Team flexibility and client proximity play a key role in a project's success. To gain deeper insight, we invite you to meet Vincent Beaupérin, Head of Delivery. In this interview, Vincent shares his career journey, the essential skills for his role, and the challenges he has overcome.
Discover his story and step behind the scenes of the Head of Delivery!
I’m Vincent Beaupérin, currently serving as Director of Delivery for France at Arago. My role involves ensuring optimal service quality for our clients, maintaining their satisfaction while also looking after the well-being of our internal teams. It’s about assigning the right resources to the right tasks, making sure everyone thrives in their roles, and striking a balance between customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and budget control. I had a similar operational role previously at one of our competitors. My career has taken me across both sides of the business—working for service providers, as I do now, and also on the client side, where I spent many years. As a client, I often worked with providers like Arago to implement HR solutions such as SuccessFactors, as well as payroll tools. I’ve been switching between these two perspectives for over 25 years. My arrival at Arago is recent but fits naturally into this path, as I had previously collaborated with Jean-Christophe and Yannick Raba on several projects. That shared history made my integration into Arago a natural progression.
As for a standout project, I would highlight the complete overhaul of the HR information system I led at Cdiscount. During that initiative, I worked with Arago and had the chance to collaborate with highly skilled and dedicated experts, which significantly contributed to the project’s success.
The most valuable advice I can offer a client looking to digitize their business processes is to pay close attention to the impact of change on end users. The true challenge in any digital transformation lies in tool adoption by employees. If the solution is underused or misused, the project cannot be considered a success. It’s crucial to stay attuned to user needs, ensure that the solutions meet those needs, validate them at various project stages, and support users in taking ownership of the tool. This approach to user engagement and change management is what ultimately determines a project’s success—for both the client and the provider—and often leads to further collaboration opportunities
The main difficulty encountered in this type of project - and this seems to be fairly widely shared - concerns the involvement of customer-side teams. Many companies underestimate the time and investment required to precisely define requirements, formalize and validate them, and actively involve business teams throughout the project. Some customers often rely entirely on their service provider, thinking that signing the contract is enough to guarantee success. However, a project of this nature relies above all on close collaboration between the two parties. If the customer's internal teams are not sufficiently mobilized, or if they lack resources, this can compromise the effectiveness of the deployment. Synchronized efforts, a common rhythm and a genuine mutual commitment are essential.
The first step in guaranteeing customer satisfaction is to fully understand their expectations. This requires a rigorous scoping phase, ideally even before the kick-off, to ensure that all stakeholders are aligned with the project objectives.
It is also often the case that the operational contacts are not the same as those who contracted the service. In such cases, there may be a gap between the initial request and the actual needs of users. Identifying these discrepancies from the outset enables us to respond more effectively, and avoid misunderstandings or dissatisfaction later on. Throughout the project, it is important to maintain a regular dialogue with the customer, to organize validation points at each stage, and to remain attentive to changing needs.
Sometimes, during the course of a project, the customer discovers that the solution initially envisaged no longer corresponds entirely to his expectations. In such cases, it's important to be flexible, while remaining true to the initial framework agreed upon. This means remaining transparent about the implications of any changes, whether in terms of budget, resources or schedule. Finally, it is this ability to listen, adjust and co-construct that enables us to respond effectively to the customer's expectations, to achieve a successful project, and to build a relationship of trust over the long term.
I haven't had to deal with any major upheavals in the projects I've managed. On the other hand, adjustments are an integral part of every project: shifts in schedule, changes in contacts, diverging visions... These changes are commonplace and require a constant attitude of adaptation. The key, in my view, lies in being close to the customer and being flexible.
At Arago, our experienced consultants know how to anticipate change, understand it and react quickly. This skill makes adjustments smoother and promotes the overall success of the project. When a customer shares this culture of collaboration and transparency, and is genuinely committed to the success of the project, then we have all the conditions we need to successfully complete our mission. Our teams master the tools and know how to adapt them with professionalism, which is a decisive factor in success.
Through this interview, Vincent Beaupérin gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the role of Head of Delivery. Interested in an audio version? Listen to this episode of our podcast Arago Voices on Spotify (in french): https://urls.fr/6chOnL
