Actualidad

SII Concatel has successfully overcome the transition audit of the OHSAS 18001 standard to the current ISO 45001, the main standard on occupational health and safety. Its central axis is to provide safe and healthy workplaces, avoid legal breaches and prevent occupational accidents, as well as health problems related to professional activity.

 

The audit has concluded with an excellent result in terms of health and safety at work. The certification according to ISO 45001, which has replaced the OHSAS 18001, demonstrates once again that SII Concatel meets the necessary requirements for the establishment, implementation and operation of an effective Occupational Health and Safety Management System.

Published in March 2018, ISO 45001 maintains most of the requirements of OHSAS 18001 but follows the high-level structure common in ISO standards, facilitating integration with the rest of the organization’s management systems.

This certificate allows SII Concatel to work efficiently to increase productivity and reduce the accident rate, by identifying and controlling the risks associated with each job. Likewise, it also promotes the preventive culture by integrating prevention into the general system of the company and the commitment of all workers.

The SII Group has recorded, during the first three months of fiscal year 2019-2020, revenues of 162.57M€, equivalent to a 10.1% increase over the same period of the previous year.

 

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the SII Group, Eric Matteucci, has been confident that the Group’s results will continue to offer in the future the dynamics of growth shown in recent years. “In line with the previous fiscal year, revenues have increased sharply in the first quarter of fiscal year 2019-2020, reflecting the expansion of our business in France and elsewhere. This performance is in line with our objective of increasing revenue, which is expected to be between 675 and 700 million euros this year, a growth between + 7% and + 11%”.

Thus, the income of the SII Group has increased by 10.1%, reaching 162.57 million euros in the first quarter of fiscal year 2019-2020. This performance shows the same trend as the previous quarter, when growth stood at 10.8%.

Sustained growth in France and other countries

In France, the income of the SII Group has increased 7.0% to 85.52 million euros, with operations in different sectors, including aerospace, defence, banking, insurance, energy and transport.

The international operations of the SII Group have increased by 13.9% to 77.05 million euros. Poland and Spain have had great performances with respective growth of +23.9 percent (€44.4m) and +6.9 percent (€9.9m). In contrast, in Germany (-12.7% to 12.4 million euros), industrial activity continues to decline, which affects the overall performance of the country despite the maintenance of R&D activity.

Most of the markets where the Group is evolving are booming markets, in particular Romania (+ 12.5%), Chile (+ 84.0%), Canada (+ 23.6%) and Colombia (+ 28.1%).

Confirmation of guidance for 2019-2020

The first three months of this fiscal year show that business is going in a good direction. In this regard, the SII Group has confirmed its revenue forecast of between 675 and 700 million for the overall fiscal year 2019-2020 and an operating result with the same rate of increase.

At SII Concatel, we continue to promote digital talent with the help of Barcelona Digital Talent. This July we attended the Sónar+D Speed Dating, where more than 30 companies participated, and 350 interviews were conducted with more than 100 candidates.

On July 19, the SII Concatel team participated in the Sónar+D Speed Dating, a space shared between recruiters and candidates to find the best digital talent in the city. In this express format of 20-minute interviews, companies in the innovation sector have carried out a first contact with more than 100 profiles specialized in technologies such as Java or SAP, and with knowledge associated with BI, Big Data or UX.

The initiative stems from the impulse of new technologies and, above all, from the need of the digital ecosystem to meet the demand for ICT professionals. This is a new opportunity for emerging talent to meet companies in the sector with the aim of boosting the digital career of new professionals and helping the sector discover profiles with the digital skills it needs.

Driven by Barcelona Digital Talent, the Sónar+D Speed Dating wants to position the city of Barcelona as a digital talent hub to retain ICT talent, facilitate the attraction of international profiles and thus reduce the talent gap of the technological sector.

Last Thursday we attended the presentation of the Barometer of the Technological Sector in Catalonia as collaborating partners of the act. The event, organized by CTecno, took place at the Disseny Hub Barcelona and organizations and representatives of the public administration participated.

As every year, SII Concatel has participated in the presentation of the Technological Barometer promoted by the Cercle Tecnològic de Catalunya (CTecno). This is an annual study that analyzes the situation of the technological sector in Catalonia, with the aim of reflecting on the reality of the sector, analyzing its capacity for growth and identifying the trends it faces.

In this eleventh edition of the reference study of the Catalan ICT sector, 1,019 companies have contributed, almost 2% more than the previous year.

 

In 2018 Catalonia has reached the figure of 15,757 technological companies. So it is not unreasonable to say that the ICT sector in Catalonia is in a moment of clear expansion, with a growth of 4.5% over the same period of the previous year. According to the study, the technology employs 106,400 people in the territory (3.1% of the employed population of Catalonia), surpassing direct employment in leading sectors such as the automotive one.

It is also revealing the fact that 47% of these Catalan companies achieved a turnover of 2.5% higher than the previous year, and for this year 2019, a similar growth is expected.

What are the difficulties that the ICT sector must overcome?

From the data gathered in the Technological Barometer of 2019, the problem of the lack of digital talent also emerges. Specifically, the demand for professionals among companies in the ICT sector has risen by 40%, but the supply of workers has only grown by 7.6%. The same happens with the representation of women, which only represents 28.7% of the workforce. 

For this reason, the conseller Jordi Puigneró has claimed the approval of two government plans to enhance STEM vocations in schools, especially among women, and to reconvert job profiles to the technology sector.

In short, the study is a photograph of a sector that continues to demonstrate its potential despite its difficulties and that must prioritize the retention of talent and gender parity.

To know all the data of the XI Barometer of the Technological sector in Catalonia, access here.

For the third consecutive year, SII Concatel has evaluated its Corporate Social Responsibility practices through Ecovadis, an international recognition related to sustainability standards as service providers.

 
SII Concatel has received, for the third year in a row, the EcoVadis Gold Certification, far exceeding the CSR standards and positioning itself at the Gold level as a service provider. The company continues among the top 5% of companies with the best results. EcoVadis manages the 1st collaboration platform that allows companies to evaluate the performance of their suppliers in terms of sustainability in 110 countries and 150 sectors. As SII Concatel, companies and organizations around the world have already adopted the EcoVadis solution to evaluate their global supplier base in more than 95 countries.

At SII Concatel, sustainability and environmental responsibility have always been among the values of the company. And, once again, this certification is a recognition of a well-done work.

As a member of the ACEC, SII Concatel has contributed to the technological awakening and the promotion of digital skills among the youngest through the volunteer program of the Junior Achievement Foundation. The participation in the educational project is another example of the social commitment of SII Concatel with the formation of the new generations.

SII Concatel has once again collaborated with the Associació Catalana d’Empreses Consultores (ACEC) and the Junior Achievement Foundation, participating in the program “Improves society: Digitalize it” that aims to boost STEM vocations (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) among young people.

Employees from different areas of the company have participated in this educational project focused on students from 14 to 16 years old, as well as students of Formación Profesional modules of middle grade. Thanks to this initiative, students from different Catalan institutes have become aware of the importance of the digital transformation we have experienced in recent years and the relevance that digital competences are acquiring in the business world. 

SII Concatel is committed to solidarity projects that offer our experience to enrich society and reduce the digital gap, providing knowledge that can help guide the career of young people. For this reason, SII Concatel endorses the objective of the project to bring technology to Catalan students, helping them to identify the skills that will facilitate their incorporation into the current labor market. 

On July 4, the fourth edition of the Prix Entrepreneur Tech was held, organized by the French Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona and sponsored by SII Concatel. During the ceremony, which was held at the Old Estrella Damm Factory, the eight finalists presented their projects under the watchful eye of assistants, companies and investments.

The French Chamber of Commerce already has his winner of the IV Prix Entrepreneur Tech. For the fourth consecutive year, SII Concatel has attended the event as official sponsor and jury of the contest.

The initiative, which seeks to encourage and support innovation and boost entrepreneurial talent, is a unique opportunity for all those start-ups that want to see their project grow. Thus, of the 60 technological projects that were presented to the call, only 8 were selected by the jury to go to the final phase of the contest.

Once again, the Old Estrella Damm Factory was the chosen stage for the finalists of this edition to present their projects to professionals from the technological and business sector.

Philippe Saman, General Director of the French Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, presented the act that continued with the presentation of the start-ups: Braincities, AI solution applied to HR to improve decision making; Coinscrap, financial planning software that facilitates savings by analyzing the behavior of people; Emotions AR, Augmented Reality to mobilize customers; Foot Analytics, Big Data platform that measures the traffic of people in a non-intrusive way; Kibus, domestic machine for feeding pets; Localoo, project of diffusion and optimization of the information of the physical businesses; Pricing Hub, a price optimization tool for retailers and ecommerce and Trucksters, an app that connects transport companies with different drivers.

While the members of the jury were deliberating, Louis de Fautereau, General Director of Uvinum, was responsible for conducting a talk entitled “Buying a start-up by an industrial group: the case of Uvinum and Pernod Ricard.”

Prix Entrepreneur Tech Award

Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Machine Learning, Virtual Reality, Industry 4.0 and Logistics have been the protagonists of this fourth edition of the contest.

 

The jury, integrated by Joan Carrillo, General Director of SII Concatel, awarded the prize to the Trucksters platform applied to the world of logistics and freight transport. By using AI, the application allows drivers to exchange themselves along the route, optimizing the management of long-distance trucks. From SII Concatel we congratulate the winner, and we wish him the best of luck to move forward with his project.

Trucksters, which received the trophy, won: one year of free membership in the French Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona as a member of the Chamber’s sponsorship committee, thus having access to exclusive events with more than 100 Franco-Spanish companies, a tutoring with corporate sponsors and meetings with some of the 450 companies associated with the French Chamber of Commerce.

The event continued with a networking in which all the attendants were able to share ideas and experiences in a relaxed atmosphere, fostering synergies and future collaborations among the attendees.

The SII Group celebrates its 40th anniversary and, as part of the great technological multinational, SII Concatel celebrates with them this special day.

Under the slogan “Imagine the world of tomorrow with us”, the SII Group celebrates its anniversary. Present in 19 countries and 4 continents, its history is a story of constant growth and technological innovation.

Since 1979, the SII Group has witnessed the advancement of technology and has accompanied its clients on their way to Digital Transformation. Four decades later, the Group sets its sights on the future and reaffirms its foundational values: proximity, innovation and commitment to the quality of our products and services.

Driven by its technology expertise, the SII Group has recorded yearly turnover of €631.4m for an increase of 12.6%, out-performing its reference market. The fiscal year has ended with a fourth quarter showing a nearly 11% increase from last fiscal year.

The SII Group has recorded yearly turnover of €631.4m for fiscal year ending 31 March 2019. Growth, which has been in the double digits for four straight years, has increased by 12.6% from fiscal year 2017/2018. 54% of turnover was generated in France, compared with 56% last fiscal year. For the whole fiscal year 2018/2019, organic growth was 13.1%, substantially outperforming the reference market.

International activity picked up over the course of the fiscal year with turnover of €289.5m, representing 46% of the SII Group’s total revenue. Business volume increased 17.7% from last fiscal year.

In the fourth quarter, international activity grew by 16.0% with turnover of €78.5m. This quarterly trend was mainly driven by performance in Poland (+27%), Chile (+114%), Canada (+59%), and Romania (+13%).

With turnover in line with expectations, the SII Group has met its objective of increasing the operating margin for the full fiscal year. With regard to trends in the sector and positive outlooks for 2019 published by representatives of the digital sector, the SII Group is confident that it will continue to grow.

The increasing connectivity, significance of software-defined functionality and penetration of electronics and software into all facets of our lives result in a society that is becoming dependent on smart devices that are part of and form interconnected Systems of Systems. Based on this basis, the Internet of DevOps project focuses on research and development for the application of this methodology when managing this interconnected future.

Concatel SII, under the coordination of Eureka and together with twelve other leading institutions in the technological field academic and business at European level, brings to this project its experience in the use and development of the DevOps methodology, especially in the development of specific aspects associated with its application in CPS systems of the e-Health area.

Focused as a multi-sectoral project, the DevOps project started last December 2018 and has an estimated end date of December 2021, with an allocated budget of more than 9.5 million euros. The technical innovations of the project will be demonstrated in examples of systems in key application domains, from telecommunications and 5G networks to the automotive industry, including consumer electronics, aerospace and defense, automation and digitization industries, IoT, eHealth and digital marketing.

Regarding the participation of SII Concatel and specifically the implementation of the DevOps methodology in the field of eHealth , the results of this research will be very useful in this sector. Due to the markedly increasing trend of technological demand in the field of sanitation due to aging and population growth and the growing interest in wellness consumption, it is essential to face the technological challenge, supporting to the accelerated process of development and innovation that the market poses.