The genesis of the creation of YOTech

In 1997, freshly graduated from an engineering school, Nicolas and a comrade already had entrepreneurial ambitions. The following year, in 1998, they created their first company together. Subsequently, they continued their journey, Pour Nicolas in a large group of household appliances for the European market, then on projects related to public and smart card readers..

Faced very early with the mechanisms of relocation and their consequences on local engineering, Nicolas chooses to leave this sector to join a web agency based in Geneva, marking a turning point: that of bringing together with the end customer and the search for a more human approach to digital.

Home-work travel, a creative constraint

Like many employees subject to long commutes, Nicolas has experienced carpooling. For nearly fifteen years, he shared his daily travels with a colleague of his city, animated by the same convictions. This solution remained satisfactory until the birth of his daughter.

The arrival of this new family status, combined with the traffic jams related to the preparatory work of the CEVA in 2012, led him to think differently. It seemed to him paradoxical to impose on certain trades restrictive journeys when they could have worked more AGILE remotely. His employer then accepted his telework request, but within the limit of one day a week.

The reason: the legislation between Switzerland and France already complicated the implementation of this mode of work. Even today, excluding exceptional conditions such as those related to Covid, an employee in Switzerland working more than two days a week from France is automatically affiliated with the URSSAF, and this on all his salary, even if he intervenes only for Swiss customers. A cumbersome and constraining measure, which still hinders the development of telework in the transboundary basin of Greater Geneva, even if local elected officials, municipalities, deputies, senators have seized on the subject there is still much to do!

The desire to undertake resurfaces with YOTech

In 2014, Nicolas founded YOTech with another computer scientist from the Arve valley. From the end of the year, its Swiss network entrusts the team with two major projects: it becomes essential to structure itself to respond to this new market.

Outsourcing invoicing and wage management to a third-party company is too expensive and deprives YOTech of direct control of its financial flows. In a business world where conflicts of interest are commonplace, experience shows that it is sometimes better to learn for yourself, even if it means leaving some feathers. The creation of YOTech Switzerland is therefore naturally necessary, in order to maintain control of the administrative and operations.

This is where the Odoo solution makes sense. A true backbone of the organization, it allows you to manage smoothly several companies, several activities, several currencies, several languages and several websites within the same platform. A centralized, modular and scalable system, which gives YOTech the ability to control its two structures as a coherent whole, without wasting time or visibility.

Thanks to this organization and the tools deployed, Nicolas and his collaborators drastically reduce their travels: from four weekly trips to only a few round trips per quarter — long before the COVID pandemic generalized these practices.

Recruitment & teleworking: the levers of the future

Today, recruiting qualified computer scientists in the Arve Valley is an ongoing challenge. YOTECH has chosen to train internally according to an AGILE approach, while opening telework as a solution to attract talent while preserving the quality of life.

Philosophy & Values: Ethics, Data, Environment

Over time, the YOTech team – now made up of a dozen people from collaborations, associations and partnerships, has been built around strong convictions. YOTech’s interventions are multiple, but can be summarized in two words: Safety and Environment.

Nicolas and his associates have always defended a vision of ethical and respectful IT, which is expressed by four concrete commitments :

• Your data: by focusing on GDPR-compliant systems and practices, guarantees confidentiality and transparency.

• Of your equipment: by advising the purchase of reconditioned equipment and fighting against planned obsolescence

• Of Energy: by promoting remote servers that are energy-efficient and optimized

• Guardian Time: simplifying processes to avoid time-consuming digital cumbersome

Credits : Photo - Stan Bouvard Photography / Text - Léonie Trubert (inspired by a first text by Florence Pistre)