It was the turn of Francis Lelong, co-founder and CEO of Alegria.tech, to talk to Alexis Kovalenko of Contournement about "no-code" technologies and projects carried out in this ecosystem.

Francis talks about his entrepreneurial journey, how he came to Nocode, the tools we like at Alegria.tech, some use cases, notably with our partner Unqork, and the possibilities of Nocode for SMEs and large accounts.

Have a good listen! 🎧

And if you don't have time to listen, we'll summarise the podcast here ⬇

In December, theNocode agency Alegria.tech made a grand entrance into the world of Nocode in France. But first, let's take a look at Francis' background before he came to Nocode.

One observation: "many ideas but still complicated to implement".

Throughout his e-commerce and B2C career, Francis has seen that companies have no shortage of ideas, but that it is always difficult for teams to implement them.

"The teams had to be extremely committed: it took a lot of investment and time to get the idea understood and then to realise it. Inevitably, this leads to frustration for the teams and an inevitable barrier to entry that is a drag on project implementation."

He wondered how Tech can be used to support innovation and the realisation of ideas .

What changed his life?

"It was my encounter with [the Nocode tool] Airtable in 2015, it was a real revelation! Since then, I've been putting Airtable everywhere."

Passionate about everything that can be done with technology, Francis has relied all his life on the technical teams around him. When Sarenza was set up, for example, we had to find an agency to develop the site, "it was very expensive and complicated". People didn't believe in it, e-commerce in footwear after the burst of the internet bubble, they thought it was madness. " But the only real issue is the user experience. If it exists in your project, your business has value. It has to be differentiating."

"You have to create a wow effect, like Amazon, for example, which promises delivery of the product in three days and that it will arrive the next day. Or BMW that delivers its cars with a bunch of flowers in the boot. The Waouh effect is exactly what we are trying to do with Alegria.tech.

Examples of Nocode use cases

At Qobuz, Francis implemented an HRIS use case with a hundred employees.

"For the annual interviews, everything was managed manually, I decided to switch everything to Airtable in automated mode, and then everything could be done in 1 click: interview appointment, automatic management of documents related to the interview, electronic signatures, etc.."

Together with the Qonto x Integromat association, we were able to devise a system for charging customers for tools.

"No commission is taken on the tools we use, so the re-invoicing is done to the nearest euro at our customers' premises. Automation allows us to avoid errors linked to multi-billing, and also to simplify invoicing for them.

Above all, this allows us to anticipate possible problems with the functioning of the tools if one of the tools encounters a billing defect; for solutions built in Nocode, this would jeopardise the building.

👉 Read the Qonto x Integromatuse case : for automation experts

Any recommendations on Nocode tools?

"Today, at Alegria.tech, we have referenced more than 600 Nocode products, and we master about thirty of them perfectly. A few dozen are part of our essential stack, and for customers with a niche need, we take younger tools with great potential. We don't shy away from giving each tool a chance. 

A lot of money has been invested in these technologies. I have experienced their evolution, their regular updates, and today I can tell you that these tools are mature.

Internally, we are also in the process of setting up a team of five people dedicated to innovation to test, score, evaluate and make more and more tools available to our Nocode Makers. The Alegria Makers community is built on very strong specialisations per tool.

Alegria.tech is not positioned as a generalist agency that arrives with a single flagship tool, our positioning is that of an agency capable of finding the tailor-made solution, the one that corresponds to the exact need of each of its clients."

The partnership with Unqork

Meeting Unqork was incredible for Alegria. It's a 3 year old company that has raised $400 million. The tool is already implemented in half of the banking and insurance companies in the United States, and they have just launched their office in London to reach the European market. We are very proud to be the first Unqork partner in France! This allows us to reach out to SMEs and large accounts. 

"To me, it's clearly the next Salesforce or SAP."

During the crisis, Unqork was chosen by the New York City Council to manage Covid-19. The platform was set up in 3 days and allowed the delivery of free meals to the sick, at a rate of 1.5 million meals per day. In France, the Anti-covid application developed from scratch cost 6 million euros and was only released a few months later: "it sets the scene for the capacity of such a tool".

In terms of security, the hosting is done in the area desired by the customer and is on premise, they are SOC 2 certified, and customer data is not on a shared instance with other customers. 

The adoption of Nocode in France

In France, we don't have this tradition of low code, it takes longer than in other countries. The French players are still small but we are starting to see strong potential, such as UDo, KSar, Timetonic.

"We need applications made in France, and we will support them. This is where our role is important, we need partners like Alegria to act as a bridge between the tools and the end customer. The tools need to focus their energy on the evolution of the product and not do consulting, otherwise that's where the negative spiral starts and they can't develop anymore."

What are its advantages?

"Thanks to Nocode, projects are completed faster, for less money, and they are 100% customised." The added benefits for large accounts are all about legacy. Let's take the example of a neo-bank where the technical costs are 95% lower than for a traditional bank. CIOs are now fully aware of the reality of the costs of what they are buying; there is a real awareness on the part of major accounts of the often excessive prices they pay for less efficient services.

We will never turn a large account into a start-up with Nocode, but we can enable them to go much faster for much less money on a large number of subjects. That's what we offer them at Alegria.tech."

A final example from the e-commerce side to illustrate the advantages of Nocode?

"For online stores for example, Shopify is simple, convenient, fast. We had a case with one of our clients for the implementation of their e-commerce site, the quote from their traditional agency was between 50 and 100K € when we were able to offer them a quote at 5K and 8 hours to complete the project with Shopify. All is said no? 😉"