Bysoft China's Blog > Your Resource To Keep Up With the Web!

First, thanks for the interview invitation from Shanghai Business Review, which is a monthly English-language magazine that provides business information and market intelligence to senior executives at Foreign Invested Enterprises in Shanghai and for those looking to enter into the Shanghai market. More info? Please refer to the below Q&A:

Q: Can you tell me about Bysoft China and your presence in China?
A: BYSOFT CHINA is a comprehensive web agency based in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Wuhan, China. We are devoted to build engaging websites through expert technology, clean and usable design, and a passion for the Web, with the interest of our customers always in focus. As a subsidiary of French group BYSOFT INTERNATIONAL, we bring an international background to our local experience and practice to deliver the performing websites needed today.

Q: How long have you been operating in China?
A: Bysoft has been operating in China since the end of 2003. First as a production center, then starting from the end of 2007 as a service provider in China, but also for customers established overseas.

Q: How big is your presence here?
A: Today we count over 65 employees in China. We have 3 offices: Guangzhou our headquarters and main production center, Shanghai our sales office, and we recently opened a new production center in Wuhan.
(More details about our presence in China on http://www.bysoftchina.com/english/about-bysoft-china/the-agency )

Q: How is China a growth market for you? Why did you first enter the market, and in what ways is it important for future growth?
A: The number of Internet users in China is already over 6 times the population in France! And the web industry in China is still very young but getting mature especially in ecommerce. As the online economy is more and more important and globalized and Chinese companies become more educated on its potentials, we expect the need in professional web services to grow, and we want to be a part of it.
Also as China is a key market for many multinationals, our unique position as a foreign-culture company with local implantation and recognized experience gives us the opportunity to work with top-tier clients and on innovative projects, from which the whole group can benefit, especially in terms of image.

Q: Can you talk to me about some of your most notable past and/or current projects in development? What are your expansion plans, if any?
A: We are working with various types of clients, from SMEs to government institutions and multinational groups, whether based in China or overseas, Chinese or foreign- operated.
Especially among our projects, we are proud of our collaboration with the Chengdu Tianfu Software Park, for whom we have already released 3 websites including their main portal (www.tianfusoftwarepark.com), and 3 more under way. This is a very good example of our know-how and how we apply it in China: multilingual content management system with English, Chinese and Japanese, multi-channel information publishing (article, news, RSS, newsletters, etc…), and an interactive 3D map.
In the past we have also achieved some complex portal for the French Chamber of Commerce in China (www.ccifc.org), with many different types and levels of information, a member area to access the directory of French companies in China, and a distributed edition workflow to allow the 6 branches of the Chamber of Commerce to animate the website in a collaborative and reactive manner.
On the ecommerce side, we recently released the Greater China e-business platform of Pull-In (www.pull-in.asia), a French brand of fashion high-end underwear, with 3 websites targeting 3 regions of Greater China (Mainland, Hong-Kong and Taiwan). And today, we are working with Kaiser + Kraft, a leading European group of warehouse equipment, to recast their ecommerce platform for China and Asia.
Regarding expansions plans: we recently opened a new office in Wuhan to boost our production capacity. After 2 years of testing the market in the middle of the international crisis, we now expect to grow faster and maybe expand to northern China in the future.

Q: What advantages or benefits do you think being a French company brings to the China market?
A: At the beginning, as a small young company, being French has helped us to win our first important projects in China, thanks to the large and active French business community here.
We also often are a provider of choice for companies doing ecommerce between China and France, or China and overseas in general, as we have the people to understand them and communicate in their preferred language, and have the necessary experience of their target market to give them the best advice and service in general they can get.
Then, in our industry, graphic design is a strong selling point, and our French culture certainly helps for that. Not only foreign accounts but also Chinese accounts who are looking for a high-end website trust us naturally with their design. In the same idea, France also has a long experience in open source technologies used in website development (ex: PHP), which are now becoming popular in China. Bysoft is for example the first company in China to ever have certified engineers in such technology and today is recognized as the most expert company in PHP development in China.
Finally, being a subsidiary of an international group is a factor of reassurance for our customers who are looking for a long-term relationship with a stable provider who can give them the quality products and relationship they are looking for.

Q: What are your projections for business in 2010 and moving forward?
A: Following our first series of successful cases thanks to our expertise and position inherited from our France headquarters, we now want to focus more on the SMEs in China. We just released our new website www.bysoftchina.com to that aim, and plan to offer a wider range of services and become a reference website provider in China.