STEP UP: “Boond helps us gain productivity”

By Johann CARRIER, Chief Financial Officer at STEP UP

STEP UP is an engineering company, expert in managing complex projects.

To ensure growth and performance, STEP UP chose BoondManager.

Who is STEP UP?

STEP UP is an engineering company that was established in 2014 and has significantly expanded across the entire national territory, now with nine agencies in France located in major French cities.

We work on industrial issues and in the IT field with over 200 employees and a turnover of more than 15 million euros.

How did you start working with Boond?

It’s quite recent; we initiated the project in July 2023. There was a configuration phase that lasted 3/4 months, a testing phase with one of our agencies in France, and we transitioned the entirety of our scope on January 1, 2024.

Our company is experiencing strong growth, so it was important to structure all our processes. During our research, BoondManager stood out with its focus on IT service companies and engineering firms.

It’s an ERP that suits us because it has this project-oriented approach, which allows us to gain efficiency and productivity across the board: from recruitment, the CRM part, project management, and on the back-office side: billing and payroll management.

Was onboarding easy?

This configurable aspect gives a certain form of flexibility while maintaining a framework: we wanted to stay within this framework and didn’t necessarily want to opt for very specific solutions.

Regarding onboarding, there was an accompaniment phase with a BoondCoach; shoutout to Sarah, who supported us during the configuration phase, the testing phase with one of our agencies, and then followed the training we provided to all our internal employees. Today, she continues to support us in the implementation of the tool in the after-sales part, and it went very well.

Did STEP UP teams immediately adopt Boond?

For me, it was a concern because change is not necessarily easy to initiate within a company. It was a pleasant surprise to see the mobilization of STEP UP teams who quickly embraced the project and saw the potential Boond could bring them in terms of productivity, efficiency, and time savings.

Does Boond help to unite your teams?

I think it indeed brought more cohesion within the company. Before, we had many disparate tools specific to each department, such as HR, sales, and back office. Now, everyone working with the same tool allows each person to better understand what others are doing and brings more coherence across the entire chain.

Do you follow our feature updates every 2 months?

That’s indeed one of Boond’s strengths: given where we are in the process, the implementation of Boond has been really effective for a quarter now. It was important for us to ensure the operational part.

Looking back after 3 months, there have been no particular bugs, and the transition went very well. Operationally, we are now entering a phase where we will delve deeper into using Boond, especially for dashboards and reporting. We are working a lot on this now and are very attentive to updates.

We also work closely with Boond, suggesting areas for improvement. Boond teams are very receptive to the feedback we provide, and we feel that the developments that come out take this customer feedback into account, which is very important.

Shall we talk about STEP UP’s growth?

We are on a double-digit growth rate, and Boond is capable of supporting us and clearly contributes to this structuring. Ultimately, Boond allows us to gain productivity, enabling us to focus on more valuable tasks rather than the more time-consuming ones that were less automated before Boond, leading to time loss and errors. Now, there is reliability in terms of information processing, for example, in terms of processing billing information.

Happy to meet the Boond community?

I am very pleased to have met Boond teams. I had the opportunity to meet in person with people I had communicated with during the Boond project implementation, such as Mathias on the IT side and Gauthier on the commercial side. I discovered a whole Boond team that seems very united through the project and has a great dynamic.