CIPAC: An almost 20-year relationship of trust
“With advensys, we’ve built up a lasting relationship of trust over almost 20 years: we’ve grown mutually, and we’re very happy with them!”
CIPAC is a Belgian family business, with over 70 employees and 5 stores, which stocks over 100,000 items for construction and renovation professionals. CIPAC is a local leader, renowned for its comprehensive service and sound advice.
We meet Philippe Beauthier, CIPAC’s CEO, at the company’s headquarters, located above the CIPAC store in Evere.
“Our relationship of trust with the people behind advensys began almost 20 years ago. They installed us our first management application, and we’ve been relying on their advice ever since. This allows us to focus on our core business: specialized distribution“, says Philippe Beauthier.
“All our infrastructure is in the hands of advensys and apart from the impact due to the fire at OVH a little over a year ago already, we know we’re in good hands because we’ve never had any breakdowns. We’re 100% reassured. In fact, we’re considering leaving OVH for AZURE to avoid any possible recurrence.”
Philippe Beauthier has a clear-cut opinion on IT:
“I consider that there are 2 types of IT solutions: on the one hand, what is necessary and costs money, and which we must manage to do as cheaply as possible – like cash registers, for example – and on the other hand, IT that can make you money – like take-away sales, for example, which proved very useful at the time of lockdown.”
Philippe Beauthier adds:
“With advensys, we manage to run CIPAC with as few administrative jobs as possible, and we’re continuing to make progress to automate as much as possible. We’re in a business where our margins are under constant pressure in a complicated environment with soaring prices, so we have to be vigilant about our selling prices and our inventories. (…).
“Legislation has also changed, forcing us to display prices, as we are essentially a professional business, but with very different prices depending on the quantities purchased. We’re working with advensys to come up with an app that will enable you to read the barcode of an item with the right price on your smartphone, depending on your level of customer. I have to admit that when we come up with an idea, advensys develops and implements it.”
“Between the infrastructure and the Modullo software, overall we’re very happy with advensys. They’re close to us, it’s a company on a human scale, and we have a lot of affinities! It’s creativity at the right price!” Philippe Beauthier concludes.
Our Business Unit Manager explains: “For a company with 70 employees across 5 sites, it’s difficult to afford all the skills needed to run the IT environment in-house. You have to set up the right architecture according to the customer’s expectations, and then make sure that everything runs smoothly. At CIPAC, we take care of hosting their environment (private cloud servers at OVH), guaranteeing high availability through our Omnium contract, which covers some fifty screens, including cash registers.”
