The stages of the CCIFI Connect application project

Presentation of the CCI France International :

"CCI France International brings together the French chambers of commerce abroad. There are 126 of them and they are present in 97 countries around the world. It is a network that has the specificity of being completely private and 99% self-financed. Our mission is to animate the French business community abroad and therefore we bring together both French companies established abroad, but also many local companies that have business relations with France. In this context, we organize all kinds of events and we make contacts on a permanent basis within these communities. The French chambers abroad are also service platforms since our mission is to develop business between France and abroad and therefore we welcome companies, we help them in their commercial development in the countries and we help them to establish themselves" explains Charles Maridor

Why did you choose Blue Soft  for the development of CCIFI Connect?

The General Delegate continues: "We, CCI France International, had for a long time a project of mobile application and it is clear that the health crisis and the acceleration of digitalization for many organizations during this period have prompted us to accelerate on this project and launch it. To do so, we explored the market and studied different options and finally, Blue Soft, seemed to be the right company to solicit for this project and we found with Blue Soft, not only a service provider, but also a partner who knew how to understand our specificities and who knew how to adapt to our constraints whether they are organizational or financial.

How did you go about thinking about this CCIFI Connect application?

Pascal Ameline explains: "In 2020, we had the Covid crisis, the health crisis, the economic crisis, which marked a bit of a pause on our various projects and we had to refocus on our priorities by meeting two main objectives: The first objective, to save time to the chambers especially in the generation of their leads and business leads and the second objective which was to find solutions, new services, new value-added services for members and to retain them.

The mobile application was the answer to these two objectives and we have launched the development of the mobile application that we have named CCIFFI Connect. This application is reserved exclusively for members and is a support, a new communication channel for the chambers with their companies and members. It is also a new support of belonging for the members of the companies that belong to a worldwide network of CCI FI. A company that is a member of a chamber in Japan is actually a member of an international network of French chambers of commerce."

What were the steps and stakeholders?

"We initially launched a first large project with a fairly small number of rooms. Canada, Qatar and Great Britain participated in UX/UI workshops with the graphic design team of Blue Soft. (Le Renard Bleu) The goal was to define the outline and the functional perimeter of the application, to define the user story, to define the wireframes and the models. 

We then had to test all these graphic interfaces with testers and end users to arrive at a validated functional and graphic perimeter. The development teams at Blue Soft were then mobilized to build and design the mobile application," explains the head of the digital business.

At what stage of the project are you?

"The mobile app project started in November 2020 with UX/UI workshops with the Blue Fox. The development teams were then able, in less than 5 months to develop the first version of the app, all the technical basics, the graphic basics and the ergonomic basics.

An onboarding phase was necessary in order to guarantee a secure authentication with login and password, as CCIFI Connect is exclusively reserved to the members of the chambers. A certain amount of content arrived afterwards.

With the Explore the World feature, each member, each chamber can go explore new markets, new countries in the application and discover the events, the privilege offers, the sectorial news that the chamber makes available to its members.

The application was launched in May 2021 in about thirty countries and we are waiting for the development of V2 in the rest of the 85 countries in which the chambers are present," continuesMr. Ameline.

What are the prospects for this application?

"We have already launched the second phase of development of our mobile CCFI Connect in two stages. The first step will consist in evolving, correcting the small errors, the small imperfections of the first version and the second step will be the addition of features such as access to the global directory of contacts of the 35,000 member companies of the chambers, which represents a total of 170,000 contacts who could potentially have access to the application.

For its members, for its contacts, the possibility of having chat modules, of putting in relation also.

We will also give members the opportunity to group themselves by interest, affinity, or theme by offering them dedicated and personalized content through premium articles, sector-specific articles that will be displayed according to their geolocation, their profile, their area of interest, their sector of activity, and their status and needs at the time," concludes Pascal Ameline.

For more information, visit Digital Factory : https://www.bluesoft-group.com/digital-factory/