In innovation, we do two main things.
We have a prospective work,
trying to identify the technological trends in use
that will impact our businesses, our customers and our partners.
We have a customer vision that guides our project.
We don't do R&D to develop projects that will remain in a laboratory,
but we are already driven by an existing need of our customers, which are the business lines.
Coface's international database is unique in the world.
The data contained in this database
allows us to be absolutely predictive
in evaluating a single company and the market; the risks of the market where the company operates.
And this is absolutely a competitive and innovative key.
We set up a hackathon,
where we brought about forty people together
from seven different regions.
I think there were about fifteen countries represented,
and we got them to work remotely on customer needs,
so they connected with the customers.
They came, we had several stages and finally, we managed to produce
a kind of prototype that we showed to our clients, who were very satisfied.
So, from there, we started to build the product.
With a series of small weekly challenges, each week we asked the teams to ask
themselves a question, so one challenge per week.
And at the end of the week, they would come and pitch their proposal.
So, at the end of this hackathon, I participated in the development of
the product by extracting the data used to build the different indicators used in this product.
We created an innovative, user-friendly platform
with the purpose of guiding companies in their sales choices.
All of this not only involving our staff, but also involving the clients,
and this allowed us to launch a platform more rapidly, in a better performing way.
Innovation is the key to success for a company.
Improving our own offer, listening to the market,
testing all aspects of the platform, understanding if we're meeting our clients' needs
and listening to the commercial feedback.
All of this helps you to innovate and to succeed.
Our team works in an iterative way.
Generally, we start by trying to understand a need.
Then we dig in when we think we have something that starts to work.
We'll do some tests. We'll try to propose things, mock-ups to customers,
or test a technology with them and with Coface employees.
And then, the more we advance, the more we'll enrich the solution to complete it.
Creating a product in less than six months that corresponds to customer needs
proves that we are agile. It proves that we listen to our customers
and it proves that there is real creativity in what we do.
At Coface we are making trade happen.