Altran
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| Traded as | Euronext: ALT |
|---|---|
| Industry | Innovation, engineering, tech and R&D consulting |
| Founded | France (1982) |
| Headquarters | Paris (France) |
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Key people
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Dominique Cerutti, CEO |
| Revenue | € 2.120 billion (2016) |
| € 122.5 million (2016) | |
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Number of employees
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29,106 (2016) |
| Website | www.altran.com |
Altran Technologies, SA is a global innovation and engineering consulting firm founded in 1982 in France by Alexis Kniazeff and Hubert Martigny. Altran operates primarily in high technology and innovation consultancy, which account for nearly 75% of its turnover. Administrative and information consultancy accounts for 20% of its turnover with strategy and management consulting making up the rest. The firm is active in most engineering domains, particularly electronics and IT technology. In 2016, Altran generated €2.120 billion in revenues and employed over 29,000 people around the world. Since June 18, 2015, Altran has been led by CEO Dominique Cerutti.
In 1982, Alexis Kniazeff and Hubert Martigny, ex-consultants of Peat Marwick (today known as KPMG), founded CGS Informatique, which would later become Altran. By 1985, the firm counted a staff of 50 engineers.
The company expanded through small business units that would later generally range from 10 to 200 employees. Business units operated semi-independently and were given the autonomy to choose their own growth strategy and investment programs while still getting assistance from central management. This allowed business units to give each other support and share ideas. Managers’ compensation was decided based on the units’ performance.
One of Altran’s first major projects was developing the on-board communications network in 1987 for France’s high-speed TGV trains that allowed French lines to be connected to other European rail lines.
In 1987, the company was listed on the Secondary Market of the Paris Stock Exchange. By 1989, Altran's sales had neared the equivalent of 48 million euros. That same year, Altran bought Ségur Informatique, an aeronautics simulation and modeling company. The number of the company's employees grew to approximately 1,000 by 1990, as well as its range of expertise, moving into the transportation, telecommunications, and energy sectors, with a strong information technology component.
In the early 1990s the company adopted a new business model. While much of the company's work during the previous decade had been performed in-house, at the beginning of the 1990s the company developed a new operational concept, that of a temp agency for the high-technology sector. The firm's staff started to work directly with its clients' projects, adding their specialized expertise to projects. By the end of the decade, the company had more than 50 subsidiaries in France, and had taken the lead of that market's technology consulting sector. The company was helped by the long-lasting recession affecting France and much of Europe at the beginning of the decade, as companies began outsourcing parts of their research and development operations. Altran was also expanding by acquisition, buying up a number of similar consultancies in France, such as the 1992 acquisition of GERPI, based in Rennes. By the end of that year, Altran's revenues had reached 76.5 million euros.
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