Our interview with Raphael Beziz, co-founder of YouMeO.

YouMeO is a consulting firm specializing in strategy and innovation, founded by Raphael Beziz and Martin Mayer six years ago. Their small team joined the large firm Bearing Point at the beginning of 2021. This new collaboration allows YouMeO to broaden their horizons, expand their team and enrich their skills. We talk to Raphaël Beziz about the post-covid world of consulting, the developments for the industry, for employees and in general in work. In this interview, the founder of YouMeO talks to us about his vision on what has happened recently and his prospects for the future.

"Congratulations on your rapprochement with Bearing Point!

Thank you. We won't be the only ones to approach another consulting firm in 2021. I tend to believe that these merger projects will accelerate. In the innovation market, we have really lived through the whole cycle: there have been plenty of small pureplayers that have been created, including us, and some have resisted better than others. There are a lot of actors who take the plunge, some who die. There is not room for everyone, some manage to remain autonomous and others prolong their growth by being bought out.

Is the context of last year accelerating this kind of situation?

Yes, because it can put small players like us in difficulty, and that's where opportunities arise. For big players, it's an opportunity to buy companies a little below their value.

Can you introduce YouMeO?

We are a small agency specializing in innovation. We set up six years ago with a team of about ten employees. We support all innovation topics in organizations – whether it is the innovation strategy (in which direction should we innovate? What are the areas of opportunity?) – more operational support for innovation projects in the upstream phase of emergence. That is to say, it goes from a detailed understanding of customer needs to a concept that we have prototyped and tested with users.

We don't support the deployment and implementation phases, Bearing Point takes care of that and they are able to do that part, hence the rapprochement. We are really in the upstream part of the emergence of new projects. It can be new services: physical or digital, new customer experience journeys, new sales spaces, products, etc.

The third thing is that we are working on the organization of innovation. As a company, how do you structure yourself to encourage innovation? Does innovation have to be everyone's business? How do you create a culture of innovation? What are the reflexes to create? How do you animate this in the long term? It's more about processes, training, management methods and culture...

Do you work with large groups ?

Large groups, yes essentially 90%. After that, we also work with slightly smaller companies. This year we worked for Blablacar, Photomathon. We work for SMEs or start-ups that are generally not too many of them. I can give you a few names of large groups such as SNCF, Société Générale, etc.

Has 2020 created a break in your profession?

From what we have seen internally: in the operating methods there is a real challenge which is the pre-commercial sales phase because we are in a business where you have to create trust quickly, we sell intellectual services. It is rarely through the methodology and the approach that we differentiate ourselves. But it is really through these first exchanges that we understand a client's problem, that we help them structure and that we show them that we can bring them value. Not being able to see each other, not being able to have lunches during which we talk about it freely, not being able to create this human link in the initial phase is a real challenge.

We have to find new ways to create this link. For the moment we are capitalizing on what we have learned, we already have other customers and prospects who know us, which helps. The batteries were full a year ago but they are gradually being emptied and there is a real issue to fill these batteries again in a world where this link will be more difficult to create.

We have to reinvent ourselves in the way we manage customer relations, find other ways to create links (webinars are rather limited), such as word-of-mouth to make ourselves known to people who are not in our inner circle.

The drop in the number of projects after the crisis has left time and firms have seized on it to make white papers and produce content. There is a challenge to stand out because everyone does very intelligent things. How are we going to bring a different point of view? To make our contribution to make our mark? There are plenty of things to do in terms of content, form and content, to find more interactive formats. We have to go after customer challenges to be able to show that we have interesting things to contribute.

In the life of projects there are a lot of challenges, especially for us because we are in a particular position, on "having things done" or "doing with". We are in the process of creating conditions for collective intelligence, facilitating key moments and making sure to cross ideas to arrive at new concepts. It was a lot of time when we really got together to bounce off each other's ideas. Today there is really a barrier, even if platforms like Team and Zoom help a lot to remain effective. But for innovation, there is a loss in remote work. We have to reinvent ourselves on this, there are plenty of tools that can support creativity, but I find that it is less effective than face-to-face time. We need to reinvent collective time.

Is it possible to start again as before or is there a break?

It's hard to say, I think we're heading for something hybrid. I have the impression that new reflexes have taken hold because we have realised that all these remote tools allow us to be effective. Where do we put the cursor between efficiency and innovation? There are often tensions between the two in societies. Being very efficient is sometimes incompatible with looking for the next good idea and preparing for the next one.

We can also talk about exploitation and exploration. Operations means doing better than what we already do today, getting more market share, more customers, and more efficiency in processes. Exploration is about looking for new fields. What works well is exploitation, we have more difficulty exploring. We have a battery, and ideas, but we have to recharge the battery. The companies have become aware of this. We have all become aware of the limits of back-to-back remote meetings. A lot of lucidity has been created around these ways of working. We will probably come to a compromise between the two.

Times will be reoriented, for the time spent together we will favor quality time, to have time for collective intelligence, to work on substantive subjects, new subjects. There may be more maturity on what we can really do remotely and what we can do by being in the same place.

What big changes are there in the expectations of your customers (in terms of digital transformation)? :

There are many things that have not stopped during the lockdown, subjects have been deprioritized and as always, the brakes are put on everything that seems ancillary to focus on essential functions and survive in a moment of strong turbulence. But I feel that it has already started again since September and even more so since January. Customers reinvest their time to ask themselves more in-depth questions and evolve their model?

There has been a fashion effect on digital for a long time, and now customers are waiting to see the result. They are looking to do fewer things but with more impact. We have returned to a time when reason is important. This is in line with a return to basics. What do we want to offer our customers? It would be beneficial if there was this refocusing on something that has more impact for customers, companies, society as a whole...

Tell us about the merger with Bearing Point:

It started with the desire to have more impact, we were frustrated to support projects very early on but from which we dropped out when it was time to take action. We didn't always see the tangible result of what we were doing. We asked ourselves how to go all the way? We had this desire to get closer to firms that knew how to do this, to have the entire value chain of the project.

By being at Bearing Point, we lose a little freedom and autonomy, but we gain a lot of impact. With Bearing Point we can go on bigger projects while maintaining our autonomy as a resource planning. This project is accompanied by a strong growth ambition and a desire to grow the team.

Do you have any advice to give to people who are starting out, who want to create their own consulting company? :

Don't spend too much time thinking about offers but spend time with customers, understanding their needs. From there, think about what we can offer them. I often see this pitfall of wanting to make a great offer, a great website, but there is a big risk of completely missing the point. The best investment of time in the first months, the first years is to start from customer needs, to discuss concretely the issues and projects in progress, the subjects on which they need support and the offers follow in a second phase. Unlike other types of start-ups, where the offer and the product are very important, in consulting it is a bit the opposite logic that prevails.

TO GO FURTHER: Read here our article on how the consulting industry was affected by the crisis in 2020 and its prospects for the future.