Alithya Group Inc. (ALYA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Rachel Andrews. I'm Vice President, Communications and Marketing at Alithya. Welcome to our Investor Day. [Foreign Language] Today's presentations will be held in English. The Q&A at the end of the day, you may also ask your questions in French or in English. [Operator Instructions] [Foreign Language] I would like to bring to your attention the cautionary statement appearing on this slide of our presentation. During the day, we may make forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which may be beyond Alithya's control and could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. [Foreign Language] Please also note that certain measures contained in our presentations are non-IFRS measures. They have no standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and are, therefore, unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other issues. In case of technical problems today, the meeting will be adjourned for a few moments while we try to find a solution. Should we be unable to resume with a reasonable delay, we may have to adjourn the meeting until a later date, which would then be communicated. [Foreign Language] I would now like to hand over the meeting to Paul Raymond, President and Chief Executive Officer. Over to you, Paul.

[Foreign Language] Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everybody. Very happy to be with you today to share more information and insight in Alithya and also give you a chance to meet our amazing leaders, some of our customers and partners throughout the day. So we have a very detailed program for you today. And please don't hesitate, as Rachel mentioned, if you have any questions to enter them and we'll make sure that we answer them before this is over. So if we go to the next slide, please. So if you think of Alithya today, we are over 300 -- 3,300 people, U.S., Canada and Europe. We've grown significantly throughout the pandemic. And as you saw in our last quarterly results, industry-leading organic growth as well as acquisition growth. To put it in perspective, we added over 1,000 people over the course of the pandemic. So despite the challenges that we and everybody had at the beginning and the uncertainty, we were able during that time to generate amazing growth and add 1,000 people. And we know that we could still be adding more. So we're very confident that what we've done is on the right track. The strategy is the right one, and our people are doing an incredible job in attracting and retaining people. If you go to the next one, please. So if you think in terms of our vision, given the events of the past 1.5 years, we're very confident that we have the right vision. And it's when everything goes awry and that we have challenges and unprecedented challenges and events that we turn towards our trusted partners, trusted advisers and we look for trusted information and help. So our vision and the way we've built the company is tailored for these types of events, and that's why we're seeing these incredible results in terms of new bookings and growth in the company. So if you think of our strategic plan that we've talked about before, our clients are more than ever telling us that they want us to have more scale to be able to do more projects. They've seen what we've been able to do with their existing challenges, and they want us to do more. Our people are telling us that they want bigger and better challenges. And our investors are telling us that they want to see better growth and better performance. So I mean, we have to deliver on these things. Growth is not an option. It's a necessity for us. Attracting and retaining people is as well. So you'll see along the day today are people telling you about the practices that we have, where we're going, why it is that we can attract these people and how we're getting and retaining them. If you go to the next one, please. If you look back in terms of the acquisitions that we've done over time, each one of them have brought in something that we did not have, a complementary skill. And if you think about it, the leaders that you'll meet today, all of them came in through one of these acquisitions, and they're still with us today and managing bigger and more important portfolios of services in the company. And we're very proud of the fact that we've been able to attract these great people and that they're still around and adding value to the company. Next one, please. One of the things that we realized during the pandemic -- and if you go through the normal steps, you build a vision and you focus on your objectives and then you choose where you want to go and then a pandemic happens. A lot of people -- a lot of companies disappeared in the past 1.5 years, some household names that we've known, and we did not go through it. And what we've realized is that our model -- we did the reality check. The model not only stands in those circumstances, but we've thrived. And we see that whenever these major events happen, they drive significant change. And if you think of every company out there today, none of them would survive without their technology. And many institutions today, whether it's financial services, government, so on and so forth, more and more people are referring to them as technology companies who sell financial products or service certain customers. But when you think about it, we're in the right industry, and we have the right people and the right offering. So our plan is very sound. And if you go to the next one, please. And if you think in terms of size of the market and what we focus on, the latest Gartner, and you can use any of the different groups out there that do these types of analyses, estimate that the industry is a $4.4 trillion industry. And to put that in perspective, if you take the top 20 largest organization that operate in this sector, so take the top 20 IT services providers in North America, put together, they represent less than 4% of that market. So there's a tremendous opportunity for growth for us. We focus on 2 of these sectors. We focus on the 2 sectors that are growing the fastest which are around enterprise services. And the reason why they're growing the fastest is everybody will, at some point, go through this digital transformation, and it's accelerating because of the pandemic. Next one, please. If you look at what that means for us in terms of those 2 groups of the enterprise services and technology services, what it means is that more and more the customers are funding these transformation projects, which means more and more projects for us, given our approach to how we go about this. It also means more talent. We not -- we are not the only ones hiring people for technologies. Our customers are as well. So there's a huge competition for more talent. And we've been very, very good at holding our own in that. And the reason for that is pretty simple. If you go to the next one, please. If you look at any statistics out there from major institutions and most of the companies. And I'm sure if you looked at your own companies where you're from, you'd have these similar numbers, but 70% of people leave organizations because of the relationship they have with their direct boss. So it's usually, they don't see a career plan. They're not well coached. They're not well communicated with. They don't know what's happening, and they feel underappreciated. All of these things are usually related to the immediate manager. We decided to invest in our people a long time ago. So whether somebody has a new promotion, is hired as a manager or comes into an acquisition, they go through our Leadership Academy. The Leadership Academy is focused on training and developing leadership skills in our people to better manage and guide and coach and develop our employees. We have many other programs as well on the technology side, and we've used partners like Udemy and Pluralsight and many other types of things to make sure from a technical standpoint, our people are trained. But basically, it starts with the Leadership Academy. And if you go to the next slide, please, we actually measure the results of this. So we launched the Academy in 2018 before we went public. We also, at the same time, launched a new measuring tool called Officevibe, where we take in real time the pulse of our people in terms of what they see and how they feel about the company and what we should do to be better and get our people engage more. If you look at the performance of all of the KPIs, so on the average, we're now at 7.9. The industry average of all the companies using the software is around 7.6. And if you look during the pandemic alone, we had a significant increase in terms of all of our indicators, people being happy with how we manage the process and how we're treating them and how we're taking care of them and how we're leading the company. And the feedback has been amazing from our people. But the one that we score the highest and has the greatest improvement since we launched the tool is the relationship between the employee and their leader, their immediate leader. And when we measure this one, we take great care in making sure we address that. We maintained the academy throughout the pandemic. We had to do it in virtual mode instead of doing it in person, and it's still working very well. So we know it's the right investment at the right place, and it has a big impact on our attraction and retention of our people. If you go to the next one. I was showing you earlier our strategic plan. One of the things that I've been asked about in the past, and I'll talk about it a bit more, is aligning the compensation of the management with the performance of the company for our investors. So I wanted to be -- and I've talked about this before, so I just wanted to be clear. We've put in place for this fiscal year, 2022, a new performance share unit plan, which will be in the next proxy. But basically, we said to the investors, we doubled the size of the company. We reached a certain number in terms of EBITDA percentage of revenue target, and we do this within a certain time. So basically, we align -- if you go to the next one, please. We've aligned the compensation. So most of the people on this call today are aligned on this. So we have a 3-year plan that basically, we're doubling the size of the company. And not only do we double the size of the company, but it's also based on the total stock return. So we make sure that we align the incentive of the senior leadership with the performance of the stock for our investors. So we want to make sure that things are aligned. So as you go through this today, you'll get a better understanding of the rest of the business, and at the same time, you'll know that the people presenting have your best interest in mind as well. So how -- why is it that we're having the success in terms of the growth that we have? So we have a plan that we put in place a long time ago, and I'm going to give you examples of each one of these things. So you might recognize this model. It's a McKinsey -- this basic McKinsey model around growth. So basically, the 3 horizons around growth. One is defending your core, protecting your core business. The second one is really new and improved offerings. And the third one is really around the transformation. So if you look at this, our interpretation of this or how we applied this to us, on the base model, the first horizon, if you go to the next one, please. So on the first horizon, you look at Alithya 5 years ago, our revenues -- our net revenues is what we report to the market today. We're around $58 million. Our gross margins were around 12%. We've invested, as I said, in changing and transforming the type of services that we do to focus on adding value for our customers. So basically, over the past 5 years, we've gone from an average gross margin of 12% to 29%. One of the ways we did that was moving away from having a subcontractor-based workforce to having a full-time employee-based workforce. So we went from having 30% of our people being full-time employees to 70% today. That shift enabled us to invest in our people, invest in solutions, invest in projects, and it helped us grow that margin and change the profile. We recently acquired R3D, and I'll talk about that in a moment, and they're exactly where we were 5 years ago. The difference is we have a plan to get there within 2 years with the R3D acquisition based on the contracts that we signed as part of that acquisition. And I'll get back to that in a second. So if you go to Horizon 2. So Horizon 2 is really about transforming what we do and adding new offerings and value-added offerings. So if you go to the next one, please. If you go back and think of the book, Good to Great, and Collins and what he wrote, we -- I'll use the analogy as we fired a few bullets way back in 2016, in 2017 in terms of trying out our remote delivery model. Today, we went from firing bullets to firing a cannon to having an armada. So basically, we put in place this digital solution center in 2017 for 1 project, which was to rewrite banking, ATM machine software and basically making it device-independent, platform-independent. So the bank that we help, if you go -- if you use your phone, laptop, iPad, ATM machine or a teller behind the counter, everybody has the same interface. It works on every platform. It's a common usage, and it facilitates service enormously. We went from that. So we went from having a few people doing development to building this application to today. Our digital solutions center has over 650 people in 4 different locations, and we just opened our Morocco office to come complement that and help us find more people. And there will be a presentation on this. There's actually one of our videocast that you can watch during the break that was recorded by the leader of that practice, Steeve Duchesne. I encourage you to go take a look. It's very interesting. In terms of Horizon 3, as I'm mentioning, this is the transformation. We do this as part of the acquisitions that we do. So we target acquisitions that bring us something that we don't have. So I think the best way to describe this is, again, give you an example, and I'll use R3D, if you go to the next one, please. So when we acquired R3D, the people profile was very close to what Alithya was 5 years ago, 70% subcontractors, 30% the permanent staff. But the type of work that they did was very high-value work, and we were looking for a way to transform that and accelerate it. So we were able, at the same time as we acquired the company is sign these 2 long-term contracts with 2 strategic partners that are going through significant digital transformations. So basically, we're able to leverage these 2 contracts to transform the type of business that we do, increase the volume of business we do and do it in a recurring fashion over the next 10 years. So based on our current run rate, these 2 contracts alone mean that 15% of our business today is recurring for the next 10 years with very good margins based on the value that we're going to be adding for these 2 customers. So these are 2 new institutional investors that have a vested interest in making sure this works that are very, very involved in making sure that these contracts work, and we're very happy to have them onboard. Next one, please. So I'd say despite -- or maybe despite is not the right word, but we're very, very encouraged and very positive and very enthusiastic about the growth that we've had in the past year. The last quarter, I think, is a great reflection of all the hard work that's been done during the pandemic, and we're seeing it. We've had a record bookings, so we're very confident that going forward, we're going to keep that growth going. So -- but at the same time, we know we can't take our eye off the ball. We want to stay where we're at in terms of being at the leading end of the industry on the growth side. We believe we're still positioned to outpace the competition and leverage that strong backlog and the new offerings to be able to grow it even faster. All right. Next one, please. Next one. So this brings me to the stock performance. So our stock has performed well in the past year, all right? But we still believe it doesn't reflect the full value of the company. If I look at the comparables that we have in the industry over the past year, the average growth of all those companies put together is 0, and that includes acquisitions. So if I take some of these companies one at a time, they're actually showing negative organic growth. Over the same period, we've shown 50% growth, half of that being organic. So we know we're ahead of everybody in terms of organic growth today because of the type of business that we're in. And we know that with the acquisitions that we just completed and the others to come that we can outpace the growth in the market. So based on that, we think right now, one of the best deals out there is our own stock. So that's why we launched the NCIB that we announced this morning. And we'll keep looking and monitoring and then buying back our stock when we see as the right opportunities. Digital transformation is really different than traditional IT services. We're seeing it. We're experiencing it. We have the type of growth that we have because we're dealing with new initiatives and new projects and cloud transformation. We don't have to deal with the legacy work anymore. So being that we're cloud-based, I think we have the right model for what we're seeing as the demand and growing demand going forward for our existing and new customers. I'll remind you, we signed a lot of these new customers over the pandemic without ever meeting them in person. I mean, we have a model that's very adaptive and adaptable to the current situation. So if it works well in the current situation, we know it's going to work great when things get a little bit back to normality, right? So with that, I'm going to pass it over to our COO, Claude Rousseau. Claude is a very good friend of mine. Claude joined the organization when I convinced him that we had this crazy plan to build a global champion. He's been with us for almost 7 years now, so he's seen us go from a very small regional company to this global international public company. I'm very happy and very privileged to count him as part of the team and very happy to have him here today to present his team and some of his leaders. So with that, Claude, up to you.

[Foreign Language] Paul. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you for your kind words. I would like just to say a nice afternoon to all of you. I'm very pleased to be here, and more importantly, thank you. Thank you so much for being with us today. As you can see, the title sometime in some presentation, it's irrelevant and not relevant. In our case, it's really relevant. That's the reason we'd like to build trust to leadership. That's the reason our key leaders of the company will join me on the podium today and as well one customer at a time, and I will have the privilege to introduce all of them one by one during -- before the presentation. And if you would like to get access to their full bio, I invite you to go to our IR section, and you will get their full résumé, and you will appreciate their full expertise. Next slide, please. A lot of folks -- a lot of people are asking us a question about practices and technical ways to slice and dice the business. In our case, we have 4 quadrants we are working with. The first one is about business strategy, and sometimes it's absolutely not related to technology. Sometimes it's more related about objective, challenges some of our clients and leaders they are facing. And that's the reason we are sitting down with them to understand exactly what kind of challenges they have and try to tailor-made or leverage the expertise we have. And maybe in the end, technology will be involved. Some of the time, technologies won't be involved, but that's the first step. That's the reason, understanding the business strategy of our clients. The second aspect is the application services. Application services is coming a lot of things, no doubt modernization as we are doing, transforming some time as well software from our different customers and adapting software of our customers. And that's the reason application service, that's the second quadrant. And I'm sure if you would like to see a lot of details or example of technologies we are using in each quadrant, I invite you to see the 3 outstanding videocast we have produced. You will get access of a lot of examples and technical example we are using to delight our customers. The third quadrant is about enterprise cloud solutions. As you can imagine, really important, again, a lot of companies they transformed their business from on-prem to cloud, and that's the reason now we need again to adapt. And more importantly, you will see today the different solutions we are offering ERP, CRM regarding HCM with Oracle and as well with Microsoft. And the last but not least is the quadrant related to the data. And as you know, the data is the most important asset all companies they have. And now we are supporting, helping them to leverage and to optimize the data and the value of the data they have within their business. And it's not only to analyze the data but how they can use it, how they can leverage and how they can create more value for their customers and for their business as well. Next slide, please. We are pretty active in 8 different sectors. And again, we are active in terms of technology, but also we are very active by knowing each sector very well and deeply. And that's the reason -- example when we talk about finance. Finance, yes, banking is one aspect, insurance companies and also pension funds, for example. But we are really active not only in one factor or one sector of finance. We're really, really active in different sectors. Manufacturing, you will see a good example later today. Same thing about renewable energy, telecom, health care, professional services, transportation and logistics and government as well. And that's the reason to the different presentation today, we'll come back on those different sectors, and just to illustrate how we work and maybe solutions also we had developed for every sector. Now if we look in terms of geographically how we are organized. We won't cover the France portion today. That's the reason we focused more on the North America. We have 4 offices in France. As you can imagine, they are with us since several, several, several years. And we are very pleased having them where the customers application, and also, they are doing consulting services for several major clients and business partners we have done there. You will -- we'll go through United States today with Russell about the activities we have in U.S. After that, we'll move from the south to the north and talking about the Ontario, what we are doing with Nigel and his team and moving to the Quebec side regarding naturally the private and public sector we have. We were active in 3 countries. And I mentioned we were active in 3 countries because since now a few weeks, we had announced the new office now we had opened in Morocco. And that's the reason it's really, really important. And we'll come back in different section today. And more importantly, we do have access to a full video on Morocco and why and how we had developed Morocco and the reason -- and also how Morocco will be used and leveraged by our groups down the road. Now in terms of percentage of revenue, if we look now the 2 most important sector we have, it's finance and manufacturing. They are representing over 50% of the total revenues we had last year. And now when we look some of the also sector, they are booming, and they are creating more value like health care, like transportation and renewable energy as well. And that's the reason those sectors, as you can appreciate, we are not only in one sector, but we are in different sectors. And we are generating the total revenues for the company and for the corporation. Paul had mentioned about some stats and the way we look at the future, and we'll move to the last slide. It's about when will Gartner had developed the -- how the IT spending will evolve in the coming years, in the coming months. But to know where we are going, we need to know where we went before. And that's the reason they are divided in 5 line of businesses, and that's the reason communication services, data center systems, devices, IT services and enterprise software. Alithya, we're really, really active in 2 out of 5. Sometimes, we are supporting the 3 others, but we are really active in enterprise software and as well in IT services. And as you can appreciate on this graph, the percentage of growth or the percentage of forecast is growing really, really fast for those 2 components in 2022. And that's the reasoning when Paul had mentioned we are in the right business. The timing is good. And that's a good illustration of an opinion from Gartner and a graph from Gartner showing how the business will grow in the coming months and the coming years. Now as I said before, really important to go through country by country, how the business is evolving. And that's a great privilege I have today to introduce our operational leaders. Let me start by -- I'm pleased to introduce Russell Smith, President of Alithya U.S.A. Russell joined Alithya in 2018 following the Edgewater acquisition. And again, just as you remember, if you would like to get his full bio, you will have access to the IR portion of our website. Russell, welcome and good afternoon.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Russell, when we look to the U.S. operation, we recognized it's driven by 2 solid group of solutions, Oracle and Microsoft. Maybe in a few words, could you describe Alithya's overall capabilities and strengths in the U.S.?

You bet. Thanks, Claude. We're in the business of driving transformational change for our customers, and we do that through building trusting relationships and delivering outstanding outcomes. Our strengths and capabilities really center around our products, our processes and our people. From a product perspective, you already mentioned Microsoft and Oracle, and we're honored to be partnered with them because they are the industry leaders in enterprise software. So when you think of ERP, CRM, HCM, EPM, the full breadth of that solution stack, we're able to deliver the full breadth of that stack to our customers. And that differentiates us. We call that a multi-pillar approach. Some customers may only focus on one segment, for example, CRM, but we are able to provide to our customers the breadth and the power of that solution stack, and that drives value for our customers. We're also deep and rich in certain industries that we really focus on. And through that, with our 20-plus years of experience in working in these industries, we understand what the challenges are that our clients face. So we innovate, we build solutions, and we develop our own product that we take to the market in parallel with the Microsoft and the Oracle solutions. From a process perspective, Claude, we recognize that most companies are going to talk about the importance of methodology and approach. But we continue to look at that day in and day out in terms of how we can improve. Just one example, when we started seeing the shift in the market to go to cloud-based solutions, we retooled our approach, and we looked at how we could package business process models, best practices, more agile approach to be able to deliver to our customers a faster time to value. And that faster time to value is really important in this market because those cloud-based solutions, being able to get the customer up and running quickly is paramount. The last piece that I want to mention is our people. I shared with you that we've been in this market for 20-plus years in some of our key segments. And if you look across the tenure of our team, we've got employees that have been with us for 15, 20, 25 years, and we blend that with new talent. I love the way Alithya invest in our employees with the Leadership Academy and growing our team. And that investment pays off in terms of how we interact and engage with our customers. One of the things that I think really differentiates us is we understand the importance of always being that trusted adviser. Paul mentioned that and -- within his first 2 minutes of his presentation. That's so important, to be that trusted adviser to work with the client to do the right thing and deliver. And I think that's one of our core strengths and capabilities as an organization is the strength of our people.

Russell, you had mentioned about the industry. And as I already presented, we are pretty active in 8 industries. Regarding in U.S., could you please bring value about the type of industries we are in versus others?

You bet, Claude. We may touch all 8 of those industries, but our strength is in 3 core ones. You saw the logos on the prior slide with Bridgestone, Firestone, Goodfood, Pacific Life, Nemours. Those represent the industries of manufacturing, health care and financial services, which is where we play best. Now if you look across those industries, they're each going to have unique challenges. In manufacturing, it's simply getting the right product at the right place at the right time. From a health care perspective, it's the dichotomy of improving the patient experience but also operational efficiencies. From a financial services perspective, Claude, you're looking at regulatory and tax laws changing consistently in the reporting elements that are important there for those challenges. But within each of those industries, there's a commonality in having a connected enterprise. And again, that's where that enterprise solution software play comes in. And later this afternoon, John Scandar, who leads our Microsoft practice, he's going to be doing a session with one of our customers, one of our manufacturing customers, looking at how we actually take technology and implement that technology to help that customer drive a new business model in terms of how they're going to get that product to their customer. It's a great story, so I hope you'll be there to join us for that. From a health care and financial services perspective, I love to talk to our customers. And one of our health care customers recently told me, he said, "Russell, when we go live, the most important thing is we've got to be able to cut checks and order supplies." But if you think about it, Claude, those are 2 different systems. You're looking at HCM from a human capital to be able to pay people into all of those [ hard to retire ] processes. You're looking at ERP to be able to simply order supplies. So the complexity of bringing all those systems together, the integrations that are required, we excel in those areas, and we've got experience. We've got business cases and strengths in terms of our references. And then from a financial services, EPM is such a strong component, being able to look at the budgeting, the planning, the what-if analysis in terms of strategic modeling. And that allows us allows and allows our customers to stay abreast of that changing environment. And we're using that land and expand strategy to work with those customers help them expand that footprint to encompass things like ERP or CRM, where they're getting closer to their customers and driving those operational efficiencies. So again, from an overall U.S. perspective, Claude, you mentioned that manufacturing and financial services being 2 of the largest markets, we play really well there. And the third one you mentioned that's really growing with health care, again, that's really solid for our team. So 3 core industries that we play in day in and day out.

Now we mentioned, Paul and I, the last 30, 45 minutes, the importance of growth. And I know as well in U.S., you have a plan to grow the business. But every growth, usually, it's based on fundamentals and like key growth drivers. Could you please share maybe the most important ones?

Yes. So as you can see, we have multiple growth drivers, and we've touched on a number of those already. But I'm going to focus on the top 3, Claude, and I'll hit the first one last. We've already talked about innovation and the importance of being able to take the breadth of a solution to our customer and product capabilities that we can develop. Claude, one great example is we work with a manufacturing customer. And this is the strength of the innovation across Alithya. And so for that particular customer, they needed to implement ERP. They needed CRM. They needed IoT capabilities, but they also wanted to look at some innovation around the area of demand forecasting. And so we were able to partner with one of our team members in Canada with Nigel's team and to leverage some of the resources and skills of that team to bring a truly innovative solution to this customer. And so I think that's how consistently we are looking for ways to differentiate ourselves, and that provides value to our partners in Microsoft and Oracle. It provides value to us as an organization, but it also provides real value to our customers. So that pursuit to continue to provide that innovation is really key. From an industry-focus, Claude, again, we talked about the core industries. The reason we focus in core industries is because it gives us that advantage. We can go in and understand the business requirements. We can talk the talk and walk the walk. But more importantly, we know how to take that experience, couple it with the technology and the platform and implement it with our customers to achieve their business outcomes. Customers are typically trying to reduce cost, increase revenue, gain some form of operational efficiency. But they're also trying to drive visibility into their operations. And so we want to continue to emerge not only with the core products that we mentioned, but to expand services around cloud services, data and analytics and so continuing to expand that footprint. And Claude, lastly, because we partner with 2 of the top leading industry partners from a software perspective with Microsoft and Oracle, we want to be known as the go-to partners in those industries. And that means that we align with them with the product capabilities, how we deliver that to the market. And that's really important. We've been recognized -- if you look at our Microsoft practice, we've been recognized many years for our industry solutions, manufacturing solutions. We've been recognized as an inner circle partner. With Oracle, we had the opportunity just this last week to get on with a partner manager and talk about all the great things that we're doing in the Oracle channel. And so being able to align with our partners and being recognized as providing value to Microsoft and Oracle, delivering value for our customers' results and great value for Alithya and for our investors.

Russell, maybe one key growth drivers I would like just to come back on in terms of conclusion is people. Our people. You had mentioned the importance of our people, and I know you're working very hard to currently developing skills and developing also new talent. Maybe in a few words, what exactly we are doing in U.S. regarding the people aspect?

Absolutely, Claude. One of the key areas when I talked about the 3 Ps was our people. And so we are continuing to invest through Alithya, as I mentioned, the Leadership Academy. We're looking for how can we provide that best-of-breed employee experience. One of the things I'll mention, I talked about the tenure of our employees, but an exciting time, I just came back yesterday from Atlanta meeting with a brand new group of college hires that we're bringing into the organization with our Oracle practice. We're going through a process. We call it our Academy, where we're putting those new employees through training, everything from consulting 101 to what it means to be a trusted adviser as well as the skills and capabilities around the technology. And we just graduated a Microsoft class in the last few weeks doing the exact same thing. So we're investing in bringing in new talent. But Claude, we're also looking at when you think of employees and what's really important is that opportunity to grow in an organization. It's also including the fact that the employee wants to feel that they're important and valued. And one of the things that Alithya did so well during the pandemic is we demonstrated to our employees that we care about them. And that was really important in terms of keeping our resources in place because we've seen record bookings over the last 2 quarters, and having that team in place to be able to deliver has been so important for us and the track that we're on.

Russell, thank you. Thank you very much. As you remember, Russell will join us as well for the Q&A section later today. But thank you very much, Russell.

Thanks, Claude.

Now I'm pleased to introduce Mr. Nigel Fonseca. Nigel is the Senior Vice President of Alithya Ontario and Western Canada. Nigel joined in 2017 from acquisition of Systemware Innovation. Nigel, welcome. Good afternoon. As you can imagine now, we mentioned about the different groups, the different business units we have. Nigel, how we can describe the Ontario and Western Canada business unit?

Well, probably the best way, Claude, is in that headline there. One thing that has served us well for 35, 40 years, is combining our deep industry knowledge with new and innovative technologies and really around driving customer and client needs to meet their business objectives, right? And that's what differentiates us from many of our competitors, having the combination of domain expertise in our key verticals and mixing that with technology. And so as an example of that, right now, our main offerings are centered around cloud services within the IT area, especially around Microsoft Azure and the modernization and migration of our clients' applications. And because of this unique, deep industry knowledge, for example, the energy industry, it's been almost 40 years. And within the financial services industry, it's been 25 years. And as Russell mentioned with his team, we have people that have been with the company for 20, 25, 30 years. Some people just celebrated the 35-year anniversary, but a great mix of young staff that have the experienced staff to mentor them in ways of not only about the business, but consulting and providing the client the business value rather than just focusing on the technology itself. In terms of the energy industry, we have that mix of engineering and IT. What's known now as sort of the IT/OT experience. And that allows us to achieve really unique results for clients, and I'll give you one example of that. So recently, we actually worked with Russell's team in the U.S. to bring in some of the expertise from the manufacturing sector, combine it with our experience with the nuclear and what we had done previously in the petrochemical sector. And as a result of that, we were selected for working on a client's digital strategy for a new initiative. And during the execution of this work and providing them a road map as to where they needed to go, we found that we could leverage other Alithya offerings that it wasn't just about providing an Alithya solution. It was also to leverage something that could really make a difference to the client. And so we brought in the potential for them to include enterprise performance management in this new initiative. So it's still early days. We're still in the early phases of this, but that's the kind of thing we can do for our clients. And in addition to the consulting 101 that we've done for many, many years, we've infused that now with IP. So we have IP offerings around analytics and reporting for asset-intensive industries and most recently, various artificial intelligence and machine learning offerings. So you heard Russell talk about one of them for the material demand forecasting that we were able to assist one of the customers in the U.S. on. But we also have that in the financial vertical around trade surveillance, which is now being used at one of the Canadian banks; and on the engineering side, for fuel channel inspections and pipe inspections. So all these are hosted in the cloud or currently being ready for migration to the cloud. And some of the expertise we bring to bear, one of our data scientists just published a paper on that pipe inspection that was just put in an ultrasonic -- one of the premier ultrasonic publications just a couple of days ago. So these unique offerings is what allows our clients to benefit from the digital transformation. And sort of the last thing I'll mention in terms of what we're delivering for our clients is it's not quite the digital transformation but something key to everyone in the world these days, especially through the pandemic, and that's what we're doing in the area of operational cybersecurity. And we might talk about that a little later, Claude.

Just if we come back on the 2 main sectors we are in. Maybe if you can describe more -- a little bit more example about what kind of technologies or process we are improving for our customers.

Sure. So on the energy side, predominant area for us there is in the nuclear sector. And we're really focused on the power generation but also on their business side. So dealing with energy markets, providing, selling and trading energy across different regions. Sometimes to the U.S., there's NISO, MISO and the ISO in Canada. So that allows us to, again, provide what we call solutions from the control room, which is on the power generation side, up until the boardroom, which is where we perform the analytics and data reporting. On the financial side, this is really that long history on the domain expertise, where we focus on providing services to the banks, broker-dealers and pension plans. And so primarily on those sides, we're working with capital markets, corporate treasury and dealing with risk. And from a technology perspective, we're really aligned strongly with Microsoft. We always have been. As Russell mentioned, we've also been a gold partner for many years, starting with what used to be called business intelligence, that's now data and analytics. We're also a gold partner for cloud. And that's really accelerating as our customers are embracing the cloud, realizing that they really want to focus on their core business, and they don't want to focus on IT. I mean, essentially, every company now is being an IT company, but they don't want their predominant expertise for a bank or broker dealers to be in IT. They want it to be in providing services to their clients, financial services to institutions and their investors. And that's really what we're focusing on in those areas. And to support that, what we've done over the years is we've established various practices. So some of them are technology-based. So we have a data and analytics practice, a cloud practice, a controls practice, even cybersecurity practice. But on the other side, we deal with verticals. So within the financial vertical, for example, we have a treasury practice. We have a capital markets practice. And that is really what helps us scale to have different individuals that are in charge for -- in charge of keeping us up to date on what the key innovations are for these industries in their particular practice areas.

All those practices now, they are offering some growth opportunities. How you could describe the growth factors and the growth drivers you have on your side, Nigel?

Right. Well, the key aspect to growth that we've always focused on has, first of all, been operational excellence. So it sounds corny a little bit, but it really is about project execution on the strategic initiatives, not really only ours, but really for our clients. And that also comes down to the staff we hire, getting -- being the employer brand of choice, so people want to work for Alithya in these industries. So that's step one. If we're not becoming that trusted adviser on our ability to provide them information on what technologies they should go to, on working with them on business directive to achieve their visions, then it's very difficult to proceed and grow. The other area is, and let's jump down to number three there, is talking about the partner channel. So focusing on Microsoft, that's a key area for our core clients and certainly a key expertise of ours. And that's where we can combine the technology in our verticals. And there's no doubt that digital transformation is both evident in our customers on the energy side and the financial side, and that's what's going to be a key driver. And our domain expertise is what's going to allow us to be positioned to understand their challenges in their various systems they're trying to piece together while they move to the cloud. So you're dealing with hybrid environments. You're dealing with, in some cases, environments that have to be incredibly secure, for example, nuclear and in banking. And that's what's really going to drive us. So you can see that we're working in key areas like cloud, cybersecurity, with key technologies like AI and machine learning that gives them better insights without having to algorithmically calculate everything all the time. And one area that you see there is SMR, and that's the small modular reactor. And there, we're talking about what's new nuclear. So if we look at what's happening in the world today, there's a huge focus on climate change. And within climate change, we need to reduce the fossil fuels. And so that means increased electricity generation and electrification. So you're looking at everyone moving to hybrid cars or electric cars, that's going to really require much more energy to produce but clean energy. So given the options for clean energy, nuclear power must be a part of the mix, and you're seeing that in the investment in small modular reactors. So if anyone is paying attention to the market, you would have noticed over the last month, and this is not a game stop phenomena, the price of uranium has gone up by 41% to a 7-year high. And I was part of a meeting yesterday with one of the CEOs of a mining company. And he said, no, this is not a flash in the pan. This is really signaling the investor realization that for clean energy, that's going to require nuclear and that's going to require fuel. And that's what's driving it. And so our ability to get involved in that new nuclear project is going to be very good for us and good for Alithya and ultimately good for the climate.

Nigel, we are also our own intellectual property as well within your group called CASSI. Could you expand a bit on CASSI?

Yes. So that is something that came out of a standard around providing key metrics. We always talk in the business about metrics drive behavior, and so the key metrics from many operators about what are the key things that will allow you to achieve excellence and keep your units running efficiently, maximizing uptime and therefore, not hitting your revenue stream. So we created that again on the Microsoft platform. It's both a reporting and analytics. Some of them forward-looking, some of them backward-looking. So there's many reporting, which is always backward looking, but some forward-looking analytics to establish the threshold so they can look at whether they're best in class amongst their industry peers. And then also just set a benchmark. So even if you're setting that benchmark low, you now have a benchmark and you can look to improve. So it's about continuous improvement to ensure that you improve your operations. And again, all these are really examples of how we've taken what we've seen from consulting and gaps that our clients have in their solutions and provide them the value to get them there faster.

Thank you very much, Nigel. And I will -- I know you will join us a bit later for the Q&A section. But thank you so much. Paul had mentioned the acquisition we had announced in March 2021. It was the acquisition of R3D. Now I'm pleased to introduce Dave Moreau. He's our Senior Vice President of Alithya Public segment for the province of Quebec. Dave, welcome. Dave, maybe a quick question on your side. Sometimes where we are not talking about our market, market by market, private versus public segment, maybe if you can give us the flavor about the magnitude of the public segment within Alithya and the potential of this market. Dave? Sorry, Dave, you are on mute.

I made the -- I made that mistake. Sorry about that. Well, thank you, Claude. Thank you so much, and thank you for this great opportunity to present the Quebec public sector. And as you said, it's quite important role in the overall business strategy. To talk about the public sector of Quebec in a few minutes is quite a challenge. There are so many things to be said, so many great stories to be told and so many great examples to be given. But I'll do my best in a nutshell to answer your question. Let me, first of all, put the public sector in perspective. On the slide there, we present 4 of our main clients of that sector. We have the justice department. We have the higher education department. We have the automobile insurance department. Also, we have the technological infrastructure department. I'd like to say that those 4 are the tip of the iceberg, but I don't think I can say that. I think they're an ice cube sitting on top of the tip of the iceberg. Just to put things clear, the Quebec public sector is composed of 21 ministries and 166 departments, where we have been providing strategic, recurring services for over 20-plus years now. The sector provides 7 of our top 20 Canadian clients at Alithya. We have over 525 professionals, bringing performance and excellence on a daily basis to assess the public sector in facing its various challenges. And those challenges are really numerous. Let me just name a few. A few years ago, we had the pleasure to help them go through a $1 billion project, replacing all the telecommunication systems and telecommunication infrastructure connecting and interfacing all departments and ministries, including health department, allowing them to bring telemedicine up north of the province. Another great example, a $400 million project where we had to replace all the radio communication systems interconnecting the police paramedics and all entities that would be involved if ever a strategic [ would strike ] the province. So those are a few examples. Let me give you another one. Various departments and ministries right now are working real hard to better be connected with the citizen who has requirements, who asks question. We're involved in numerous projects like that where we help them to improve their performance and where we help them to bring value to their customer, the citizens. So to your question, I think I can easily say that we play an important role in most of the sectors' digital and business transformation. And the sector is still at the very beginning of a very long transformation endeavor. They are right at the beginning of what they have to do to go up to the speed where a citizen can ask or buy anything online and now he's asking the question why I have to jump in my car or on my bike and go to a service center to renew my license permit or anything like that. The citizens are asking that now, and so the transformation will be increasing its speed, increasing also in importance, and we'll be there to help them. So basically, to your question, fair to say that the public sector plays a critical role in Alithya's past, present and long-term success and performance and, of course, in the great results we have the pleasure to announce on every single quarter we announced the results.

Dave, as you already mentioned, the public sector now is in the middle of a major, major transformation, but it's also a very competitive market as well, where we have a lot of competitors, they are also highly active. How we can differentiate our offer and what Alithya is doing versus our competitors?

The first thing that comes to mind is the great quality of our people. We have an outstanding group of professionals that master what it means to work with the provincial government, its laws, its regulations, how procurements work, how the politics plays in, in decisions and in the process of delivering a project. What's the culture? How do they work? How -- what their problems are? So we know exactly -- we master that so we can provide them with good advice, sound advice, which are extremely valuable to them. They recognize -- each and every single of our professionals recognize the challenges our clients are facing. They recognize those on a daily basis, and they can bring innovative solution to every single one of them. I'd like to say Claude, that another key element lies in the long-term relationships we have built throughout the years with our clients, any single ministries -- departments we -- that compose the public sector. We have become, over these years, a partner of choice that brings an unparalleled client experience. We have demonstrated our ability to improve the delivery of services provided by the states to our cities. And I was telling you a few examples sooner, taking into account not only the business and the technological portion of the problem, but primarily the human factor. The person that is there that requires a service, that wants the service. So face as that human person that is there, and that's our main focus. And we work for that client, which is us, you, them to bring them the best product or the best service possible. And also, I'd like to mention that our capability of providing an end-to-end service is also a great value to the state and the public sector. We can support any single transformation from cradle to grave. Let me define that, from the definition of the problem through the implementation of the solution and the decommissioning of obsolete system. And that implies change management, how people go from state A to state B. How do we bring them along that change -- project manager, business analyst, architects. So all brands of people we have, all the professionals we have who work together to be able to provide the best solution possible and once again bring the best value possible. At the end, I'd like to say, of course, we have -- we do all that using leading edge, sorry, technologies, frameworks, solution. I sincerely think, even though I'm with you guys since April 1, but we've known each other for many, many years, that we're one of a kind and we behave accordingly, and the public sector recognizes our value adding. And I think we have one of the greatest relationship with them that can be.

Just maybe to come back on the innovation side of the business and what you are creating regarding solutions, new solutions and so on. Maybe if you could share some examples of innovation and/or the process to innovate?

Yes, sure. Now let me give you some examples, but being very careful with names and numbers and stuff like that. And of course, we have contracts and we have to be careful. But -- we were able, at some point, to bring people together using new technology. I remember some day, we were facing a problem in one specific project I was mentioning, where we had to bring telecommunication lines up north, which was not practically feasible. It's pretty expensive, and we have people up north that live there, but there's a huge gap between Montreal, Quebec, Saguenay and those people. So it's pretty cost expensive to do that. So we were able to bring to the table a new way to go through satellites. So basically now, many systems we use are going through satellites, and we have established those links with our people, with our architect, to be able to jump the signal through satellites and bring a perfect signal that is now used by medicine, telemedicine, but also for court, so people appearing in court, they can do it through video conference, which was not possible before.

Now we mentioned about the transformation. We mentioned about the way you had organized the team to innovate and change things. Now -- as you can imagine, now the business is growing as well. How you will organize those key drivers to drive those expansion, those -- that growth within the public sector?

I think the primary key here, Paul (sic) [ Claude ], and I'll start from the end is quite simple. We want to remain a partner with whom it's easy to do business with. We don't bring problems or complexity to our clients. We don't want to become a problem. We want to be a partner. We want to provide state-of-the-art services and solution to complex problems. We're never the problem. We stick to our commitments. We bring value to the client on every single step of the journey. You've heard from Russell, you've heard from Nigel a few minutes ago. In a few minutes, you'll have a great pleasure to meet my colleague, Dany. Altogether, they bring outstanding credentials that, in turn, we can propose to the public sector. We can benefit from what we do all over the country, all over North America and elsewhere on the planet. Vice versa, our accomplishments in the public sector can be made available and exported to other administrations in Canada, in the U.S. and elsewhere. So we have a very strong bond between us altogether to share expertise, to share knowledge, to share experiences, to share credentials to be able to bring to all of our customers the best that can be, and that's a pretty good example that we do on a daily basis. Another thing very important to us is our flawless reputation. That reputation precedes us. Of course, we work through requests for proposal with the public sector. That's a fact and we respect that without a problem. But we are able to mark high scores in those requests for proposal processes because we are known and re-known. Our professionalism, our reputation based on excellent respect, and all those professionals that work with us precede us, as I mentioned, and we are a natural partner for the public sector. We have a team of young, less young, less, less, less young people that remain on top of their game, that remain on top of their respective field of excellence. And Russell was mentioning it, we can work together with those young people, bringing new ideas, new perspective to our work. We can mix them with guys with gray hair like me that have scars on the back, that have gone through difficult projects and stuff like that, and bring that new generation that will be outstanding professionals and that we'll be able to face the upcoming challenges of the public sector. And this is only the beginning. As I said earlier, the Quebec public sector, it's really at the beginning of its transformation, either from a business and a digital point of view. Most of their systems have been built in the '70s and the '80s. And now they have to be replaced. The citizen is asking for more. As I mentioned, you can buy a pair of pants, you can buy anything through the web. So he doesn't understand why he has to send fax, why he has to go directly to a service center to have a service provided by the states. So there's a lot more work to be done, and we've been there for over 20 years now working with them. So I'm pretty glad to say that it's not the end of the road. There are more and more requirements for a partner like us. It's not the end. It's not even -- and I will rephrase Winston Churchill, it's not the end of the journey. It's not even the beginning of the end. Maybe I will agree that it might be the beginning of the end -- or the end of the beginning, sorry, the end of the beginning, but we still have a tremendous journey in front of us, and we have all the credentials and the people to succeed and to bring values once again to the public sector.

[indiscernible] part of the Alithya journey and welcome again with Alithya. Your presence is really, really appreciated. Thank you, Dave.

Pleasure. Thank you so much.

Now I'm pleased to introduce Dany Paradis, Senior Vice President of Alithya private sector for the province of Quebec. Dany also manage the Canadian Oracle Division of Alithya. She was formerly President of Pro2p acquired by Alithya in November 2016. Dany, good afternoon. Welcome.

Hi Claude, good afternoon.

Dany, just maybe when we talk about the private sector, if we can maybe craft a bit and define a bit the private sector for our viewers, please?

Of course. The private sector is served by over 1,000 professionals and growth will mainly be generated by -- from project and strategic consulting. What makes Alithya different from its competitor? For our customer, we do nearshore development with the Digital Solutions Center. And for our employee, we have developed a follow-up program for both permanent and subcontractor employees. Since the employees are the most -- one of the most important assets that we have in Alithya, we make sure that all permanent employees have the opportunity to improve their skill by offering them training.

Now when we look at different logos and companies we are working with, Dany, could you please expand a bit on those companies we are working with?

How we are working more with the financial -- sorry. Thanks, Nigel. Sorry. So we are working with the financial and insurance sector. Those 2 are [indiscernible] for Alithya. We -- as we see on the first page, the logo that we -- that there is logo on the financial and insurance sector. We are partnering with the largest company in this sector. For those customers we do time and materials services or we are now a strong partner for the delivery of projects. We have -- with those customers, we have a long relationship with some of those customers. We also have the telecommunication and the retail sector, where it's a significant share of the market. As well as we do in the financial sector, we can be part of team to develop project or bring our team and methodology to help them to transform their business. So with the digital solution center, we can help all the customer to deliver a project with, I would say, new practices like agility, like DevOps. So we have a lot of scale that we can improve in the Digital Solutions Center.

Now we have more than 1,000 professionals working in the private sector. Could you describe a bit the kind of expertise we have for supporting the private sector?

Yes, for sure. We have people working -- we have people that is in the beginning to the end of the project. So we have people doing the planning of the project, so project manager. We have people in architecture. We have people doing business analysis. So just before we start projects, just to make sure that we understand well the needs of our customer. And then when we have -- well understand, we have people that can do the architecture, like I said. And after that, we have people that can do the developments. We have Java developer,.Net developer, all the new skills that are required actually with the development of project. We also have people in security. We have team doing web development in the Quebec area. Also, we can provide them with security. So we're covering all the, I would say, the important part of a project with all the team that we have. We can do it within the Digital Solutions Center or directly on the customer side. We are joining teams and be able to provide them those kind of services.

Dany, we also -- we can see on our screen the 3 main sectors your team is in. I know you're maybe in all the 8 sectors I already have mentioned. But could you please give us, in a nutshell, what's going on within the private sector regarding those 3 sectors?

Yes, for sure. So like I said, in the financial part, we are there since many years. If you remember at the beginning of Alithya, one the first customer was a customer in the financial service. So -- and then we are really working closely. Actually, the financial and insurance services, they are all reviewing their system. Their systems are very old. They want to have -- they need to refresh those systems with new technology. So actually, we're working very closely with them to develop those new systems. Within the telecommunication and retail sector. Those 2 sectors are also a sector that we are since a long time. And again, we are working with them to -- I would say, we're not so closely that we do actually in the financial insurance because there is a lot of projects in this sector, but also we're working very closely to help them to develop various project. On the retail sector, I will say that we are more working in a time and material basis, but we're working to bring them on project model also. So the team is working -- that business development team is working really hard to help them how we can, help the retail sector to be transformed.

Dany, when we read a different newspaper and we watch the news, we are hearing about the labor shortage and the challenge related to labor shortage in the IT industry. How you can perform when we have a labor shortage? And any solutions you are working on to find a consultant and professionals for our clients?

You're right. Labor shortage is actually an important challenge. The global digital center in Morocco help us to fulfill expertise to project team at a competitive price. So since we have opened the office in Morocco, so we are able to have people helping us on projects that we do in Montreal or Quebec. And also, I will say that the international recruitment can also be a long-term solution. So this is -- actually, this is the, I would say, the main problem that we are facing is to find people to fulfill project. Let's say that if we continue on the growth that we are going to have on the future. Let's talk about vertical [ consulting ] that we developed. So actually, we have higher education and health sector where we're positioning ourselves at the architecture level and give Alithya the opportunity to be part of the transformation of those industries by developing solution or by deploying Microsoft and Oracle solution. We have talked about -- a lot about the insurance and financial sector. So to make sure that we are going to be in top of the edge for this sector, we actually work to develop a center of excellence to make sure that we are going to create people knowing well the sector of the insurance and be able to help our customer and establish a good relationship in this sector with -- in the Quebec area.

Dany, just maybe to come back on the recruitment aspect. I know you're doing a lot of efforts as well regarding international hiring. Maybe could you give us maybe some flavor about what exactly we are doing.

Actually, what we do, so we recruit people where we have 2 sites. Like I said, there is the Morocco office that -- where we employ people and they're going to work from the Morocco's office. But we also recruit people at the international, and we bring those people in Montreal to work with us. So during -- I think that we're looking to -- actually, we have more than 1,000 people that are going to come. And it's still the beginning of the year, so we're going to have more during -- coming during the year. So it's an important, I would say, that help us to fulfill projects. So it's a lot of work, but I think that brings new people on the market and -- when we have those people coming from the international.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Dany. And I know you will join us as well for the Q&A section. Thank you. As a wrap up to this first session with our leaders, our operational leaders, I'd like to highlight that at Alithya, we customize our solutions and offers based on customer needs, objective and the end state expected from our action and engagement. We leverage our expertise by market offerings based on different elements, geographically, practices and solution by promoting cross-selling and cross implementation to all of our business units. Our clients think global and so do we. We invest in our employees by developing training programs for all of our leaders and employees to create a positive environment for all of us and all employees. We jealously protect our client or customer relationships by communicating with them on a regular basis and in a transparent manner. We attract and retain talented employees through worldwide recruitment efforts and make these experts available to our clients. We are convinced this is a winning combination. Thanks so much. And now I would like to hand the call back to our CEO, Mr. Paul Raymond. Paul, back to you.

You're muted.

I just saw that. Thank you, Claude. Thanks, everybody. Thank you for the great presentation, folks. Very appreciated, and great insights into our different business. And I know that you're all very passionate about your business and can talk about it for hours. But given the time that we have, I think those were great overviews. Maybe if we go to the next slide, please. So I mentioned earlier about our growth horizons and protecting the base. And so R3D was a good example of an acquisition that looked like what we looked like 5 years ago and how we're going to accelerate that and bring them to Horizon 2. You heard a little bit about Morocco. We have some videos online that are available to you. [ Steve Schein ] recorded one on our Morocco operation. I encourage you to go watch it during one of the breaks here or at the end of the day to explain how we set that up. It's a great opportunity for us to get some bilingual and trilingual people, very qualified people who are very happy to be joining the team. And I wanted to spend a bit more time on our Horizon 3. And I think sometimes the best way to explain what we're doing is to actually do a deeper dive and talk to somebody who's been through it. And as I mentioned earlier, very fortunate that I have a slew of potential guests that I could have used for this session as everybody who's been participating on this call today came in through an acquisition and were the CEO or a leader where they were before. So the next one, please. So I could have basically picked from any one of these to bring somebody in front of you. And I decided to ask Russell to join me for the next segment here and kind of go through what we typically go through an acquisition from the perspective of somebody who's been on the other side. So if Russell is on...

Can you hear me okay, Paul?

Yes. Yes, I can hear you, Russell. Can everybody see Russell? Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. So thanks for joining me, Russell. Maybe before I start, maybe a bit of background from you. Earlier we were talking about the business, but maybe on yourself, where you're from and where you're based and a bit more background.

You bet. Paul, I live in Athens, Alabama, which is a bedroom community for Huntsville. So when you think of a NASA space and rocket program, so that's the area that I'm in. And just as a bit of background, I'm an engineering graduate from Auburn. I worked with a multibillion-dollar company for my first few years, just learning the ropes, worked in manufacturing operations, engineering management in that role. And then transitioned more into really the area that I'm in today. I had an opportunity to go back to school, to get my MBA from Duke and put that into practice in terms of actually being one of the founders of a company. And so actually, the company that I worked with starting along with John Scandar one of the partners here that you'll hear from later, that company has been through a number of different changes in terms of names and so forth. But it's really the genesis of the company that represents the Microsoft practice for Alithya today. And so we've had the opportunity to go through -- in our growth strategy, we've dealt with all the challenges that an entrepreneur will deal with, the banks, the growth, all of the challenges that come into play. Paul, we've had the opportunity to have -- to work with venture capital firms. We were merged and acquired by a public company prior to joining Alithya. And so through all of that experience, we've seen a lot of integration. We've seen a lot of transition. But throughout it all, just the opportunity to work with such a great team and to combine that, along with Alithya, has been really special for us.

So it's interesting, Russell. You mentioned you're one of the -- you're one of our leaders who's been on both sides, right? I mean you've been through several sales, acquisitions. You've been both on the buying side and on the selling side. Maybe I'll take you back a few years to when we first met in the first process where we met. How did it go? What was your perception when the first time you met the Alithya team and the proposition that was there to try to get an acquisition done?

So Paul, I may take you back a little further than you intended, but we've met for the first time, if memory serves, in 2016. And so at that time, Alithya, we had an opportunity to talk with you. Edgewater, the company I worked for at the time, had publicly announced that it was going through a strategic process. And one of the outcomes was going through a potential acquisition. And that process, when it ended, Edgewater didn't make any change. But Paul, that first meeting, you came in and you captured my attention very early because you started quickly talking about your vision, the mission of the company. You talked about being that trusted adviser. You talked about the importance of your passion for employees, your passion for cool projects and customers. And those things really aligned with my personal values, my personal beliefs. And to kind of continue the story from there, so if you fast forward 2 years, Edgewater did go through a process that resulted in an M&A activity. And I had a chance to meet you again the second time and this time with Claude. And it was so interesting for me to see that, that vision that you had laid out 2 years ago, you were on the journey to completing. And so it was really good to have actually that break and to see that what you said you were going to do, the company was doing. And Paul, you laid out the importance again of the people and wanting the leaders to remain involved in the business. You laid out the importance of being that trusted adviser. And all of those things really appealed to me in terms of how I felt we could fit into an organization like yours. Like ours, now.

It's interesting that you bring back the first meeting, I almost skipped over that, that moment. The first time that we met, I remember, we had actually put a proposal in for the formal process. And we were told that our price wasn't high enough, that everybody else was much higher, that we -- it was ridiculous. And then a few months later -- so we actually, we bailed. We got out of the process. Because I didn't believe the other offers, and the bankers called us back a few months later to ask us if our offer still stood because all of the other ones -- they went through the fine print and found out that the price wasn't the price, and we had walked away at that time. But yes, it was -- it took 2 years. But I'd like to say that we're patient and disciplined in how we do our deals, and I'm glad that it finally worked in the end. Maybe, Russell, you've been through this before. Before us, you had been through this. Maybe compare the process of how it went from dealing with Alithya versus other processes you've been through before?

Yes. Sure, Paul. I think one of the really important piece is you've got to get right in one of these engagements is you've got to deliver on what you say you're going to do, [ Claude's ] famous you are as well for saying deliver on our promises. One of the things that held so true is things that we talked about pre-acquisition were fulfilled post acquisition. So I'm going to start with that. That is the most important piece in terms of, you're looking for how do you align values, you're looking for the business strategy, you're looking for all the elements that make it work. But to be able to make it work in a way where we do what we say we're going to do, that's really, really important. Paul, we had a dedicated integration manager from Alithya. I think that was the first time that I had a dedicated integration manager to support the process. And I think that's something that worked really well because you've got your business. And listen, we care about our people. I mean that sincerely. When we're bringing across our people and our customers, we care about those. And so for an integration manager to be dedicated, that's his sole role to work with us to make sure that we're getting oriented with the business, to make sure that we're getting aligned with the systems, being introduced to the people. All of that is so important. And so I would encapsulate it in those couple of areas. One, everything that you said you would do prior to the transaction, Alithya delivered on in full support. And then just the focus around having that dedicated integration, the focus on making sure that we have that smooth transition, I'm sure we'll talk about customers and employees later, but those are 2 really key points. Because if you start off on a foot, where you don't believe what was shared before, that's a bad track record to get started with. But we were able to communicate to our employees what we were doing, and that worked really well. One other thing I want to point out, Paul, before we move on, though, is when we went through the integration and announced the transaction to all of our employees, I know you and Claude will remember this, we had scheduled a holiday gathering in Atlanta. And so in that meeting, we were getting together, it was something that we've done for years. We had a lot of people coming in. The deal had just been announced. And you and Claude, you flew Alpharetta, Georgia to meet with the team. And with the team you shared the vision, the values Claude was there to meet with the team. And I remember one of the things you did upfront, and this is something that's unique about, I think, the experience with Alithya, you went to one of your favorite movies. You went to Miracle on Ice. And you talked about the importance of we play for the same team. We come from different backgrounds. You showed that slide with all the different acquisitions. But we all play for the same team. And that's important because anything less than that confuses the market, confuses the customers, confuses the employees. But that, too, I think, is something that is really different because I've been part of companies where maybe there are multiple acquisitions. And maybe they carry that brand into the next -- into the consolidated company. But with Alithya, there is the importance of we all play for the same team as part of Alithya, and I come in, you and Paul and the team -- I'm sorry, you and Claude, the team as a whole for really emphasizing that from Day 1, and I think it matters.

It's an interesting point there, Russell. I wasn't going down that route. But now that you mentioned it, one of the challenges that we always have when we're -- the companies we've acquired have all been very high-quality companies. Nigel was on earlier, SWI was over 30 years old as a company. R3D was over 20 years old. I mean all these companies have a brand. The people are very attached to their brand. How did that transition go from moving -- I understand -- it never really was a transition from Fullscope to Edgewater. I mean you had remained Fullscope for all these years. How did that go? And how the -- how were you successful in getting that brand change and adopted by everybody?

Listen, that's one of the challenges when you've been an entrepreneur and growing a business, you and your team, you do get an attachment to your brand. And so -- and you know that, Paul, from growing company yourself. So there is that attachment there. But when you go through a process where you're being acquired, or consolidating the businesses, you have to look at what's the best for the team, for the company as a whole. And so that's something that we used as our North Star all along. I had seen some of the challenges of having a company that has different brands. And so while you may be very passionate about your brand, at the end of the day, we're trying to drive value for our shareholders. We're trying to drive great employee experiences. And that comes under the footprint of one brand, one team. And so I'll share a little story that made it really real for me, really early. Might embarrass you along the way, Paul. But we were in a meeting.

I think, I know where you're going with this one. But, yeah.

We were in a meeting in Montreal that Claude had called and I happen to have a pen that I was using to take notes, and it was an Edgewater pen, and I really liked that pen. And Paul walked up behind me and without saying a word, he took the Edgewater pen out on my hand and he put an Alithya pen in my hand, and that said more than words. It was like, okay, we are part of one team. We are part of that Alithya brand. But Paul, I think our team has embraced that. I think that, yes, when you make that transition, there's some holdover of, hey, we were Fullscope and that brand was really recognized by Microsoft. We were known as Edgewater Ranzal. That brand, again, really recognized by Oracle. But we worked very diligently, and I think we've done a really good job of marketing and amplifying the message that all those good things that we brought into this integration are now encapsulated under the stronger brand of Alithya. So I think there's a lot of value in that.

Thanks, Russell. Yes, I remember the pen.

One of the other things you touched on that I think we might have some potential acquisitions listening in or people who are aware of the call today or people who might be influencing other companies thinking of joining. Going from the job of a CEO of a company, to part of the executive team of a larger company. I know it was a big adaptation for many of our leaders, everyone who's been on the call here today anyways. How did you go through that? And how -- why are you having so much success in what you're doing today versus what you did before?

I think for any good leader, they're looking to be surrounded by people that are better than them, people that can help fulfill the vision and mission that you're trying to drive as an organization. Look, I've going from a point of starting a company to being CEO of a company, being involved with venture capitalists, joining a public company, taking maybe a little bit of a different role. But throughout that process -- and then moving on with the opportunity with Alithya, my role has expanded. I have an opportunity to manage a larger business today than I did yesterday. And so if I look back in time, and I shared this with you and Claude some of the goals that I'd put -- I'm always trying to look at my goals, both from a life and a business perspective. And I'll refresh those. I remember sharing with you and Claude some of the goals that I had from a professional perspective. And you're both helping me accomplish that. And so I think it's really important to understand that, yes, when you're an entrepreneur and leading your business, that's very fulfilling. But when you can join a larger team that's focused on Paul I stated objective to double the business, that's fine. That's exciting when you're a part of a business that's trying to double in 3 to 5 years. We want to be a part of that. So surrounding yourself with that leadership. And I think if you look at each leader on this call, I think to the man or to the person rather, everyone will tell you that their leadership role has expanded as part of Alithya. So it hasn't shrunk. So if you're an entrepreneur today and you're on this call and you're thinking, well, what does that look like for me tomorrow, I can tell you just by the evidence of what you see here as the collective team, our roles have expanded as part of Alithya, and we're managing more and having a large contribution to the success of the business.

So what -- if there was any advice you'd have to give to somebody who's thinking about this based on what you've been through with the integration, what would it be?

Yes. I think it's so important. Look, if you go back and you look at what's shared from a -- this is common knowledge when I was in school, one of the key things I heard of why integrations fail, what is it, it's culture. And so I think starting from both our side as Alithya but also the side of the person that's considering selling or consolidating their company through some M&A event, you've got to make sure that the culture fits. You've got to make sure that the business strategy is in place. That's really important. But as you actually move through the integration, Paul, one of the things that I've learned through going through this a few times is don't tell your team that there will be no change. There's going to be change. What I try to really focus on is trying to separate the noise from the real issues and really focusing in on those to make sure that we've got the right pieces in place, the right process in place to deal with real issues. But when you integrate companies, that culture is such an important element. So you're bringing the best of what you have, but you are joining a new team and you want to combine that together. I do think sometimes that teams make the mistake of saying, "Hey, there's not going to be any change". And you'll actually hear that from when you're looking to sell your company, you may hear, "Hey, we're going to bring you in, but there's going to be no change". Well, if there's no change, why are you going through an acquisition? You want to be something part of -- at least for me, I want to be part of something bigger and better. And so I look at the positive and try to embrace the positive of that change and share that with you -- with my team. And so as I mentioned before, we've got folks that have been with us for 20, 25-plus years. We've been through a lot of change, but managing that change is really important, just like for implementing a project, managing that change internally. If you're a leader of a company, looking to go through that process, managing that change for your team is really important.

Any -- that's a great segue into that change management, Russell. I mean when we did the transaction back in 2018, it was a quite complicated one. I mean we were becoming public as part of that transaction. We had never been a public company before. You were on the other side and it had been a public company for a while. I mean, I'm sure you saw some things that we didn't do right, but we adjusted later. Anything that you took away from that, that you say this -- we should have done this different and that you're applying today because now you've been on the other side and you're integrating acquisitions that we've done since then, any lessons learned from that, that you're applying today?

Yes. Paul, I'll get to that. I'll answer that question specifically, but let me tell you 2 things we really did do right. And that is, again, when you're buying a company, if you think about it, the most important assets are the people that are coming across and the customers that come with it, we did a good job with that. We started early in terms of how do we move our team across effectively. We started all the communication and collaboration with our customers. We did a really good job on that. We may touch on that later, so I won't go further. But we did an excellent job in those areas. In terms of areas where we want to improve, it's not that we didn't do them, but we just want to be able to move faster. I know that you're famous for say, let's move faster, how can we simplify, how can we do it quicker? And that's just getting everyone integrated onto the same platform. How can we do that more quickly? In terms of doing what we said we were going to do, we said we would get all of our acquisitions on one integrated platform, and we're doing that. But the speed in which we can do that helps us with the ability to produce our financials, the reporting, all the key aspects that come along with that. Because just like we're implementing for our customers, Paul, those -- when you're going in and have all those disparate solutions and you've got different sources of reporting and so forth, that's where we go in and we make a difference for those customers. We want the same for ourselves. So we want to be so efficient in getting teams integrated on the platform. So we're doing it. But the more we can do to move more quickly, I think there's value in that. The other one I'll point out from the get-go, from day 1, we talked about the value of cross-selling and leveraging the strength across the enterprise of Alithya, and we're doing that. We're making great strides. But again, the ability to move faster and that ability to integrate, I love what we're doing. I think we've got such a fantastic path ahead of us. And so being able to leverage the combined strengths of all of our resources, there's power in that.

Yes. No, absolutely. And you brought up 2 subjects that I'd like to cover as well, Russell. One is the people and the one is our customers. How did it go with the employees going through that change, to your point, many had been around for many, many years, how did you and we together manage that? And how was the turnover based on the transaction?

Let me start with the people side, Paul, then I'll go to the customer side. So when we went through that transition, again, what we started with Alithya prior to the actual announcement of the public, we started looking at our transition plan for the team, for the people. And we had -- as soon as we were able to announce the deal, we had our communications in place, not only the letters that we're going to go out, not only the offers, but in terms of who is calling who, down to the finite degree of how we are going to structure all of those calls. Now we quickly got you and Claude and the team in front of our team, again, to share in terms of why there's value in us joining the team. Look, if you're part of a company and you're being acquired, you want to know that there's a spot for you. You want to know that there's a -- basically you hear this term overused, but 1 plus 1 equals 3. But as someone that's being acquired, you want to believe that, you want to see that, you also want to be able to believe that the people that you're working for care about you and that was demonstrated really early in the process. Now from a customer perspective, likewise, through all of the integrations that I've been through, I've never been through one where there is so much emphasis on the communication to the customer. And so we had form letters to go out to the customers. And again, we had a day-by-day blow of who's calling what customer, and we had follow-ups relative to making sure those calls were made reporting any issues. And that was something that was led by Alithya working in conjunction with us as a leadership team to make sure that we have those processes in place, to make sure that we made the calls. And Paul, I can tell you from a customer perspective, it was seamless. I can also tell you that from an employee perspective, if you look at that first year and the turnover, it was no worse than what you would see in any other year. And when I say no worse, I'll tell you that from our Edgewater operation that you bought, we're industry-leading in terms of our turnover. That's something that we have historically had a great track record in terms of our turnover. And so I believe the way that we demonstrated to our employees where they fit in the organization, demonstrated to them that this is an opportunity to grow. I think that landed really well, and we saw the positive results from it.

Cool. From the [ chemist ] perspective, what was the feedback when you're telling them, you were going through this acquisition, a Canadian company becoming public, what was the general feedback?

I think one of the key things a customer wants to know is at least from our experience, is your leadership team staying in place? Is the team that I'm working with today, is it going to be the same team I'm working with tomorrow because I'm mid-stride in this very complex engagement. And so we were able to demonstrate to them really quickly. But customers, Paul, they like the mindset of you growing and growing in strength. And so we were able to share with them that we were joining with a company that had a very strong footprint in North America, already established in Canada and that we were going to be that footprint for growing the U.S. that landed really, really well because they saw that there was a basically in that position that we were growing in terms of our capabilities that we could offer to them that we are more financially secure in terms of the size of the company. So it landed very well. The challenge in terms of, hey, this is a Canadian company, that really didn't enter into the equation at all. That was never -- I can clearly state that was never an issue. It was more about, is your leadership team staying? Are we going to continue to work with the same group that we were yesterday? And really the emphasis on, hey, this is good because you're going to be part of a larger company with more value to share.

You talked Russell about cross-selling. Any examples you could give of quick wins that happen because of the announcement or as part of the transaction?

Yes. I'll give you one example, Paul. So there's a large manufacturer in Canada. And we were in the process of trying to close that deal right out of the gate. And so we were sharing our pipeline with you. And I still recall you and Claude, you said, "Hey, I know the CEO of that company. You called the CEO of that company. And what have been a long time pursuit, and we felt like we were very well positioned. But we've quickly closed that deal as a result. But I want to give you one other one, too. Even if you look back at the acquisition of Travercent just the size of company that we've been working with since that integration, the scale has continued to grow because, again, the solidity of the company, what we're able to offer. But Paul, one of the things that I really think differentiates, again, I gave an example earlier about one of the customers where we're able to cross in terms of the different practices, so when you hear Dany talking about the engagements the team is working with and what we're doing there with the resources she's got, we're leveraging on our Oracle projects and working on opportunities together, with Nigel and the work that the team is doing on IoT and machine learning, with Steeve Duchesne, who you'll hear from later and the work we're doing in the Digital Solutions Center in Morocco, all of our teams are working together to try to grow as a whole, the cross-sell opportunity. And with Dave Moreau and he shared earlier, that's a segment that we're looking to from our enterprise solutions, how can we play in that space. And we're seeing some opportunities already with some of our larger customers that came in as part of that R3D acquisition, where we're selling CRM and some of our other capabilities that came along with the Edgewater acquisition.

Yes. Cool. One of the things we always look for when we look at companies for acquisitions and we look for things that we don't have, we also look for what we can do better. Any insight of things that Fullscope or Ranzal used to do or Travercent did well that we -- you've seen us deploy or leverage across the company?

Yes. So one example -- I give you 2 specific examples. One of the areas is we were using a CRM system prior to the acquisition. And that's really important in terms of being able to be in connection with your customers tracking your engagements from the pipeline, the funnel activity. All the way to the bookings. And so that's something that when we first started talking and talking with Claude, I said, this is one area that I think that we really need to implement for overall Alithya. And so I can clearly state that we've implemented that solution. All business practices across Alithya are using the same system, using the same tool in place. And I'll even give another example from -- and that was a Microsoft CRM solution. But with Oracle, we're using Oracle as our ERP across the enterprise. And that was a decision that Alithya had made even prior to acquiring Edgewater. But since then, we've taken the EPM component, and we've implemented that to support us in our budgeting and our forecasting and also our closing consolidation. So we're taking some of the practices that we had. I'd like to think that we had a lot of operational excellence from an Edgewater perspective that we were able to bring into and share with Alithya, and we're building those components into our business as a whole.

I have another -- a great example that I like that I'll remind you of and a couple of questions for you on that one, too. I think one of the things that you did extremely well, Fullscope had a college recruiting program that focuses on -- and especially in the context of today's search for talent, where you recruit business grad, not IT people, but business grad and you train them and bring them up to speed through a very efficient program to make them into business apps consultants. Maybe you'd talk a little bit about that. And I know it's something we're deploying across the company and maybe talk about the success or retention rate for the people that go through that program.

So Paul, let me give you a little back story on that. And so again, I talked about the evolution of starting a company 20-plus years ago, and there's been times in our evolution to where we were able to actually emphasize and bring in young college or young professional hires. But then you go through -- as I mentioned, you go through acquisitions, sometimes that doesn't make the cut, so to speak, in terms of a budget. But from an Alithya perspective, when we shared that with you and with Claude, it wasn't only let's do it, but how can we do more of it. And so not -- I want to mention that we not only have done that with Fullscope team, we also just completed that with the Oracle team. And so as part of that process, you're exactly right. We're bringing them in. We're trying to teach them basically the fundamentals of consulting. We're teaching them what it looks like to be a consultant, how to grow in that path of trusted adviser. We're trying to also teach them the product how to engage with the customer. So even down to the level of, if you're looking at our Fullscope program, we're giving some [ apex ] classes around understanding more in depth around manufacturing. And so it's a very rich program that we put in place but Claude -- I'm sorry, Paul, if you look at the team that we hired 2 years ago, pre-pandemic with a Microsoft group and put through that program, we've not lost one person. That is unheard of. And so that's something that we want to continue to build more and more and appreciate your support of that because I think you see the value of it. And so that's something that you've actually challenged me, okay, I see what you're doing, how can we do a lot more of it. And that, again, is part of what I think makes us unique and special.

Anything that I didn't cover, Russell, that you'd like to comment on as part of our M&A process?

Paul, I think, again, from an overall M&A process, integration of companies is challenging, and we talked about that. But one of the things that I believe is so important, and I think we do well is we really look at the fit, we look at the strategy, and listen, I've been a part now of opportunities to where we've looked at it, and we've said it's not a fit, and we walked away. And so when -- and I hope everyone hears this and knows this, when we're looking -- when you're talking to someone or seeing that there's actually been an M&A decision where we bought a company, it's been thoroughly vetted, we've been through a thorough due diligence process in terms of values and culture. We've looked at the [indiscernible] in terms of business strategy. And I think the combination of that -- look, if we're going to double our business, it's going to take acquisition. It's also going to take organic growth. And so going through the parameters that we have and the guardrails that we have in terms of what makes an important acquisition, my hats to us all as a leadership team for the way that we approach that and that we successfully executed.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Russell for sharing those thoughts with us and your experience is very appreciated as always. And with that, I'm going to go to our next guest.

Thanks, Paul.

Thank you, Russell. So as we're bringing our next guest online, I'm very privileged to be able to introduce to you, Catherine Desgagnés-Belzil. Catherine is the Executive Vice President and Lead, Business Performance and Information Technology at Beneva. And I will let Catherine introduce herself in a second here and give us a bit of background on Beneva, Catherine?

Well, thank you, Paul, and good afternoon, everybody. And Russell, I can assure you that mergers are difficult integration right through an integration, and we're just starting, and it is difficult, but it will end as well as we were just saying. So just to give you a little bit of context and background on what is Beneva. Beneva is a new company that is born of SSQ insurance company and La Capitale and together, Beneva is now the largest insurance mutual in Canada. Both those companies were founded in the 1940s and both have naturalist fruits and are comparable sizes and obviously have complementary expertise and culture. So it is a great fit. Nevertheless, it is a big initiative to go through a merger. And Beneva sectors cover group insurance, property and casualty insurance, individual insurance and financial services. We have around 5,000 employees, over 3.5 million members and clients, over $25 billion in assets under management and $6 billion consolidated insurance premiums.

Thank you very much, Catherine. And Catherine, as I was introducing you, I realize you have a very interesting title. And that technology is taking up more and more space every day and especially in financial services and insurance, as you know. And I know you have quite a challenge with the integration, as you mentioned, 2 large companies coming together and trying to get the best of both worlds. You've been very public with your strategy and how you're going to get there. And you came up with kind of the different streams of the strategy. And one of them you call the foundation. Maybe you can give a little bit of insight on that and what that means.

Yes, absolutely. Of course, we're going through our integration, and it's going to take a few years to get through that. But at the same time, we don't want to be left behind because we do have a transformation to be done. So as a new group, we did go through strategic planning to better understand where we're going and how we're going to get there. And basically, what we came up with is really a strategy that is based on 5 important orientations. The first one being the set the foundations. And basically, what it means is that we need to continue our integration and make it a success, to really establish really modern foundations in terms of ecosystem in order to ensure the uniformity and solidity of our future business model. And it's not only about IT ecosystem, but it's about our processes, it's about a way of doing business. It's about our culture. And so we think that in order to be able to achieve our strategic goal by 2025, we need to be very successful into deploying our foundation. It is really the lever that we're giving Beneva in order to remain competitive and keep growing and being amongst the best in insurance companies.

Okay. You also -- as foundation, and then the next one, I think you talk about is around your digital experience, the customers experience. What does it -- does this mean to you? And how from a technology perspective are you supporting this?

Well, I think that everybody is talking about digital transformation. And we've been talking about digital transformation for many years but in insurance companies domain, there is a reality in [Technical Difficulty] and such that we're a little bit behind compared to other sector of the market. And it's particularly true in Canada. So now not only do we have to talk about it, we need to execute it. So basically, what we want to do is really drive customer experience through digital. So we want to proactively support our members by supporting them at the right moment through a personalized approach and anticipate their future needs, mainly through the deployment of new digital capabilities. So if we're proactive, if we personalize with the data that we have on most of our members and customers, if we have an experience that is seamless, that is omnichannel, if we rethink the way we engage them as a whole instead of in silos, if we give better tools to our employees in order to better serve and better protect better decisions with our customers, all that through digital, we believe that we're going to be a much better company. And one of the levers that we're using, of course, is technology. And we're using software that are well-known in the insurance industry. And even though we might not get there by the end of 2023, we're really wanting to use the cloud as an important lever because the time to market is so much better. And because there is a reality in our business about IT expertise that is so rare and everybody is looking for the best people and it's particularly true in Quebec. So we need to really focus our strategic expertise on less back office and back-end initiatives but more into thinking and organizing and finding strategies to deploy our -- and ensure that we can reach our goals.

Yes. No, actually, that's a great point because one of the things that you also talk about is simplification right? So I think leveraging that and that process is going to be very important. Maybe I'll take you to another place. As you know, we acquired R3D back in April, you were a major shareholder and customer of R3D. And I understand something of that size always -- there's always concern. And we -- I don't think we were a very known quantity. We had never met before officially, how did you get comfortable with that? And I guess are you comfortable today with [indiscernible].

Well, that's a great question, and I'm -- I always like to talk about it because if you remember correctly, Paul, when we first met, I was very closed off about the opportunity of being a strategic partner. And I remember being like this, and I have many, many concerns about partnering together. And one of our main concerns was making sure that we only -- we always had access to the best expertise and there wasn't a possibility for -- to develop our complacence, pardon me. And so we had to really talk about the way we would approach it and the governance and how is it that you would be able to get expertise when I'm not able to get expertise and how would you be strategic as a partner. And what kind of risk would you take. And how would you share into the journey. And through all of the discussions that we had and the many, many, many questions that I've asked, you were always able to find exactly what to say, in order for me to every single time change my mind and realize by the end of our discussion, that it was the best decision and the only way to go for Beneva. And frankly, many months later, I can assure you that I thank the sky for being so -- to be able to listen and be wise enough to recognize that I had the bad posture when I started, and it is the right decision because we need so many expertise and people to go through this extraordinary endeavor. It is difficult, and we need to be with a lot of mind to -- in order to use intelligence -- collective intelligence to achieve success.

All right. I should make sure I recorded that [indiscernible]. Very appreciated, and I'm glad we listened and took the time to understand those concerns. Maybe I mean, we're not perfect. Any other areas that, from a partner perspective, you say these are the things that are coming, we're going to have to think about. Yes, we're doing the blocking and tackling now, but coming down the road, there is still a lot of heavy lifting to happen. You're talking about all of the consolidations of the system, maybe a little bit into the future. What are you seeing ahead? And what are you seeing as the biggest challenge for our industry?

Yes. Well, one of the biggest challenge, I believe, is that -- is really about keeping up. Keeping up about the new ways of doing IT or even doing business altogether and keeping up about all the new levers that are out there and all the pressure for -- from the business in order for us use them and utilize them in their best capacity. And quite frankly, before in the IT business, you could become an expert and you can serve on that expertise for 30 to 40 years, and everybody would turn to you. And you would be the only person that knew all the answers, and that was great for the person, but it was really putting the enterprise at risk and making it vulnerable because you really needed that person. And if that person went -- I mean there was nobody else that could really help out. In the new way of doing IT and everything that's going on in all the new levers and blockchain and AI and software and cloud and all that, it's not true anymore. It's not the way we do IT. I mean nobody has all of the answers, so it really changes the way we're approaching because we really need a multidisciplinary group in order to find the right answer, the good answer. And that's quite a change for the IT people because they are really used to knowing at all. And they like it that way. But all of a sudden, we can't work like that. So it's really a matter of approaching it in a collaboration manner, I suppose, and making sure that we're able to continually learn because it's a continuous learning process, everything that is new and yet you have to recognize what is an opportunity and what is not. And when it's the right time to be a leader and when it's a good time to wait and let other businesses go first. So all of that being the more and more complex necessitate approaches where we're really working as partners in a transparent manner and that we're able to see things coming because it's very, very difficult, more and more doing IT. And I haven't even talked about security yet. And that's just something that you add up on all the complexity that's out there already.

You just reminded me when you said you don't always want to be the first, there's another saying that says that the second mouse gets the cheese. Right?

That's right.

It's like, you don't always want to be bleeding edge. And yes, there's so many different options now out there and different solutions that sometimes it's a challenge finding ourselves in term of what's happening. Maybe your thoughts on -- we've gone through a paradigm shift in the last 18 months, Beneva, like many other companies, like ourselves and other financial institutions, the work from the office was [indiscernible], you can change that. Today, everybody is working remote. Any observations on that? You see that as something that's going to keep going? And what do you think is going to be happening at Beneva or the industry in general?

Yes. Well, absolutely. I think that it's absolutely something that's going to continue. It's certainly true for Beneva because we did announce that we're going to move forward post pandemic with a hybrid kind of way of doing things. So in my Executive Vice Presidency, we're not going to force people to go into the office, we want to believe the team the possibility of deciding when it's good to meet together when it's the right time. And quite frankly, we think, and we don't say it out loud to everybody, but we think that maybe it was useful for the integration because when you're on premise, you know what it is, when you go through the corridors and lifts or whatever, so many chatting and so many rumors and so many things that are taking away the focus that's very much needed into an integration. When you work into -- in virtual, well, that does not really happen because it's all focus and meetings.

Everything's coordinated...

And so I think that in a way it did help us. But maybe 12 months later, I just joined Beneva last June and had the opportunity to meet for the first time individually my 5 Vice Presidents. And when you meet them face to face, you see what you're missing. It's very different to be together. And I think that having the best of both world and that's what we're working on in the future is going to be really the new normal because let's face it. We need to find a better balance between work and family or personal time. And before you took that step back, you didn't realize how demanding our jobs were and always running and moving and going places. And now that you don't have to do that every day, you realize that it's a lot easier. And you can accomplish much more. So I think that having both ways will be beneficial for all enterprises. And of course, it's going to keep going because all you hear when you talk to the employees is that they want to keep that option. And many of them in my company want to stay that way forever. So that's the theory, and we'll see how it goes. I mean, we'll follow it and we'll make sure that we continue asking how it's going, and we're going to adapt if it's not -- doesn't really happen how we think it will.

Yes. We're actually seeing that now part of the recruiting questions, people are saying, do I have to come work to the office, or will I be able to work remotely. And we were talking about and we were being asked about talent shortages earlier. What are you seeing in insurance? And how are you dealing with that?

Well, I'm worried about that. Very much so because there's many insurance companies, as you probably know in Quebec, and everybody is reaching out to their expertise and everybody is complaining about a shortage of great expertise and it was true before, but it's even truer now. And even the small and medium enterprises are starting their digital transformation because COVID obviously was a trigger for them in order for them to understand how important it is in order to survive as a company. So now we have all those new entities that also need the IT people. So I think it's going to -- it is a problem now, and it's even going to be worse, considering that we're working through virtual now. So what we see more and more, and we didn't see before is, for instance, American companies giving American salaries to people that can stay in Quebec City, doing the same job for a USD 35,000 more. So I mean what would you do? So it's becoming very, very complex, and we are very worried because there's more demand, and it seems that there is less people into the field. So it's a subject that is -- everybody is concerned that we talk about all the time.

Ongoing. I'll take you somewhere else, Catherine, for a minute, because I know it's something that we talk about a lot very often is the number of women in technology, right? As a percentage of the overall workforce, it's still very low. You've been very successful in what you're doing. And I know you're involved in many organizations to try to change that. Anything that we can do -- we have a lot of leaders on the call today that are out there recruiting and finding people. Anything else that we should be doing as an industry to try to accelerate that even more?

Well, one of the things that I find is that the ones that have the power in order to give opportunities to women is men because many women don't feel comfortable in a field where they're in minority for many, many obvious reasons. And the one that can change that and make sure that women are comfortable and part of the group is the men that are in 80% of the team when you look at the employees and when you look at executive and even the management, it goes to 11% to 2% in executive positions, such as myself. So when there's more women in executive or management positions, without doing anything else, it gives a vision or it gives to the other women a sense that it is possible, and there is certain comfort to be able to move forward in their career. And myself, I -- when I was appointed in last June, since then, there's at least 7 more -- 7 women managers in my team more that are managers without me doing anything at all, but just because there's women out there that facilitates and makes it more comfortable for other women, to join management team. So just make sure there's women in your management because women are amazing and are so organized and they're so performing and you need them on your team.

Yes, we do. Yes, we do. We're up to about 30%.

That's a good number.

So I know we still have a lot of ways to go, but we're -- yes, we working very hard at it. And to your point, it's 50% of the workforce. So if we're not doing a better job, we're limiting ourselves and we're talking about shortage, I mean there's another huge pool there that we could be attracting. There's been a lot of hype around InsurTech start-ups in insurance and whatever. Any killer applications you're seeing out there or anything that you're seeing saying, "Oh, we have to pay attention to that? Or that's something that is on the horizon, but we're going to wait a bit to see how it goes."?

There's not many things I'm very much aware of right now because I'm really concentrating on integration. But maybe one of them, and I don't kind of even remember the name, but we're looking into it right now is about AI and security. And that's something that we tested through our innovation center of excellence and that we're thinking of deploying in order to help in any ways possible to better our resilience as an enterprise. But right now, we're trying to stop everybody that's knocking on our door in order to really, really focus on our integration, but I know that there's many things happening right now, it's just that we're not focus on that these days.

So last -- my last question before I see if you have anything else I didn't cover, but there's -- it's not for lack of challenges, but what you see for coming 2, 3, 4 years in general, the biggest challenges for CIOs in the insurance industry? You talked about a lot of subjects. What are -- anything keeping you up at night for the industry in general?

Well, the industry or as a whole as CIO, I think that what's keeping us up at night is very much anything and everything about security because something changed over the last 18 months. And what's happening now never, never happened before, and which means that we need to invest so much more time and effort into making our ecosystem resilient. And even when you have to do that, it's a continuous cycle. So security is an issue never before because there is no second chances. And there is many, many threats out there. We were -- we went through a cyber attack in last December and it really shook us. And yes, it helped us improve, but we see that it's a continuous cycle. And the other thing you mentioned is the shortage of expertise. And -- because there's going to be a point where just the equation doesn't add up. So we're going to have to slow down our transformation, but what's needed is the opposite. So I think we need to find new ways. And we've found new ways together and explore outside Canada and all that. And that's going to be the way to go to lift up barriers in order to get the expertise wherever it is. That's the reality now.

I agree. We're going to have to get very creative on that and not just recruiting but on working differently, we're talking about simplification and robotic process automation and leveraging latest technologies to help us out. And anything else, Catherine, you'd like to mention, we didn't cover or anything?

Well, just because it's going so good right now, so while it's that way, I'm going to make sure I can share that I'm really, really pleased with our partnership with Alithya so far. It's only been a few months, but the amount of time that you're taking to listen, and I'd like to speak, so a lot of time, in order to -- our concerns and what's coming and our needs, it's very much appreciated and it is what I recall a strategic partnership, and we talked a lot about it, Paul. And so far so good. I'm very pleased that we're in business together. And I think there's many great things we can do together.

Yes. I agree. So thank you again very much, Catherine, for your generous comments, your time. It's very appreciated. And I hope it enables people to get more insight on Beneva as well and the company that you're building. So thank you very much for being with us today.

My pleasure. Nice meeting you all. Bye-bye.

All right. Thank you. Bye bye. And for everybody else, we're going to take a break and be back at 3.45. If you're interested, the videos that we talked about earlier are posted on our website. You can access them through the link to our Investors section. And we'll see you back here in about 25 minutes. [Break]

Thank you, and welcome back, everybody. I hope you had a good break. So my next to do here is I have the privilege of introducing John Scandar and 2 guests from Firestone Direct. I'll let John do the introductions of our customers and the project itself, a very creative and interesting project. So I look forward to sharing that story with you. But before that, just maybe a bit of background on John. I've met John several years ago. He was one of the first people who I met back in the full scope Edgewater days. John is -- runs our Microsoft practice. And to put it in perspective, we just won the Inner Circle award again this year for the 16th, it's 1-6, year in a row. Very few companies on the planet can claim that. And I think it's under John's leadership and the great team that we have there that we're able to accomplish that and with great customers like Firestone. So thank you very much for joining us today. It's very appreciated. And on that, John, I'll hand it over to you.

Thank you, Paul. Thank you, everybody, for joining on this session. And when we talk about what allows us to do that 16x to be Inner Circle just to clarify, that puts us in the top 1% of partners worldwide. So it is a great honor to be able to do that 16x. But it is a teamwork. It is a village, and it takes everybody working together and be very passionate. And part of the reasons why we're able to do it is, I think Russell and I started the business 20 years ago. We joined Microsoft in 2003. We had a legacy product before that, and we had to digitally transform ourselves. You've already heard Russell talk about many things. He did a great job. But since 2003, I think where we -- what we bring is passion to our customers. We try really hard to improve the -- work hard for the customer experience and rapid time to value. And I think a little -- later on, you're going to hear from our customer from Firestone about what they've done, and they have an incredible story. But we've been a partner since 2003, and the 250 ERP customers, 500 CRM and won a few awards, but the one thing we try really hard is amongst our customers and above and beyond our employees is try to be innovative, be that leading edge. I think you've heard that from Beneva earlier today. And just the latest leading edge that I'd like to just throw in there before we talk to Ashley is we're trying to adopt. We have industry power apps, the next $4 billion business that Microsoft is talking about. We have industry power apps for manufacturing, insurance and healthcare. You'll hear something words like Teams 365. Of course, with COVID, we're all working through Teams, either one-on-one or many on one. How do we allow our customers to do business application things, CRM, ERP within Teams. So that's never have to leave. So you'll hear that us coin that phrase. How do we have a power apps, powerhouse program where we allow our customers to not only be citizen developers with low-code, no-code but ultimately write enterprise apps, solve problems around dynamics, but we can help them with security and compliance. And finally, with all the data, you hear about industry clouds, how do we bring industry KPIs and really link them to the industry cloud strategy that you're going to hear Ashley talked about. So with that, I want to just introduce Ashley Haynes-Gaspar, who is -- happens to be our executive sponsor this year as Inner circle. And I'd love to -- there is a 10-minute clip out on the website, but please join me on listening to the next 4 minutes. So Ashley, thank you so much for -- it's great to meet you again today, and thank you so much for being with us. For our viewers, we've known each other for a little while. Why don't you introduce yourself and what you do with Microsoft?

I'm delighted to you, and it's such a pleasure to be with you today. For those of you that I don't know, my name is Ashley Haynes-Gaspar, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer of U.S. Business Applications and Industry Clouds at Microsoft. And I also have the distinct privilege of being the Microsoft Inner Circle Executive Sponsor of Alithya, and I'm just so grateful to be with you here today.

Can you talk to us a little bit about we've changed? What will the partner of the future be compared to the partner of yesterday in the Microsoft Oracle, I guess?

I love that question because at its core is growth and opportunity, which are 2 of my favorite things. And I will say, John, that we just continue to see tremendous market opportunity in business applications. We are realizing more than ever that digital transformation and adoption have never been more core to our customers' business strategy and we really have the opportunity and business applications to disrupt the market and create the next triple-digit growth cloud for Microsoft. We can aggressively figure out how to increase our market share and really contribute to our overall company's valuation. And all of this is really grounded in the market opportunity. When we look at our market opportunity for fiscal year '22 for our core business applications workloads, which is customer engagement, finance and operations and power applications and automate, it is a whopping $78 billion. And this is a bigger market opportunity than any of our other clouds at Microsoft. And Microsoft recognizes that. And we have been voting with our investment dollars that this is a key growth driver for the company of today and in the future. We have the most engineers in the company working on our products, and we have grown our U.S. business application seller by over 60% over the past year. So we have big, bold goals for business applications and frankly, for our partners like you all at Alithya.

Can you talk to us about Microsoft's industry strategy?

I'd be delighted to. And I believe that like industry and outcomes are our customers' love language, and we have to speak their love language. And Microsoft is really leaning in with great partners like you all on this notion of industry. And I think that it's best that we just start by laying a foundation for what Microsoft industry clouds are. So Microsoft industry clouds are really new extensions of existing Microsoft cloud capabilities, things like services that pull together specific industry capabilities that really span across all of our Microsoft solution area stack. So I think business applications meets Azure, meets Modern Work. And each of these offerings are designed to work as one, really bringing together the breadth of our solutions along with new capabilities, customizations and standards that are really tailored to our focus industries. And we have industry clouds in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, financial services, government and sustainability. And each of these clouds really work to provide industry-specific value through these trusted and integrated capabilities that I mentioned that really deliver automation and efficiency on our customers' most high-value workflows as well as deep data analysis, really enabling customers to do what they need to do to turn insights into action.

I just want to thank you, Ashley, for coming and talking with me on this. This is great. You're very generous for your time. So I totally appreciate it, and I look forward to a great year in front of us. Thank you very much.

Me as well. Thanks a ton.

Have a great time. Bye. Talk soon. Well, I just want to remind everybody, if you wanted to see the longer version with Ashley, it is on our website. And without ado, I'd love to say -- have you introduce or introduce Angie and James, and thank you so much for coming. And you have such a great story. Can we start right away with introducing yourselves.

Absolutely. Thank you for having us. I'm Angie Oleson. I lead the Firestone Direct team that is our mobile, tire and service team, part of the larger Bridgestone Americas company. James?

James Whitfield. Thank you so much. Very glad to be here. I work with Angie closely. My role with Firestone Direct is the Director of Field Support and Systems. I was part of the founding crew, if you will, back in April of last year that we -- about 4 of us that were pulled in to start this exciting adventure.

So can you tell us about Firestone, the story, the Firestone Direct story, the concept where it came from the new model?

Yes. I'll start it out, but I think James will add a little color and commentary on it, too, because as he said, he really was a founding member at the table. I joined the organization about a year ago. So maybe I'm a rookie in this group, having only a year in with the team. But I think the origin really was fueled from a change in leadership and a change in our North Star direction as a Bridgestone organization. Our new CEO, who joined in 2019, Paolo Ferrari, is very focused on mobility solutions and bringing value to the customer. At the base, we are still a core tire organization. We're clear on who we are, but we want to bring value-added services, solutions and systems to our customers. And one of the many things we are doing is a mobile tire solution. There are many start-ups going on in the organization right now, and we are one of several, and it is quite interesting to be a startup inside of a large organization. But James, I think I've heard you say several times how you got the phone call and were told, "Hey, what can we do in 100 days?" You've got to share that piece of the story as well.

Yes. Sure, Angie. Thank you. So the way I tell it was that it was about 16 months ago, it was in April-ish of last year, me and a guy with the name Daniel Cox, who's our Director of Strategy, got that mission impossible call. It was like, your mission, should you choose to accept it. Mr. Ferrari wants 20 vans and he wants a website with -- where customers can land on it, shop for products and services, check out and schedule an appointment to have those services delivered by said 20 vans and then he wants them in 100 days. And so we -- 100 days was July 20. And so we had that big date in front of us. And on the first week of July, we signed contracts with our partners. We had -- it took us from basically May, June to identify who our partners were going to be, and we signed contracts in the first week of June -- or first week of July and started coding. We hit our 100-day mark with 1 van and a website where customers could land, shop for products and services and schedule an appointment. And with the -- and we'll talk about this more, but with the help of Alithya and some other partners, 2 months to the day of signing contracts, we launched version 1 of our website and integrated systems.

That's incredible. And so with this change, I have to ask the COVID question. Maybe you can talk a little bit of how -- if COVID affected the decision and the new world we live in along the way?

Yes. COVID had multiple impacts on us. Some have been actually very positive. Obviously, as you think about a mobile service and the consumer desire to have a totally contactless service, you can have that with a mobile tire service coming to your home. We can do this service contactless thanks to the technology that we have. But it also impacted us in our ability to get and procure the vehicles and find teammates and a million challenges that we encountered. In fact, one of the things that I inherited when I joined this team a year ago was 101 problems that we had thought through, we didn't think through COVID problems, and they did create additional challenges. But frankly, we turn those challenges into opportunities. And we have a quote that James is known for that says, "Everything is figureoutable." And that's what we've done through this. And our partners have joined us in that, our partners no longer feel like our partners, and I think COVID played into that, they feel like part of our team, and that is very, very true of Alithya, and frankly, Microsoft in this because we have gone through COVID, we've gone through a start-up, and we have something real on the heels of this right now, and we're really servicing the customer. So COVID's had a huge impact. And most of it having come through to this point has actually been positive.

That's great. And so if I was to say, you said it, your start-up, but you're part of one of the largest tire companies in the world. So where do we go from here? And you hit the first $1 million, where do we go from here? What's the potential?

You want to take some of that, James? I have a couple of things to probably add, but you take a little.

I go back to the mission impossible. I'm big thinker. I think sky is the limit. I shoot for the moon or shoot for the stars, I'm going to land on the moon, right? So I look at this, I mean, as you mentioned earlier, Paul -- John, that the world is changing and people -- while people are very sociable, we also like to be safe. And I think that with the automotive -- remote mobile automotive tire and services, it's been tried several times for many years. It's hard to get it started because technology isn't really big in the automotive space. And so people are left with building their own platforms, and they're typically start up small. Bridgestone getting involved, a complete game changer for the industry, both in the U.S. and really globally. And when you think about what's next, what's the option? Or what's the opportunity there is? Bridgestone isn't a U.S.-based company, right? We have bridged on Americas, which covers all of the Americas. We have North America, we have Latin America, but then we have sister companies in Europe, in Australia and Asia. And so we're working on the playbook, really Firestone Direct started up, and we're now working on the playbook for how can we duplicate this. We've been working with Alithya with our Firestone Direct LA or Latin America team, as they kind of go through the genesis of their model and their product as well.

And I think Global is a very big part of that. For us in the U.S., we're going to double in size next year. So going from 9 markets to 18, from 60 vans to 120-plus. That sounds fairly simple. But this is also the point where if we have cracks or breaks or have not built things well, this is where manual begins to break down and the need for technology really is going to become even clearer and more necessary for us. So the doubling of where we're at today and where we're going tomorrow will feel very -- it will not be tolerated unless we've done a really good job. I believe we have. So I embrace it, and I look forward to it, but we will have to stay very closely linked as partners to move forward seamlessly and continue to deliver the level of service. And I think that's one of the other things that I am so proud of, so very proud of. Yes, we've done a good job in sales. Yes, we're -- our Bridgestone Japan is also pleased with the results we are providing, but the thing I'm most proud of is the fact that our CSAT and NPS scores are off the charts. And that comes from a great customer experience from the moment that they schedule their appointment on their website to we show up to the moment the bill is done. I mean we are running at a 98% NPS score. I'm really proud of that.

That's really great. That's -- and I know we've worked as part of this process about improving the customer experience to the customer. I know that's been a very -- and as you scale, as you say, having a better customer experience, a very good one will be key to the growth, as you say, yes. So can you talk a little bit about maybe just for the viewers like -- or the listeners, what modules we implemented and just how Alithya and Microsoft, the partners helped you get through this. That would be really great.

Yes, sure. Angie, you want to take that one? So as I mentioned earlier, we had -- we identified our partners. In July of last year, we launched with a partner that was doing our web development and a partner that was doing our UI/UX design and being -- kind of the help with that strategy. And we partnered with Alithya to handle our Microsoft Dynamics field service, which we refer to it as CE as well as Microsoft Dynamics F&O. Our day-to-day system that we work in heavily is that field service platform. And so it's -- working with it, learning it. The learning curve was right there, Alithya resources working with us day in, day out, try and working with us to learn how to use that, how to maximize that to get the function out of it that we need.

Well, that's really great. And I know we all work together. So we want to thank you. I want to thank you personally and everybody on this phone wants to thank you for the partnership. We really, really appreciate it. We know it's a journey. We know there's a lot more to do together and we thank you for coming and just sharing your story with us. That's really -- I look forward.

Thank you for having us.

Absolutely, John. Thank you.

Thank you. And so last thing, I'd just like to say for all our viewers about the Microsoft strategy all up, if you just look at it. And clearly, I'm the Microsoft guy on the phone. So I'm going to -- as people smile, I have to give it a little bit of extra pizzazz. But we really believe, just like you've heard from Firestone, the total solution, if you look at all the quadrants that are out there in the market, whether it's the cloud, the Azure the ERP, CRM, analytics and so on. Microsoft has really from -- since 2003, where we started, to today, we are one of the -- in each quadrant, they're one of the top 2 or 3 solutions, BI and analytics, I also missed out. So I do believe that for our customers and their digital transformation that we have an incredible opportunity to help them as we go along. So we're very excited. The entire team is very excited, and we thank you, again, Angie and James for coming. Now back to Paul, as we -- there he is. Back to Paul, a little early, but that's good.

Thank you very much, Angie, James, very generous to be with us here today, and we very appreciate it. Thank you very much. And John, I think you could become a pretty good TV interviewer if you really wanted to get into it.

Yes. I'll try to keep my day job.

So with that, our next guest on the show is Mike Feldman. Mike, are you on?

I'm here, Paul. How are you?

Great. Great. Thank you. So Mike, talking about all the great leaders that we have in the organization. We just went through the Microsoft one. Mike came through us through an acquisition as well as we've mentioned before, Travercent, and heads up our Oracle Practice in the U.S. And while we're waiting for your guests, Mike, maybe a bit of your background and how you got here?

Yes. So I joined -- I've been in the Oracle consulting space for 25 years. And I came to Alithya through the acquisition of Travercent. It's been almost 2 years now, Paul.

Time flies, we're you're having fun, Mike.

It seems like yesterday. I remember meeting with you and Claude and Russell in Dallas, Texas and talking about joining this amazing organization. And it was literally 2 years ago almost to the day. It's been a fun ride.

It's been a fun ride. And it's interesting, Mike, because as the same way that on the Microsoft side, we're kind of in the top 1% in what we do around manufacturing and supply chain and so on and so forth. We're also one of the top partners on the healthcare side in Oracle. So maybe you could give a bit of perspective on that and how did the joining Alithya changed that for you?

Yes. We were fortunate enough when we launched Travercent. We made a commitment to be fully into the cloud. And as we kind of made our way, we've done ourselves smack that in the Oracle Healthcare industry. And it was a really good fit. Healthcare was adopting the cloud. They were -- healthcare isn't typically your early adopters. But a lot of the healthcare, there were some early adopters in healthcare, and we were along the ride with Oracle. And the Oracle healthcare sales team is phenomenal, very partner-centric, very solution-centric, and we were a really good fit and lessons learned from other entrepreneurial experiences. Focus is a really good thing. Discipline is a very good thing, and we row that way. And one of the great things about joining Alithya -- Alithya had, through the Edgewater acquisition, acquired an Oracle enterprise performance management company, and that's huge in healthcare. So when you couple the EPM and then our ERP, given capital management, supply chain management, it allowed us to bring every -- all of that to healthcare because healthcare needs every one of those solutions. So it was a match made in heaven.

Do you have a few examples of how the merger helped with upselling and cross-selling?

Well, the biggest thing, Paul, is we started in kind of mid-market healthcare. And as a smaller company, you get to that ceiling where you don't have enough resources or enough financial backbone or scale to really sit down with executives at companies including healthcare companies. So having the support, all the resources that Alithya has really allowed us to break through that ceiling and go -- and really create partnerships with larger organizations. So it was -- it's been tremendous to fuel our growth.

You know, everybody is talking about talent shortage and things that we're doing, how are you making out with that and how we're managing that in the Oracle side?

Yes. I mean, talent acquisition, talent retention, I think, is a challenge for many organizations and consulting being a big one. We have to stay proactive. We have to stay proactive and in these days, with the pandemic and people working from home, there are new wrinkles and new nuances on how to keep employees engaged and really help with burnout. I'm a huge proponent of wellness and life balance. I preach it. I preach things I get.

We've heard.

So yes, it's something that we're going to always have to not deal with, but something that we're going to always have to keep -- I mean stay ahead of, and we have beefed up our recruiting quite a bit over the last year. We've hired 2 net new Oracle recruiters, and they've done a phenomenal job. They really understand our business. They know how to recruit, where to look. So yes, we're trying to stay 1 -- at least 1 step ahead, but it is something that we'll face as we're out.

Where do you see -- John was talking about where Microsoft is going and how we're leveraging that, where do you see the Oracle side going and how are we leveraging that from a cloud perspective?

Well, I mean, we're fully in the cloud, and we're focused on the core, the core areas that -- healthcare is one of them. Financial services is another industry. So we're looking at verticals as we continue to grow organically and diversify. We have strong horizontal plays, the EPM practice. I mean they're known in the industry for solving some of the -- or being able to support some of the most complex EPM transformations across verticals. So we're seeing horizontal plays in EPM. We're also seeing horizontal plays in human capital management as well. And that's a big part of our business that's growing organically as well. So we're aligning with Oracle as we'll talk to Sarah about here in a minute. And yes, we're -- the alignment has been huge, Paul. I think aligning our strategy with Oracle strategy and then focusing on our strengths and really amplifying our success as we create new references and happy clients is tremendous.

So thank you, Mike. And with that, I'm going to pass it over to you. And then Sarah, thank you very much for joining us today. Sarah. Up to you, Mike.

Thanks, Paul. It's a pleasure and good afternoon to everyone. We saved the best for last, as they say. I'm kidding, and good afternoon, Sarah.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. Sarah is our main Oracle liaison, and we thank you again for joining us today. It's always a pleasure speaking with you. I represent a very talented and seasoned team professionals, at Alithya and in the Oracle Practice, all of our consultants, salespeople. And to tee up our discussion with Sarah, I thought I'd give you just a brief update on the Oracle Practice. I think Paul and I kind of did a little bit of that informally here. But like I mentioned, I get in the Oracle space for about 25 years. I came to Alithya through Travercent a couple of years ago, and it's been a crazy 2 years, but I'm very pleased with the progress we've made and the momentum we've built over those last 2 years. It's certainly been a team effort. I wanted to underscore 5 main points on our progress: I think the first one, and maybe the main one is that we have fully integrated the 2 Oracle acquisitions that were made by Alithya. So the EPM practice, as you know, came from Edgewater and the ERP, the supply chain management and the human capital management practices came from Travercent. And I can't say enough how this combination provides for a complete multi-pillar strategy as we go to market with Oracle. My opinion, Sarah probably shares it, is Oracle really shines when a client wants to transform their entire systems landscape to an Oracle platform. I don't think -- I mean, Oracle has the breadth and the depth, like no other enterprise software to do that and being able to support and be aligned with that Oracle strategy has been a critical and a real differentiator for our Oracle Practice at Alithya. Point number 2 is I'm big on being disciplined. And we've done a great job focusing on growing our core business. We just talked about industry-wide is healthcare. We own a significant share of the Oracle healthcare consulting space. It allows us to sell virtually everything we offer. We've also made significant progress in the financial services sector across EPM and ERP. And then horizontally, we have been known for 20 years as being leaders in the EPM space for any complex EPM transformation. I'm very happy to talk about our growth and diversification strategy. It's gaining a ton of momentum. We're seeing strong organic growth in other industries besides healthcare and financial services. It includes retail, a lot of recent success in retail, high tech, professional services and there are others. So the plan to diversify and to grow organically through that vertical or industry diversification is really paying off. We're seeing a lot to -- Paul, to your earlier kind of question you teased out of me, we are seeing more and more upmarket opportunities, and we're being very successful competing with the big 4, the global system integrators, we're being more and more successful with that. We're having tremendous success growing our human capital management practice. And what's great about that is it's more of a horizontal play. It's not necessarily vertically aligned. So we're able to use human capital management, HCM payroll to wedge our foot into other industries. And finally, we're growing our advisory practice. So our advisory team is a blend of industry experts, functional experts and change management. So that's another great overlay part of our practice that really helps some of these larger transformations take place. And that's one reason why we are able to compete with some of the larger GSIs because we have that end-to-end capability to be able to support a large organization go through a -- through a digital transformation. The fourth point is -- again, I mentioned it before, but we have a very tight alignment with Oracle and hopefully, Sarah can elaborate on that. You can see it from our results. We've had a record bookings in Q1 of our fiscal year. We had a record quarter. We have had incredible pipeline growth. Our sales funnel is very strong, and we have got a lot of new logos. So it's not just repeat business at existing clients, but they're net new clients that are moving to the Oracle Cloud. And in the last year, I came -- when I saw this number, I had to double check it. We've had 60 successful go-lives within the last year. And as Sarah will attest, bringing quality references to the table is critical to being a successful Oracle partner. And through our marketing engine, we're able to amplify that success. We're spreading it across Oracle, across the market. So we're able to really leverage that engine that we built, Jamie Bracewell built. And the last point, and again, going back to -- Paul, you must have read my notes, we continue to attract top talent across the organization and at all levels. And I'm happy to report, I'm literally sitting here in our U.S. headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia, where we are on-boarding a brand-new college class of recruits that are just in the next room. And I've been very -- and really enjoy the time doing that. So that's a quick, quick update on the Oracle Practice here in the U.S. Sarah, how about you introduce yourself and just give a quick intro and talk about your role at Oracle?

Absolutely. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me joined today. I'm excited to share a little bit about Oracle and how we value our partners such as Alithya. I am an Alliance Director here at Oracle. I have been with Oracle for 10 years and had the great opportunity to move into an Alliance's role in February of 2020, which as we all know, is an interesting time for a little bit of a career shift, but it's been a really exciting place to be. It's been really great seeing our partners thrive and really capitalize on some opportunities. And as Mike mentioned, I'm aligned with one of our healthcare sales team. So I've had a really great opportunity to connect very closely with Alithya and see the success that they've had in the healthcare space and also watching that success trickle into a number of other industries across the board. So happy to be here, happy to answer some questions that might be on your mind about how the Oracle partnership works. And now, Michael, I'll let you take it away from there.

Sure. No, thank you. These are easy questions we won't get to. So Sarah, first question, can you please tell us what you're seeing in the SaaS, the Software as a Service market from an Oracle perspective? Can you shed any light on that?

Yes, absolutely. Well, from an Oracle perspective, it's absolutely top of mind for us. That's really where we're focused, where we're looking for growth. Our first quarter financial results just came out earlier this week. So I can speak to it a little bit more detailed in that we're seeing year-over-year quarterly growth for our first quarter. And Software as a Service, the SaaS market as well as Infrastructure as a Service are 2 of our fastest-growing, highest-margin businesses. So absolutely, there's a huge focus cloud in the cloud adoption. And Oracle is completely committed to delivering the best of breed, end-to-end business processes, and we look to our partners like Alithya to help deliver those on-site to our clients. We all know how much business processes have changed on a day-to-day in the last 1.5 years. And so many of our customers have been forced to realize how critical technology is to their overall success and have been forced to kind of open their eyes and ears to that cloud conversation and to get that education. And we've seen a lot more adoption even from those industries that might not be -- have been as technologically savvy because they've got to be more flexible. They have to modernize their infrastructure. They have to be more readily available to operate in different ways than they ever had previously. So yes, we're seeing great growth there. There's, for sure, going to be continued investment there. Like I said, we look to our partners like Alithya to help continue to deliver those business capabilities successfully to the customers on the end.

Thank you, Sarah. So every software company kind of has a slightly different partner model. Can you tell us a little bit more about the Oracle partner ecosystem, how it works and the importance of partners? And what are the characteristics of a good Oracle partner?

Sure. So our partner ecosystem operates in an open market model. What we ask for our partners is to join our Oracle PartnerNetwork program. That's where our partners are identified where you're listed on the Oracle website and where you're searchable and visible internally to Alliance directors such as myself as well as sales teams. So once partners have taken the step to join the partner network program, there are then 4 different tracks that they're classified as that you can opt to participate in based on your go-to-market model. So Alithya is one of our service track partners. We also have sell partners. So those partners are qualified to resell Oracle products. Build partners, which would be our ISV, our independent software vendor partners and then our license and hardware partners as well. So you've joined the Oracle PartnerNetwork, you then self-select into one or more tracks where you're invested in going to market with Oracle. And from there, you begin to earn expertise and gain credentials and qualifications and certifications that, like I said, are searchable internally for our teams. As you know, our teams are looking into pursuits and looking at challenges and wanting to align the bestly qualified and capable partner for that. So having a strong Oracle PartnerNetwork presence is imperative internally. And secondarily, the Alliance directors such as myself, are finding this information. We're aligning our partners with our sales teams. We're then marketing our partners back to our sales teams based on the capabilities and qualifications that they've had. And like you said, Mike, you've delivered 60-plus new customers this past year, that's phenomenal. So having those customer references is imperative, as we all know, that a reference is your best sales tool that you can have. So having those customer references is hugely valuable in making sure that those are visible within the ecosystem. So like I said, in the healthcare market, Alithya is a commonplace name in financial services. And because of the success and the presence that you have within the Oracle PartnerNetwork program. And having a household name, for lack of a better term, within Oracle, has helped to gain those relationships and to give you the opportunity for more pursuits within different industries in the Oracle ecosystem.

Great. I've noticed there, over the years, the -- from a partner perspective, more and more emphasis has been placed on having the consultants in the program be certified, have certification test, and that's a -- we've placed a premium on that ourselves. Can you talk a little bit about -- more about just how the certification program works? And help me understand -- anything you can share about that?

Yes. The certification program. So Oracle through the partner network offers a variety of education for our partners to keep them up to speed on all things Oracle and the newest releases and making sure that your teams feel totally enabled to do every implementation and to overcome any challenges that they might see. So we look to our partners to stay up to speed on those certifications so that we can feel confident going to market with you and knowing that any challenges that you might see, your team will have already undergone the certifications and knows how to combat those challenges on site at the customer site. So I know -- last week, we had the great opportunity to do a partner business review with Alithya. So this is with the Alithya team and then my Alliance's -- our leadership team to make sure that all of the Alliance's teams have the great visibility on the work and the effort and the training that Alithya has gone through to keep them top of mind as a valued partner. And one of those things that we're always looking at are those certifications that are offered through the Oracle partner network. So I know Alithya showcased goals and some targets for meeting a certain number of certified consultants, and it's really great to see that Alithya has prioritized that as well because it brings additional value to the table and that confidence that we can recommend and partner with Alithya and that you're going to deliver a successful customer at the end of the day.

I don't know if I'm going to put you on the spot or put us on the spot with this next question. But from an Oracle Alliances perspective, candidly, how is Alithya doing? Do you think our strategy is resonating with the Oracle organization?

Yes. I would say -- and this is also really tiny just given that we had this conversation last week internally with the Alliance's team. But it's been really exciting over the last 18 months to be working very closely with the Alithya team. Starting with health care because that's where my initial focus is, but also as your main point of contact into Oracle. Watching the Alithya practice thoughtfully consider how to make smart investments and grow into additional industries. I think there's been incredible pay off, just seeing the expense that you've had within the Oracle ecosystem and seeing the internal pipeline that you're driving from the marketing investments that you've made, the successful customers that you're delivering again are being evangelized through those marketing efforts. And it's not going unnoticed by the Oracle teams. Your marketing team is doing a great job of getting those out on multiple social platforms. I make sure to evangelize it internally. So I think that's been -- that's going very well. Additionally, Oracle realigned our sales teams this past fiscal, which started in June to be an industry-focused model. So health care has always been a targeted industry, but we've identified some additional industries to focus on. And what's been really great to see from a partnership perspective is that Alithya consider that and has also realigned their sales teams to mirror the Oracle sales team. So it's made it a really easy process for engaging with Alithya, for wanting to partner with you, for knowing that Alithya has those subject matter experts and those folks that are working in the same industries that our sales teams are working in to have that valuable industry knowledge and the specific language and the challenges that those industries might be facing. So I would say the time and effort that you took to reorganize your teams to mirror the Oracle sales teams has made it one of the easy button to continue to partner with Alithya and to look to you for those opportunities to go into pursuits together.

Yes. So I couldn't agree more. I think if there's one thing that we've done really right in the last year, it is just being -- getting as tightly aligned with the Oracle sales teams, the Oracle strategy, the Oracle messaging, our marketing. I think if I had -- that's -- we've done a lot of things right, but I would say that is the #1 in my mind of what we've done right.

Absolutely. And one thing I forgot to mention, Mike, but you mentioned it earlier in your comments, and this did come up following our conversation last week internally was the concerted recruiting effort the fact that you've got recruiters looking to grow and make sure you've got talent ready to go from an Oracle perspective at Alithya. It -- that was phenomenal to hear. And everybody is happy to know that you're actively recruiting and that the college program that you're doing also, you're growing that young talent organically at Alithya. So I think that was something that came out of that conversation that we had last week that was regarded and many people came back and said, "This is so great. Alithya is making some really smart investments and really we can tell that they're committed to their Oracle practice.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yes. And if you ever run across good Oracle Talent, please send them our way. All right. What would be some advice on how we can continue to enhance our partnership with Oracle. Where should we be investing? And this can be kind of your own thoughts, but what advice would you give us?

Well, like I said, I think you've done a lot of great things, and I think you're seeing a lot of great return from the investments that you've made so far. The alignment for sure is one thing. And I think that you've got a lot of those relationships already established. So just having that alignment with the executive level at Oracle and staying top of mind from a top-down perspective is something imperative to stay up on. And of course, I'm here to make sure that you've got those connections and those relationships as needed. We've talked about the great response you've seen from the marketing investments. I would maybe suggest the only thing just to continue looking at and ways to consider to grow and provide additional value is because of this industry alignment, anything that Alithya can do to continue to provide industry-specific thought leadership and subject matter experts are all going to be highly valuable to the sales teams here, just helping to really dig into challenges and focus on how Oracle and Alithya together can solve those challenges by industry, I think is maybe just one other way to stay top of mind and to stay incredibly relevant and very valuable for our sales teams.

Yes. Just -- I don't know if you can speak to this because it's a bit of crystal ball. But in terms of industries that you guys are seeing kind of continue -- or maybe ramp up their cloud -- or are you seeing certain industries be more active? Is there any trend or anything you can share around kind of other industries that you guys are seeing pop up as such.

I'd hate to attempt to stack rank industries. But what I can say is some of the industries that might not have been as technologically savvy, like I said earlier, are now open to at least getting some education on cloud and what that modernization looks like and what it can actually do for their business. So I think we're seeing a ramp in levels of engagement kind of across the board. And Oracle is committed to delivering those. We do kind of cloud day, which are very basic educational messages and we look to our partner community to also relay the y cloud, and more importantly for us, y Oracle Cloud message to those customers. So I would stay industry-agnostic that there is certainly more interest because all businesses, like I said, are recognizing how critical technology as to their success and staying on top of technology and having the best of breed and enabling their employees to do their work maybe in different ways than they have ever done before is just -- it's now something that they're considering and something that they're looking at. And so yes, I would say it's -- there's interest across the board industry, agnostically. And I wouldn't want to try to attempt to stack rank those industries. But I definitely think there is huge opportunity. And I think we've seen the success and we've seen the opportunities and have capitalized on a lot of those together. And I think that there's just great momentum to continue that trend.

Well, Sarah, we really appreciate your support, you evangelizing our success at Oracle. You've been a phenomenal liaison and channel partners. So thank you, and thank you for joining us today. We really appreciated you and your answers.

Yes, absolutely. And thank you for making it easy for me to want to evangelize you for all of the great work and the great success that you guys have had and look forward to continuing that.

Absolutely. Thanks, Sarah. Paul, back to you.

Thank you, Mike. So this gets to the fun part, where you get to ask all these questions, and I can pass the buck to somebody else to answer. So usually, I'm the one answering all these questions. And today, I have the privilege of having all these great people that you've met today to answer the questions we've received so far. And I'll dispatch them myself.

There is one question. Maybe we'll start there. A lot of questions came in on talent. And I know it's something that we've talked about, our customers have talked about our partners, Sarah just mentioned it again. One of the questions on talent is how does M&A help us tackle that challenge. And I think I'll start with that one before I pass it on to everybody else here, because I think one of the biggest advantages that the M&A has brought us is the people you see on this call today. I think one of the things that we look at when we look for targets in the acquisitions, the first thing we look is for quality leadership teams. And we know that when we have the right leaders and the right people, we can usually attract the right people to come and do these projects. And they're the ones with the great ideas, and you've heard several of them today. And we're going to talk about a few more of those here in a minute. But I think from an M&A perspective, if I understand the question, well, I think the biggest advantage we have there is adding great leadership to the team. The second question that came around that is maybe -- and then I'll pass it to you Claude, and you can disclose or so and you can decide how you want to answer this or somebody else should. But if you can speak more broadly on the kind of the virtualization of the workforce and how it's impacting our hiring strategy and maybe even some comments around Morocco and how that's impacting the recruiting?

Yes. Thank you very much, Paul. We'll start maybe with the first part of the answer, and then we'll turn the mic to one of our colleagues after. But I would like maybe to introduce, first of all, Steve Duchein. Steve joined us now for the Q&A session. We mentioned his organization several times today, calling the Digital Solutions Center. Steve, welcome. And we have also another colleague who has joined us for the Q&A section. That's someone you have the privilege to meet on a quarterly basis, our CFO, Mr. Claude Thibault, also will answer some questions, and he will be available for any questions you have. But to come back on a few elements about the -- how we manage the labor, no doubt now with the pandemic, teleworking opened a lot of opportunities. And in the sense of now we can recruit outside boundaries outside local geography and now bring new talent. And by the technology we are using and technologies we are using now. We can combine and regroup teams together and talent together in order to deliver our solutions to all of our clients. No doubt, that's a great value for all of us. By the same token, well, we need also to create a teamwork aspect as Catherine described very well today. And that's the reason sometimes we need also to organize activities and meetings together, and that's the reason that's a mix of both. But no doubt, now we have more opportunities than ever. And I will give you a concrete example of that. As you can imagine now, every country as they were not impacted the same way by the COVID. An example, in France, we had some colleagues that were available, and we had a shortage in Canada for some projects. In the past, we tried time to use our colleagues in France to help us in the province of Quebec. It was a bit difficult for different reasons. But believe it or not, now we have a few projects where we are using colleagues from overseas working on Canadian projects. Those kind of elements were not expected. We cannot position them, unfortunately, 18 months or 20 months ago. Now with COVID, that's the kind of projects now we can position. I would like just to come back on Morocco. And as I said, Steve is the architect behind the scene. He has developed everything regarding Morocco. Maybe I would like to add some color about where we stand now and how Morocco will be -- will bring value to the organization. Steve?

Yes. Do you hear me?

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes. So thank you very much, loud, and hi, everyone. First of all, I'm very proud to represent the great team of DSC, more than 650 very high professional people. So in fact, our office in Morocco is fully active since July since the end of July with 20 permanent employees, 40 who are just waiting for the end of administrative process and for sure, more than 100 at the end of the year. Thus, we -- with our Morocco team, we covered -- already covered several technology, namely Java, Oracle, Product Owner, QA. So we already have a very positive impact on our delivery performance. And though it's very important to note that we don't send work to Morocco. Now we build a mixed team using our Alithya, way, so our recipe for a successful project, to offer our customer the best team to achieve their goals. So -- and it's just the beginning. Claude?

Thank you, Steve. The last part of my question is regarding if we feel now the working on-site is, I think, of the past. Honestly, the answer now we can already position based on information we are getting from different customers, the information it's not. It's not something from the past. What we are seeing now some customers in some countries, they are more looking at having folks on site. The only thing I think will be a mix stuff. And sometimes people are talking about hybrid. I'm not here talking about numbers of days per week, it's getting flexibility to deliver projects on time, on premises with the right level and the right expertise. And that's the reason we can combine both. The only thing we are clearly demonstrated in the last 18 months. From theater working, we can deliver a lot of projects with quality, on time, on budget and respecting customer expectations. Paul, back to you.

Actually, Claude, that's a great point. And I -- one of the questions is kind of a follow-up, you did this last comment. Based on our experience, and the fourth wave that we're seeing right now, can you comment on -- are you seeing this as another headwind? Or are we -- is this going to be like thing in the past? Or what do you think of this fourth wave and how it's impacting us?

Well, as I said, it's a bit unfortunate. If we have a fourth wave or not, but the only good news, now we are more equipped to Phase II any ways we can get in the coming quarters or years. That's a good news. Now the question is also related about the operations but the sales team. And we have outstanding colleagues on our call today with a lot of expertise in sales. And I would like to turn maybe the mic to John Scandar for the first part regarding what happened in U.S. and how the sales organization adapt themselves to be ready to position our products and services. And I will ask the same thing regarding the Canada in our portion to Dany as well to position how we adapt the way we interact with our customers. But John, first, regarding U.S.

Thank you, Claude. So I guess at the end of the day, we know that we used to do everything on site. I think people know we used to fly to our customers all across the country. The infamous 5-day ERP demo that people you would ask us, you'd Fly 5 people to a customer, and everybody would just spend their life at the customer discoveries -- many, many visits to the customer all over the country. And we had to very quickly adapt to, obviously, say, okay, we can't fly anymore. What do we do? And it's kudos to our team, where we started to use technology -- that we all look at what the technology we're using now, where we were able to actually do discoveries not only remotely, but we were able to use phones. I'll say -- give the example of a site tour, where we use the camera with the customer, and we went through the site tour over the telephone, and he would tell us the story of what they do, how they do it, where they do it. So rather than being on site, we use things, obviously, mobile technology to do it. And then we reinvented how we do presentations so that I would tell you today, the presentations might even be more interactive and more fun remotely. Some of our people have studios at their homes to do these presentations for the customers, but we were able to do it and really do the day of a life of a customer without ever visiting the customer. And that was as much the salesperson to the presales consultants and solution architects.

Thank you, John. Dany?

So it was the same for us. But the difference between what we do in the Quebec area, people were used to have us near. We were near office of our customer. We crossed the Street, and we were just in the office of our customer. So we have adapt ourselves, and we help our customers to adapt to this new way to work. And I think that it's the same for the sale people. They were used to have those people in their office very often. But with the technology, again, we were able to bring them. It was -- it takes a few weeks, and then they understand that we can deliver, like you said, Claude, on-premise, on time, on budget, the project, and we are able to bring them -- they see the value. Sometime at the beginning, if you remember, we were telling we're going to be less performance if we are not all together because we were used to work, let's say, at the DSC people who are used to work together, but and we were facing -- are we going to be able to deliver at the same pace that we were doing before? And the answer is yes. The team have organized their work. Some team are working. They open -- like with the technology. They have -- they bring the camera on for all day, and they are working like they are at the office. So people are very creative to make sure that they're going to achieve the work that they have to do. So we have adapt, and then we can -- we have the proof that it's working because we have delivered a lot of projects during the last 18 months. So that's a big achievement for us. And for the safety, is the same thing. They're working with the customer. And we're -- the fact that we have new projects, so the team is working very well, even if they are not in face-to-face with the customer.

Now to come back on the fourth wave, maybe Nigel, do you see less disruption if we have a fourth wave or a fifth wave of COVID?

Disruption, I'm not sure. I mean, a lot of our business is in the essential services, and we have been delivering very successfully remotely. Thanks to Steve's team, Dany, to our Ottawa unit. We have some projects, which are drawing on people from all different areas. As a matter of fact, in terms of trying to staff up our cloud services team, we're recruiting across Canada. We're not allowed based on our industry to have information kept in the U.S. So we are recruiting across Canada, but we're getting good results with that. I think we've hired like 10 people in the last 2 weeks. So this is really good for our business and good for our customers, and they're seeing delivery.

It's a great segue into one of these other questions that I find really interesting. And I know we have a lot of people here on the call that deal with the financial services industry. And Dany, you talked about this about the opportunity on financial services and the switch from legacy to digital systems. Katrina at Beneva also mentioned that the insurance industry is behind in the move to digital. IBM is suggesting. I think they're overestimating the number, but they're saying that 20% to 25% has already been done. How do you see -- and I guess several of you could be answering this one, and I'll let you do the traffic quote, but do you see the opportunity in financial services insurance still huge? Or is there a limit or based on experience? Where do you see it going?

Maybe I will turn the mic first to you, Dany, regarding what happened in Canada, but I will ask Mike after to comment as well what is going on in the U.S.

To answer the question, I think that it's the tip of the iceberg. I think that we're -- when IBM said that we have a 20%, I don't think that we're already there. There is a lot to do. There is a lot of projects ongoing in the Montreal area, like Catherine said, we're going to face, I think we're going to miss people to do all the work that we have to do. So we will have to be very creative to make sure that we're going to be able to answer all the requests that we have for our customers. So I think that we're -- we have a lot of work to do for the next -- for the coming year on the insurance sector.

Mike?

I 100% agree with Dany. I mean, we're seeing a tremendous demand within -- across financial services, banks, insurance, reinsurance. It's -- like I said, it's one of our fastest-growing sectors in the U.S. The U.S. financial markets are a little different than in Canada, but we are seeing tremendous growth from all sides of regional banks, startups, all the way to very large organizations. We're -- as we speak, we're responding to a tremendous amount of demand in that sector.

Maybe, Claude, the follow-up question to that, that somebody is asking here is, given all this demand, are you seeing any price sensitivity and then pricing power into what we're doing today. And when we're looking forward, you see some of this stuff kind of changing as we go forward and then being able to basically change -- impact the margins.

Let me ask Russell regarding U.S. price sensitivity, and I will comment with the overall comments regarding all countries in 2 minutes, Russell.

Sure. Thanks, Claude. As we look at the market, we're always trying to give a fair value-based pricing. But from an elasticity perspective, we're able to charge what we believe are fair rates and good rates, and we're driving really good margin in all of the sectors, including financial services. And so we're not seeing, at this point, with the increased demand. We're seeing strong rates, but we're not seeing any reduction in those rates. So we're able to see the margins that we need to be able to drive for the business.

And the labor shortage as well is creating now the price increases as well. Because, well, if we have a shortage, well, everybody, they are fighting for the same resources. And that's exactly the situation we have everywhere. Again, we need, again, to be careful because we need also to find the right talent. And also, we need to get the right approach. And that's the reason -- it's not only to fulfill a request and say, okay, we have someone with this level of expertise. It's more about, as Steve described very well, how we organize ourselves in terms of projects oriented -- deliver on a project that are creating value to our clients. And that's the reason the price sensitivity is also oriented with the value we are creating in front of our clients as well.

Paul, one comment on that just with the labor. And again, given the strength of the team that we have combined and the resources, for example, in Oracle and Microsoft that we have in Canada as well as the U.S., given the exchange rate benefit that we're able to recognize, again, the virtual mode of being able to deliver projects, we're able to tap into nearshore resources as well as we talked about offshore and what we're doing in Morocco. But out of the gate right now, we have skilled resources in Canada as well as in the U.S. that we can use to lower that cost base.

Yes. Which brings me to the next question, I like a lot, Claude. You had a slide that was showing that the industry is growing at a 10% clip. But yet the objective is 5% to 10% for organic growth. I think somebody is saying you're sandbagging.

Okay. I think we need to evaluate the market and how the market is growing. And as you know, we need -- and we mentioned about we need to adapt ourselves. And that's really, really important. Now the market's still really sensitive, in the sense of, look only the return to the office or reopening offices now. I don't know how many times businesses had announced. The other offices will be reopened. And that's the reason it's really difficult today to mention about revenue and the stability. The only thing we can recognize today. The way we started Q1, we started Q1 strongly. And now we continue the recipe, we have continue the way we are doing business. But to see where we are at sandbagging and/or we are looking forward in 2024, we have the same growth, it's impossible to answer that today to be candid and honest.

And all joking aside, I think when we made this plan. So our fiscal year starts April, we make our plan. We started planning 6 months before, we started the plan during the pandemic. And it is a long-term objective. If we want to double the size of the company and we guesstimated 50-50 between organic growth and acquisitions. And of course, if we're growing at a 30%, 40% clip organically then by definition, we wouldn't have to make as many acquisitions or we'll get there faster with the acquisition. So I think it's a balancing act, and we have to plan long term to Claude's point. So we put that in our plan. But yes, we're running ahead of that today. And based on the backlog and the bookings, it should keep on going. Questions here, and I don't know if you or Dave could comment, Claude, on the integration of R3D and how that's going and how fast or what's the plan to get from that 30% to 70% in terms of full-time staff.

Dave?

Well, to your first question, Paul, how is it going? It's going really well. And it's not because you're there that I'm saying that. It's really -- it's going really well based on the comments I get back from our people. And I'll probably refer to some of Russell's statements this afternoon. When we talked about respect, when we talked about communication, when we talked about openness. And basically, that's -- those are the main factors that drove that transaction and that integration. And right on day 1, you stood in front of us and you said, well, don't be worried. It's going to go fine. It's not the first time we do it. But each time we make sure we do it well that was really well done, and everyone is on board. All people are happy. Of course, it's a change and people have the need the time to go through that change, but it's going really, really well. And of course, we've lost a few people. That's quite normal. But the good news there is that none of them, none of them and they are quite just a few on one hand, none of them that have left said it was because of Alithya because they were pursuing another dream and they were about to go through a change. Well, I'll give you an example. One of the colleague decided once and for all to open her flower shop, which she's been dreaming for years and years and years and she decided to do it. I'm happy for her. And one day, she knows that the door is open and if she need shall come back. But for 99% of the people that are still with us, the journey is continuing. They're adapting very well to Alithya, thanks to those folks, but thanks to you with your open minded and your openness and it's a great journey. Now...

Yes. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.

Yes. About the 70% to 30% way back when we were on a ratio. And when I say we refer to our 3D at the time, we were on a ratio of 60% internal people and 40% subcontractors. From projects to projects that ratio on balance, that now we ended up with 70% subcontractors and 10%. Now we have the attraction. Now we have the traction to go faster, to go higher. And that interests a lot of people. And some of our people throughout the past 10, 12 years, that have decided to become freelancers are knocking back at the door now and say, "Well, I've had a good time. It was fun. I see the team. I see the sky quite blue ahead of us. I'd like to be part of that. Can I come back?" And it's not a dream that I'm saying, right as we speak. Well, it's probably done now. But late this afternoon, we had an interview with one of these ladies that were with us many years ago. Quit the company to be a freelance and now she wants to come back. So this is one venue we're going to be using to work on that ratio. And I think so far, it's working quite well.

Thank you, Dave. On that question about the employee mix. It's also based on the quality of projects we have to offer. And that's the reason we are working on projects where our employees will be not only there for a few months, but they're more at medium- and long-term basis. And the kind of relationships we have across the company, we can build on those projects on a long-term basis. And now we are creating value, yes, for our clients, but for our employees as well. That's the reason why we're investing in training. And one part about the RTD integration we need to remember is the commercial contract we had signed as well. And with that contract or those contracts depending if we look at 2 or 1 contract. But we also have projects where we need to hire more permanent employees than subcontractors. Why? Because they are on a long-term basis, but gradually -- it's not something, unfortunately, like a switch of on/off. We can turn on or turn off. But gradually, we'll move and we are moving in the right direction. But it's a very good question, but we are confident, we have a game plan we are more attractive than ever based on the quality projects we have, and that's exactly what we are working on with our current employees, but as well with our new colleagues.

Thanks, Dave. I have a few questions here on the Microsoft and Oracle thing. I'll start with the last one. And Mike, if you can't answer this, maybe I know Sarah left, but you can probably check with her later. Sarah mentioned or you mentioned that we had 60 go-lives in that -- and she said it was phenomenal. Is -- how does that compare? And do we have any way of quantifying how that stacks up versus the other partners they have or similar sized companies or any metrics on that, that you could share?

I don't have visibility to the other partners, but anecdotally, it's as many as -- ironically, it's as many as some larger GSIs. We have a good portfolio of Worco customers, Paul. We have some smaller customers that projects are a little faster or we have certain types of projects where they involve EPM, they might be shorter, we have larger. So we have a good volume, a good mix in terms of portfolio goes a project. So it doesn't -- in a way, it doesn't surprise me that we have compared to others, a pretty good number of go-lives. And we have really good project leaders, project managers. So those are -- the majority of those are on time, on budget delivery.

It is a very, very impressive number. The other one, kind of a follow-up to that, Claude, and maybe for you. We say that Microsoft and Oracle, they're strong partners. Any other relationships or other vendors that you want to attract attention to or mention in terms of growth and what they're generating.

First of all, no doubt, Microsoft and Oracle are the 2 most important partners we have. No doubt also, we are working with a company like EWS, for example. And again, not a small market, that's very important. Now we have more people certified to integrate some technologies on the AWS platform. We are also certified and Dave can comment on it regarding the public sector in Quebec, regarding, again, the cloud services. And again, that's a very important recognition we have, working in the public sector. And we have also some partnership. We have several partnerships with other partners. Sometimes they are a little bit more specific like Splunk example, and we are working with them on specific clients and specific needs and/or any other partners we have on our side. But maybe, Dave, regarding the recognition we have with the Quebec public sector. Maybe you would like to add some colors on.

Yes. Thank you, Claude. Yes, we are qualified that the public sector in the province of Quebec to provide cloud services and they range from hosting services to IT services and also to change management services. And basically, any of the 187 entities I talked to you about the 21 ministries and 166 departments can use that contractual vehicle to get to us and on a very quick turnaround, we can provide the services to any single one of them.

Thanks Dave. Question Claude, on cybersecurity. I mean, Beneva talked about it. It's a hot topic. Nigel talked about it. Any color you can give on the practice size, where it's going?

First of all, we have expertise. And again, we need to be careful when we talk about cybersecurity. sometimes I'm using the example of a Walmart. We don't want to be a Walmart of cybersecurity. We are a little bit more niche and more specific. Maybe Nigel, you mentioned a few times today about what we are doing about cybersecurity, and I will come back on with other teams as well we are working on the cybersecurity aspect. Nigel?

Yes. Claude. Yes. So we certainly have a very large and growing cybersecurity practice, which is really focused on plant level cybersecurity right now. Just as an example, in doing that, in the plant, they have maintenance laptops. They're concerned about making sure everything is locked down. We now offer a couple of our clients the ability to have a lithia branded cyber-hardened laptops. And we actually even have a device locker, which is almost like a laptop vending machine where the maintenance folks can store their laptops, get new VMs, virtual machines with the right type of maintenance software put on it. So we just closed our first deal on offering that. And that's -- it's not a huge volume generating or revenue generating, but it really shows you the scope of what we're doing with our cyber practice and trying to take it from governance and standards and making sure they're following the right processes, right down to giving them the equipment and the guidance they need to implement something that's real and solves real-life problems in the plant and keeps them safe.

Yes. That's the same thing, same situation we have as well in other regions. We don't have a, I lay the same maturity of a full practice in security. We are doing several things, but we are looking now to define exactly to define our position in this area and then show up. We are not there only to resell products and services and/or having our own product and services. We need to be ready to define what we would like to be. And how we would like to be recognized within the cybersecurity. And I will just extend a bit in the IT security aspect as a whole. And that's exactly where we stand now. Paul, back to you.

Yes. Thanks, Claude. And Claude Thibault, who's still on in the last question, and I think it's more in your ballpark. As you all know, we announced this morning the launching of our NCIB, which should kick in over the next few days. One question here for you, Claude Thibault, is maybe if you can talk about the metrics that we're going to be using to -- for the stock buyback versus kind of other capital allocation alternatives. Claude?

Thank you, Paul, and thank you, everybody, for being here today. We have a very good turnout, and it's much appreciated. Obviously, we announced this morning because we feel that the stock is undervalued, especially considering our peers. So we look at comps and sometimes, we do not understand our stock price and especially considering our recent performance in terms of growth, organic growth, which was very good. Then I would also point out to the R3D acquisition, which we do not believe is well understood. And we just heard from our Beneva partner. This promises to be a very fruitful relationship. That being said, we do not intend to for this to be a material use of capital. We -- our plan is aimed mainly at market support in low volume days. This is what we have in mind for now. And our priority for capital use will always be organic growth and acquisition. But more specifically, to your point, there's 2 moving parts here. There's the stock price. We would like that to be closer to the consensus out there. And right now, we're a little bit below. So when we get closer to that zone, we may have a bit of a smaller appetite and the other part is the company performance. So if company performance continues to move in the right direction, we will have the capital resources to be more active on the program, but that remains to be seen. We will obviously watch how things unfold and adjust accordingly.

Thanks, Claude. That's it for the questions, folks. Thank you very much. I know we have a lot of people on the call. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for participating. Thank you for your questions, very appreciated. All our speakers, thank you very, very much. I think based on the comments that I'm seeing your inputs and insights were very appreciated. So thank you very much for participating today. And if you have any feedback or recommendations for next year, we're happy to have them. So keep them coming. Thank you very much, everybody, and good evening. Stay safe.

Thank you all.

Thank you.