Siveco is growing
Another month has passed, I have spoken at a few more conferences, we have recruited a few more people, signed a few more deals… Business as usual? Well, perhaps, but in that special Siveco way… Judge for yourself:
– We have opened a new office in Chengdu, Sichuan province! The new office, combining the local partner operation with our own, already employs 5 people and is headed by one of our most experienced project managers, Ma Minhe, a native of Chengdu. The office is up-and-running, supporting existing customers in the province and developing new business in West China. The choice of Chengdu to open our only office outside of Shanghai reflects our confidence to grow the company in this part of China, based on the successes already achieved with our great customers there! Read the announcement here.
– We have opened our new R&D center in Shanghai! Our customers and readers probably already know that we have, since 2008, conducted local R&D operations in our Shanghai office, with a focus on mobile solutions “for the worker of tomorrow”. This led in 2009 to the release of bluebee®, which has since been very successful. As this unit became too large, we had to find more space and decided to move it to a separate office, in the same building where our main office is located. Currently all the bluebee® and bluebee® cloud development takes place in Shanghai, managed by two separate product teams (product strategy, design, documentation etc.) and a development team (programming, testing, etc.).
Growing the business may be an achievement in itself, but it brings new challenges! We now have around 40 people directly employed by the company, to which two outsourced teams should be added. We manage three different physical locations, not to mention that our projects happen anywhere in China (and a few export countries as well). My management team has taken up this challenge and we already see positive results!
Growth remains nonetheless my priority! I would like to take this opportunity to ask you (yes, You) for your help. Our experience has been that the best way to acquire new customers was through referrals. One of my favorite stories is that of a plant manager meeting his friends for barbecue and telling another plant manager how we helped streamline maintenance at its factory (true story). Two months later we had the contract and both companies are among our best customers! Our readers already know how we like to organize plant visits, exchange sessions, sharing workshops, etc. In addition to fruitful knowledge sharing, the referrals we get from existing customers have proven very powerful.
To our readers and customers: we welcome referrals and business opportunities. If you know someone who may have a need, have heard of a new project that may require our expertise, please let me know! Thank you!
Now for this month’s newsletter content: the Reliability article contains the second part of Tom Harada’s interview on link between Lean and Maintenance (again many thanks to Tom for supporting us); a Partner article on how we help EPC companies and automation vendors in export projects; this month’s Customer Story features the French Embassy in Beijing and finally Tips & Tricks on bluebee® system architecture and components. Our Latest News completes the issue.
We are growing, thanks to you our trusted customers, our faithful reader! We need your referrals so we can grow even bigger! Many thanks!
Bruno Lhopiteau
General Manager
Siveco China
General Manager
Siveco China