Siveco China announces record Q4 results, emerging stronger from the crisis

Today Siveco China announced record Q4 2009 performance, allowing the company to report a profit for fiscal year 2009. During the last quarter, 15 new plants have selected Siveco to manage their maintenance improvement programs.

 
This excellent result concludes a very challenging year: while many suppliers struggled to stay afloat during the economic downturn, focusing on cost cutting and staff reduction, Siveco managed to reinforce its position as the country's largest maintenance consultancy. Throughout the crisis the company strengthened its ROI-driven service offering and continued its investment in R&D, especially for mobile solutions.

 
Speaking to the press at Siveco Shanghai office on January 4, Bruno Lhopiteau, General Manager of Siveco China answered several questions about the challenges faced during the past year and the company's outlook for 2010.

 
Q: How did the downturn affect Siveco China?

 
A: Many of our multinational customers suffered from the downturn. Although sometimes their Chinese operations were not directly hit, this resulted in projects being postponed and sometimes cancelled altogether. More forward-thinking companies, however, strived to increase the reliability of existing assets and to reduce inefficiencies, which clearly favored Siveco as we promoted result-driven projects. The first half of the year was clearly below expectation, but we were able to maintain a steady income from maintenance services, audits and smaller-size projects. We started to see customers making bolder decisions again in Q3.

 
Q: How did Siveco react to the economic slowdown?

 
A: We saw many companies taking very conservative measures, cutting staff and thus regressing during the crisis. Some companies reacted by cutting down their prices to totally unsustainable levels, resulting in further financial troubles. We did just the opposite. In 2009, Siveco invested a lot in R&D both in Europe and in China. We did not reduce headcount and in fact started recruiting again in Q4. We took the initiative of helping customers improve their ROI, sometimes by providing free audits. We did not, however, reduce our prices. Instead, we guaranteed returns, which no other supplier in our field could do. We were, I think, both creative and aggressive.

 
Q: What is your expectation for 2010?

 
A: I believe we emerge from this crisis much stronger, with a bigger team, more references, a wider range of maintenance improvement services and new innovative products. No competitor in China is able to match our skill-set: in fact most our competitors have been weakened by the downturn. This makes me very confident for the future. 2010 is also the year of the World Expo in Shanghai: considering our leading position in the Chinese Facility Management market and our vast experience of multisite facility and public infrastructure projects all over the world, we are well-equipped to capture a good share of this market.

 
Q: What specific initiatives are you planning for 2010?

 
A: Our mobile solution, which can connect not only to our own maintenance system COSWIN, but also to other CMMS/EAM platforms, represents a new avenue for growth, not available to our competitors. Our teams are already using mobile devices to deliver our own projects (for data collection and inspections), but we are going to actively promote this tool to our customers in 2010. We have also decided to continue with our initiative to replace failed EAM/CMMS, as we see increasing awareness of the limitations of traditional IT solutions: most of the companies that have implemented such systems admit they have never experienced any benefit. We are really looking forward to 2010, an exciting year for the Chinese maintenance market!

 
About Siveco China

 
Siveco is the number one supplier of Facility Management (FM) and Maintenance Management Systems (MMS, also known as EAM) in Europe with around 82,000 users in over 60 countries. Siveco works with industry-leading customers in the manufacturing, infrastructure, and facility management markets. By implementing innovative management solutions, the company assists facility owners (and their service suppliers) in optimizing the utilization of their assets and reducing their operation costs, while improving safety and ensuring regulatory compliance. Siveco Group was founded in 1986, with headquarters in Paris and global R&D in Montpellier, South of France. Global customers include Airbus, BP, Carrefour, EDF, the European Space Center, Faurecia, Fiat, GDF SUEZ, the Greek Olympic Facilities, Nestle, Singapore Metro, etc. Siveco China was set up at the end of 2004 in Shanghai, with already over 40 references including Beijing Oriental Plaza, Changcheng Property Group, Brose, Danfoss, Saint-Gobain, SCA Packaging, Ikea, etc.

 
Siveco website:www.sivecochina.com