Movers & Shakers Interview with Mr.Henri Boccia, CEO of Smart Packaging Solutions
Industry analyst Shyam Krishnan from Frost & Sullivan interviews the CEO of Smart Packaging Solutions, Mr.Henri Boccia.
SK: Mr.Boccia, on behalf of the Frost & Sullivan smart cards research team, I wish to thank you for the wonderful opportunity to have a dialogue with you today.
HB: Thank you, it's a pleasure.
As one of the European participants in the smart cards arena, SPS has occupied an important position in the smart cards ecosystem. Can you tell us a little bit about your core founding values, the mission and vision of SPS?
HB: I believe that SPS' value that we bring to customers is based around the design and research which goes into our products as well as the security and quality that allows them to depend on our technology. This ties in especially well with the reliability and the overall lifespan of the products that we offer, and these are founding attributes of our value proposition. Through our twenty years of experience in the industry, we have been involved with many high profile projects in European countries and have thus assured a level of quality reputation that sets us apart from the competition. To add to this, many of our products are externally certified and undergo very stringent design and manufacturing phases before reaching our customers.
SPS' core competencies lie in the smart card manufacturing space. Can you tell us how your development initiatives are shaping up, in the current industry scenario?
HB: We are heavily involved with research and development, and have been awarded many patents for our technology and products. This is a value which we bring to our customers in the form of dual interface solutions, advanced ID cards and E-passports inlays, high memory products, various sensors and other smart card based devices which incorporate SPS' technology. Of our workforce, about one third of the personnel are dedicated to research and development, which is significantly higher than many of our more traditional competition.
SPS is headquartered in France - and you continue to be a strong participant in that region. How do you see the movement of cards sourced from your production facility to other regions?
HB: Being a French company, our success, particularly initially, has been very much aided by a strong French smart card market. We have worked on many card projects in France which have required many units on our behalf, including the French E-Passport program. Of course it is always hard to see exactly where every one of your products ends up on a global scale, although it would be fair to say that SPS' solutions have reached quite a number of countries throughout Europe, not just France.
Continuing with that, do you have plans to expand your presence to other regions? If yes, which region would be of interest?
HB: With SPS' success in Europe, and France in particular, we anticipate continuing to grow and expand over the coming years, and leverage our nearly twenty years of experience in the market towards other regions as well. We would like to think that SPS will become a world leader in providing secure identity solutions with our technology and research which has already proven its success and value in Europe and Morocco. This will simply be an extension of our growth, and allow us to use our industry expertise as a strategic advantage in less mature regions which can benefit from our market knowledge.
Dual interface cards and cards for travel applications are considered huge drivers in this space. You have a strong product portfolio in this space. Can you elaborate on your efforts to expand this line?
HB: We currently offer dual interface solutions that are highly regarded in the industry due to our Dual Interface Module technology used between the antenna module and our E-Booster antenna. The technology behind this has helped us create a mechanical layer which serves as an interconnection between these two modules and physically separates them. This has the benefit of increasing the security and reliability of the solution, and can be used with hybrid devices as well. Implementing Dual Interface module with the E-Booster antenna is also very straight forward as this uses the same embedding process that is used to embed contact modules, making our solution both easy to create and to implement as well as cost efficient.
Do you have any specific production processes that you adopt for more efficient card production? Six Sigma, for example?
HB: We are currently very much focused on research and development, and that has enabled us to be awarded many patents for our products. Our production capabilities include the abilities to create over 100 million micromodules per year, for use in smart cards. For the development of these cards we use a state of the art class 10,000 clean room to assure the highest quality and reliability to our clients. We can definitely claim to have some of the best production processes, which offer lean manufacturing solutions.
Organizations such as the French National Printing house have now been added to your list of clientele. Can you elaborate on the level of relations you have with public sector organizations, which calls for high level of trust and security standards as part of the deal?
HB: Of course our reputation and industry experience have gained us a large amount of trust in markets throughout the world, and has helped us to be successful in both the government and the public sector alike. These markets have similarities, which have allowed us to be successful on multiple fronts, by promoting the core strengths of the smart card platform which are truly the essential elements. These strengths fall in line with our own emphasis, being: security, reliability, ease of use by the end user, and a high value offering to any organization, government or otherwise, looking to adopt a smart card solution.
What would you say are the most immediate challenges facing the European card manufacturers?
HB: European card manufacturers have to deal with a much older, more mature, smart card market than the American based companies, which have their own set of challenges. Due to this, we have to keep innovating and offering advancements over the competition, in order to continue to gain market shares and stay ahead of the competition. This is why SPS has devoted so much time and effort into research and design; which is particularly necessary in this competitive environment, as smart card vendors already have a presence in the region and end users already have experience with smart cards from their banking and transit cards that are a part of their every day life.
I'm sure the economy is impacting your business in a direct/indirect way - can you share your experiences and throw a bit of light on SPS' performance in 2009 and outlook for 2010?
HB: There has been a notable slow down in the smart card industry for 2009, which can largely be attributed to the recession facing all businesses this year. This has hurt many companies, causing flat growth and a limited number of projects compared to the nature of this market in previous years. Thanks largely to our value proposition on our products, SPS continues to grow though, and we anticipate that 2010 will be an even more successful year for us. We also anticipate that our value will continue to grow, as budgets for organizations interested in smart cards recover from the economic down turn, allowing them to invest in truly meaningful technology which will help to secure their business.
As a CEO in charge of giving strategic direction to SPS, can you share some of your next steps and outlook for SPS as a whole in the near future?
HB: We plan to continue to grow all of our product lines and invest in their design and evolution to remain consistent with what our clientele require. SPS has a long history of growing through the progression of our own technology, and from this we will continue to pursue new patents and design innovations, leveraging our talented team of researchers and designers to offer a best in class family of products. Going forward it will be important for SPS to remain consistent with industry trends as well as competitive pricing structures, so that we can retain our strong value offering and the reputation that has made us successful.
That was a very insightful and interesting discussion on SPS' initiatives and outlook for 2010. Several interesting points of discussion, but the theme remains that constant innovation is essential to be successful. We hope SPS will continue to grow in 2010, and thank you for your time, Mr.Boccia.
HB: Thank you!
TOUT LIRE 
