Rallying the exec committee to transform, as an interim manager

Before AirSaas was set up, Caduciel's governance, crisis-resolution process and steering ran on what every company has used at some point: Excel and PowerPoint. New ideas for the strategic plan were generated on Post-its and consolidated onto a slide. Fortunately, collecting, processing and tracking are now far simpler thanks to AirSaas.

The context

Founded in 1991, CADUCIEL provides IT services and digital solutions for pharmacies. Caduciel is a subsidiary of the CERP Rhin Rhône Méditerranée group, based near Besançon (Bourgogne-Franche-Comté).

CADUCIEL supports more than 300 independent pharmacies and buying groups day to day in their digital transformation and the evolution of their business model.
The organisation has 50 employees and generated three million euros in revenue in 2021.

Vincent POTEL joined the company to address a turnaround situation, as interim Managing Director.

Interim management means calling on an experienced executive to solve a specific problem: exec-committee interim, project management, crisis management (growth, restructuring, turnaround). Highly operational, interim managers deliver operational, pragmatic solutions within a set time.

Carrying the challenge as interim MD

Vincent led a triple transition — managerial, technological and methodological. With his arrival, CADUCIEL overhauled its strategic and operational plan, addressing four key stakes:

• Tracking innovation: an ambitious plan to relaunch and upgrade the "PMS" (pharmacy management software), to make it the benchmark solution for modernising pharmacies.
  
  
• The financial stake: when he arrived the company was making significant losses. Within three months, it had cut the projected loss by a third.
  
  
• The technical stake: a migration of more than 300 Caduciel customers in under 18 months — all "re-plugged" with every connection. A technical feat.
  
  
• The managerial stake: an MD let go on Thursday and the interim manager arriving on Friday morning. The objective was to bring the business teams back on board.

The solution: AirSaas accelerates the transition for corporate governance

Tracking the transformation… with a tool that fits!

Working in a crisis context, speed was a key criterion in choosing the solution. "I was looking for a simple tool, easy to implement, to track the transformation", Vincent POTEL points out.

AirSaas made it easier to take control of innovation steering across the four defined activity areas:

• the Pharmacy Management Software (PMS) and its Marketplace
• Diversification
• Innovation: one of the topics where we have strong ambition, with Artificial Intelligence
• Providing a team of experienced, multidisciplinary developers

Beyond steering the transformation, simplified reporting is a key win: “I save hours of formatting”, Vincent tells us.

A tool that maximises cooperation by bringing several departments on board

“80% of crisis resolution is about people. The objective is to bring the teams on board for the project to succeed”, Vincent POTEL points out. He tells us he appreciates that with AirSaas “everyone can contribute information in the solution, and that it happens in a more interactive way.”

An anecdote Vincent shares is telling about the natural adoption curve of a tool like AirSaas. At the start of the assignment, the solution hadn't been selected by the company. It was through his individual use of the platform, and the sharing he did with leadership, that the added value was perceived and recognised. Leadership now uses AirSaas directly. “You can only move forward on transformations when tech, finance and operations are aligned with the exec committee”, Vincent recalls.

A tool made for the interim manager's job

“An interim manager is both architect and bricklayer”, Vincent Potel explains. “We're here to solve problems and put efficient business models in place”.

The business need is to have both a global and a detailed view — to better steer the project portfolio and the allocation of financial resources.

For the company, using this particular role avoids some of the pitfalls tied to internal career stakes. Here there's no future to protect, no permanent contract to chase! On the contrary, you focus on the problems.

“My job is to buy time; I save time for the shareholder.” Bringing in an external interim manager is sometimes vital to get a company out of a dead end. Vincent POTEL quotes Arnaud Marion: "When you're hostage to a crisis, you can't be the negotiator of that crisis".

Bonus section:

What sets AirSaas apart from the other tools you considered?

“Everyone can contribute information in the solution; we have a more interactive tool that genuinely engages the teams and brings several departments into the transition”.

Your favourite feature?

"The flash report: I press a button and the reporting PowerPoint is generated! I save hours of formatting." Vincent Potel tells us.

How do you calculate AirSaas's ROI?

“AirSaas helped us get past the silos that existed in the organisation”. Even though Vincent POTEL points out that: “calculating a direct ROI is necessarily subjective; nonetheless the tool clearly made it easier for us to take control of steering”.

In short, for Vincent and his team, AirSaas is a simple, intuitive and fast solution, and he recommends using it.

Quick bio - Vincent POTEL

Certified as an interim manager by the IFMT (Institut de Formation au Management de Transition) and the IHEGC (Institut des Hautes Études en Gestion de Crise), and holding an executive MBA from KEDGE, Vincent POTEL has a strong background running and steering business units in Finance, Sales and General Management roles across industry, services and BtoB/BtoC distribution — which gave him a global view of a company's stakes. Vincent is today an interim Managing Director.