Hello my name is Anne Mignard and I invite you through the ZDNet podcasts to discover the world of digital transformation in small and very small businesses.
Today, direction Narbonne, in the South of France. I went to meet Malvina Chassagne, the creator and owner of the company Temps de rêve, a wedding decoration company.
From the CD sent by La Poste to WeTransfer
Lights, tables, chairs, room… and much more! This is the core business of this young woman for 17 years now. And to best satisfy the customer, you need stocks, mountains of candles, candlesticks, meters and meters of fabric, not to mention all the DIY materials to adorn all the ceremonies.
On the administrative side, on the other hand, the company only has a few boxes of paper archives. Malvina uses a computer and a mobile phone, that’s all… thanks to the cloud. We find her in her little office:
“At first, I remember it was quite complicated: to communicate the files to the printer, we recorded them on CD and sent them by post. But quickly, we used a tool called WeTransfer. Cécile, the graphic designer who lives and works in Toulouse, prepared the files, put them on WeTransfer. I then retrieved the WeTransfer, checked the files, re-uploaded them and sent them to the printer. For the photos of the performances, we also put everything on CD, by season, etc. But sometimes we couldn’t remember where we put the CDs. It wasn’t very comfortable. With Cécile, we always communicated by messaging. We started with MSN Messenger – it’s really old. Afterwards, we used the Facebook Messenger. That way, we had a written record, and it was easier than using paper. But suddenly it was e-mail, suddenly it was Messenger… we had a loss of information which was still significant. »
Simplified collaboration and sharing
Especially since Malvina’s activity is concentrated over three months of the year. In the summer, she doesn’t have a minute, and especially not to dig into the papers and tidy up or store anything. You have to move quickly, forget nothing and be very organized to be able to provide the service ordered and be paid in return. A real balancing act that has been simplified by the arrival of the Google cloud via a client.
“At the beginning, it was a bit complicated, because I had the impression that you had to be very seasoned. But ultimately it’s quite intuitive. It has become a great tool, and now all our documents are created and shared via Gmail Drive. With Cécile, we only use that. And even with customers! I encourage them to use this support, especially for guest lists, for seating plans, which change until the last moment. That way, there is no risk of getting the wrong version. It’s changed instantly. And when we say “today we stop the list”, we know that it is the latest version. »
“It’s very comfortable, and it’s a huge time saver because everything is recorded, even during a performance. It happened to us that a bottle of water spilled on our worksheet with the layout plan of the tables, the distribution of guests around the tables and everything… Now, we retrieve the document on the drive and we can share it instantly. With the caterer for example, if there are food allergies. Finally, it allows a huge reactivity with the entourage, even with people with whom we are not used to working. We get the Gmail address and everyone shares the documents. We all have our cell phones on the benefits, so it’s really profitable. »
Saving data
And interactivity with customers via the cloud encourages creativity for Malvina for what is called in wedding designer jargon “the wedding project booklet”.
“This document is fed by image databases, in particular Pinterest. It’s very comfortable, because they can feed it gradually. I then recover the data and it makes the operation smoother. This document is commented on via the drive and when the ideas are validated, we move on to the estimate. There, I use an online tool to make quotes and invoices. »
“I can work from any computer. And if my computer breaks down, I don’t lose my data. In fact, I often break my computer hardware. Before I lost my data, I had to go to the technician to recover the hard drive. We were then deprived of the computer and we could not work for 15 days. Whereas now, if my computer malfunctions, I take another one. I find it a time saver. »
Cloud limits
But the cloud has its limits, because if the data is kept, it can sometimes be difficult to access it.
“It happened to me recently. After breaking my phone, I couldn’t reactivate Gmail Drive because I double-secured everything: everything goes through codes that are validated via the phone. Everything mustn’t break down at the same time, otherwise there’s panic on board! »
“But hey, they just changed my phone and I was able to recover the data. Despite everything, I still make regular backups on external hard drives in case of hacking, so that we don’t lose all our data, which would still be quite problematic. »