Laurent De Buyser and Michael Diet (INTENSUM): 15 years of Trust
As a human sized independent European Consulting Company with highly specialized teams, INTENSUM has continued growing steadily. After 15 years in the business, with close working relationships based on trust, INTENSUM has built an excellent reputation.
Can you present INTENSUM in brief?
Laurent De Buyser: INTENSUM provides advisory services, mainly on SAP solutions. Our skills are mainly focused on three areas: Finance/Treasury, Business Intelligence and processes improvement through Innovation. We provide CFOs and Treasurers of large enterprises with operational tools they need to optimise their work and for enhancing their financial reporting & planning using latest technology. Our specialisation goes hand-in-hand with controlled growth and our human size ensures that our team members genuinely support one another to deliver the most challenging projects. Over the course of this journey, our team has developed a real sense of partnership together with our Partners and customers. We are certainly proud of this!
Michael Diet: We provide “state-of-the-art” SAP Treasury solutions! We also oversee the roll-out of software packages and the rationalisation of cash management processes. Users feel the need to measure their performance and to improve dashboarding and KPI’s for a more dynamic Treasury Management. To do this, new techniques come into play. The cloud, for example, is playing an increasingly important role, particularly in governing treasury-related services. Artificial intelligence can also help to develop processes which enable to manage data, to forecast and to plan when it comes to the core business: financial process and treasury. This responds to growing demand from managers to be able to anticipate effectively and to make decisions very quickly. We help customers implementing “treasury-on-demand” solutions.
“Thank you for your trust and collaboration, the INTENSUM Team is proud of what we achieved together with our people, partners & customers.”
What stages have there been in INTENSUM’s growth?
LDB: The most significant stage was to set up a clear strategy from the very beginning in 2005, which is still valid today, with particular attention to quality and long-term collaboration with our People, Customers & Partners. Our decision to choose Luxembourg as a base for our European development was also key due to its excellent reputation/network in financial & IT services expertise. As a partner of ATEL, we benefited from a high level of visibility which was also boosted by supporting events such as the Luxembourg CFO/Treasurer of the Year, now the European Finance Innovation Summit. Major companies soon put their trust in us and we managed to create an independent team, capable of leveraging its high level of specialization to successfully work on complex projects. Our mission today still lies in attracting and retaining the most specialised profiles while training young talents in order to meet our customer’s needs.
MD: We managed to attract competent, motivated internal people who wants to get involved in international projects using innovative SAP solutions. We embarked on a worldwide search to find rare talents. However, we remain a close-knit company. We are also able to decline some contracts in case we could not bring enough value or because of concerns about the distance as we also want to ensure a close relationship with our customers. After developing our footprint in both Luxembourg and Belgium, we now increasingly serve large customers in other countries across Europe and even further.
How do you see your business developing?
MD: Low-tech treasury organizations are risking their organisation’s future if not adapted. Treasurers usually underestimate how they can impact bottom-line results and their contribution is even more significant today as companies have to re-organize to face post-COVID-19 challenges. We can help with best practices and in view of the rapid changes in technology and regulations, it’s essential to focus on changing and adapting. We also have to anticipate new trends. Our special relationship with SAP makes it possible for us to keep a close eye on latest developments & innovations.
LDB: With SAP, as with other partners & together with our customers, I really feel we are co-creating value! The evolution of SAP, certainly in Treasury management, has taken an impressive turn over the last fifteen years. Their S/4-HANA platform, which is purely technological at its core, makes it truly possible to digitise financial processes. Following the COVID-19 crisis and its economic consequences, it is clear that CFO’s must continue to upgrade and modernize their finance organization to match coming challenges and become more agile and resilient. A combination of talents like ours with Senior SAP competencies and Business expertise is absolutely required to deliver successful projects. For a company which is implementing innovative SAP systems, the absence of any major project failures certainly also enhances our reputation today.
We are therefore celebrating our 15th Anniversary with proud in the past & confidence in (y)our future!