France Chapter: A 2006-2009 Chronicle

Serge Bodenheimer, France Chapter Vice President

France Chapter members listen as the
results of the 'Day Plus 1 before 8 a.m.
Survey' are delivered.

In the ’80s and ’90s, the AFSMI France Chapter experienced great success and a thriving membership, with up to 200-plus members at one time. However as one might presume, due to the economic climate (local and global), a newer generation of workers, and a fear of “mixing” with the competition, the chapter saw a decline in its membership over subsequent years. In 2006, the chapter leadership took a look around at the local region, the industry as a whole, and the services professionals in their locale and decided to do something about it. They developed a plan with their members in mind—and now they’re once again growing and gaining back the foothold they once had. How are they doing it? What follows is a chronicle from Serge Bodenheimer, vice president of the France Chapter, in which he describes both the wane and the resurgence of the chapter throughout the years.

Why the Decline?
The situation has declined post-1990s for a number reasons:

Many companies had merged their European subsidiaries to create one entity based in other geographies—London, Holland, Germany. The chapter began having fewer and fewer correspondents in these regions.
The “old” members had been replaced by a newer generation of workers who were wired for online learning and were not as open to (i.e., weren’t aware of) the value of face-to-face networking and sharing of experiences.
Companies didn’t realize the benefits that could be obtained from their employees interacting with members of competing organizations outside of the work setting, discussing theory and practice.

The Comeback
In 2006, the chapter leadership took a reflective look at the situation, and in looking back, we devised a plan for the future. This once-flourishing chapter could be re-strengthened—but we needed to have a solid foundation from which to grow. So we looked to our membership with an empathetic and understanding state of mind, and we devised a plan. We came up with five good reasons why any company in the France region should want to become involved with AFSMI:

To resolve actual problems. Real problems faced by our organizations; very concrete ones.
To gain access to learning and products/services. Local knowledge that can be obtained outside the five annual meetings; to add continuity to real relationships.
To develop business relationships. To form new links and engage with potential suppliers.
To gain access to international expertise. Leading services authorities from AFSMI U.S. and Europe, taking advantage of the international network.
To be at the right place at the right time. A place where knowledge and experiences can be shared, and above all, a place where constituents can enjoy a relaxed and fun networking environment together.

Focusing on these five reasons has helped us to turn a tremendous corner. In 2007-2008, we have chosen to help our members in handling a new law—one that is incredibly difficult to follow—called “TEPA.” With TEPA, the government’s aim is to allow organizations to allocate supplementary working hours to their employees without taxation. The goal is to provide more wealth and “buying power” to the working class. The problem is that it must be proven that those hours are really supplementary working hours and not regular hours. How? First, the organization must have a solid process in place to document and count daily working hours (not an easy task with field engineers). Second, there must be a process in place to calculate the supplementary working hours, and if an employee was historically compensated by time off, it’s not possible to interchange the system from one day to the next. As one might presume, it is a very complicated, delicate, and foggy issue. To help our members deal with TEPA, we organized three meetings on the subject with increasing success—so much so that we have doubled our average number of visitors to up to 25, and gained six new members.

Additionally we have engaged our chapter by having guest speakers attend our meetings. Recently we invited CEO Richard Seurat from A-NOVO to describe the organization’s method for developing a European branch despite the cultural and business differences from one country to another. These types of engagements continually prove to be a valuable contribution to the meeting discussions for everyone involved

As another example of how we have added value to our chapter members, in March 2008 we launched a survey among our membership on the logistics of spare parts being delivered from one day to another, called “Day + 1 before 8 a.m.” In January 2007, a law was passed in France that stipulated that tractor-trailers cannot exceed 90 kph (as opposed to the previous 110 kph), making it difficult to meet the before-8 a.m. delivery times. At the same time, the need of an H+4 service is developing, and the use of field stock locations (FSLs) is on the rise as well. Will it be possible in the next few years to use those FSLs to meet the before-8 a.m. goals? These issues and others were addressed in this important member survey in which 20 organizations participated, the results of which were just recently delivered on May 22.

A Plan for the Future
In 2008-2009, our plan is to continue to focus on our members’ issues—to bring them expertise and solutions, and to grow the membership base, thereby increasing network connections as a whole. We are pleased to announce a visit from AFSMI president and CEO JB Wood on September 16. We will be organizing an event with a focus around JB’s vision for building a robust services business (inspired from his discussion at the 2008 Technology Services Europe event earlier this year). For more information on the France Chapter and how you can become involved, please feel free to contact me at vicepresident@afsm.fr.

France Chapter: A 2006-2009 Chronicle

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