for those customers. We knew that these were customers who had chosen us at the outset and trusted us. They took a risk, and that risk must be rewarded by the credibility of the work done. And it's thanks to these first customers that we've been able to grow. Today, our sales exceed one million euros and we're beginning to be recognized.

Over the past two and a half years, what's been your proudest achievement?

In terms of commercial success: when we launched our business, we won a major tender for the French Ministry of Education within nine months. We were listed as the sole bidder for a consulting contract, up against all the market's biggest competitors. I'm proud of this, because we responded with a partner who trusted us, but we were the market's agent. It was the quality of our response that enabled us to win this project.

With regard to production success, we worked with the Neoma Business School. They initially called on us for a small assignment with a budget of €20,000, to help them structure a call for tenders. We over-qualified and spent more time, and little by little this customer entrusted us with many missions. Today, they trust us to lead their ERP transformation projects, and we are their project managers. It's now the firm's biggest customer and we're really proud of it."

Discover another interview here, with YouMeO.