Fabian Prudhomme at the INKISH NON-EVENT 2019 · Copenhagen

INKISH hosted for the first time ever our NON-EVENT. The Non-event is celebrating the people that have been in front of the camera, or been supporting INKISH during the past years. This is a new recurring event, and the idea is to give space for the people we have featured to connect in a new way. We invited 150 people, and 32 decided to join us. Our guests came from Japan, Canada, USA, UK, Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark – and we are confident that next year, even more, will come.

We asked most of our participants to talk LIVE during the dinner – and here is Fabian Prudhomme from Belgium. Fabian Prudhomme is the Global VP Sales & Alliances at CHILI publish. With a broad background within the printing industry and maybe even more on the side that deals with software, Fabian Prudhomme is a well-known and recognized person. We had the pleasure working with Fabian Prudhomme both when he worked at Enfocus, and even more since he joined the CHILI publish team.

Enjoy!

Fabian.

Hi Martin.

Thank you for joining me here.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you for you and Maya to come to our non-event.

It’s our pleasure.

I hope you had a good time.

Very good time.

That’s great.

It’s not over yet.

It’s not over yet. That’s true. That was actually Mark Hinder that came in from Ricoh Europe and I wouldn’t say that you should put too much into him right now. He will talk a bit later. I just said to, because Connie, I just spoke to here now, she won several gold medals for being the best in dyes and embosses. And I talked about her competitive gene.

Yeah.

You have a very competitive gene as well.

Absolutely.

You want to be a winner.

We want to be a winner. We want to be on top. But more importantly, customer satisfaction is what we’re after.

Yeah.

I don’t care so much about titles, awards, medals. I just want to have the most happy customers.

But the reason why I mentioned this is just because, just for the reference, Fabian is a working… What is your title? I can’t remember.

Global VP of Sales and Alliances.

For Chili Publish.

Right.

And for those who don’t know what Chili Publish, you should really look at English TV right now because we have a playlist with almost 20 films from Spicy Talks and from Printing United. And Fabian, we had the privilege of actually working with you both, on both events.

Yeah.

I think that what makes me attracted to Chili Publish is basically that you have this mentality of making the best you can. You have, in my opinion, you have some of the smartest people working for you that I have ever met because you have like this drive of making mass customization, automation in prepress, and understanding of the customer’s needs is something that is really, really unique in the industry. How do you do that? How do you attract those people?

Well, we provide a working environment which is a very dynamic, very flexible as well. So, we give a lot of flexibility to the employees. We expect a lot of flexibility in return. We’re a very horizontal organization, we’re basically a big family, basically. We have a lot of fun. We work hard.

How many people are working?

About 65 people.

65 people.

Yeah.

That’s both in the US and Belgium or…

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And how many is in the US operation?

In the US, right now we have about 10.

Okay.

Right.

So, that is like growing [inaudible 00:02:29].

It’s growing. Yeah. That’s actually my main focus right now is to build the sales teams, the commercial teams in the US. Yeah.

Okay. Sorry, I interrupt you. I just wanted to keep you going on with what drives the people to get working with you. So, you have a flat organization?

Right.

You have a… Would you say that you are… I spoke to Ward, your CTO, at Spicy Talks, and he kind of said that I know that I can’t reference that from the PR people, but I don’t give a shit right now. I’m just saying that what he said was like, when he see people doing things with Chili that is not really the right way to do it, it educates him to actually-

Of course.

… Improve your software even more. Right?

And it’s often the case with software, right? You build software, you develop software because you have a certain idea in mind. You have a certain purpose. But people are creative, people are innovative. People will always look for new ways and they will use or try to use software to do things that you didn’t even come up with as an idea.

Yeah, yeah.

And the feedback we get, obviously, as Ward says, allows us to learn and maybe develop new features that we hadn’t thought of a couple of weeks prior to that.

As you know, we have on the player right now Life Art and Mike Grehan.

Yeah.

Who is doing… I mean, when I met him in Amsterdam last year talking about personalized coffin, I thought that…

Yeah.

But it’s actually a very good idea.

It’s awesome.

And it’s utilizing your software-

Yeah.

… In a way that I guess that nobody could have thought of, right?

Yeah. Nobody ever thought at Chili that, let’s develop software to personalized coffins, you know? But it’s just one of those applications.

One of the things I’ve asked most people here is what their expectations for 2020 is. And I know that it’s a [inaudible 00:04:01] year and you can’t say anything about the future because blah, blah, blah. But, in general terms, what to expect from Chili Publish?

Ongoing new features. A lot of performance improvements, it’s an ongoing focus of ours. We revealed a number of features during our user event in Berlin a couple of weeks ago. You were there.

Yeah.

For instance, dynamic layout, which is a really an innovative feature.

That was really something that is unique, isn’t it?

It is unique. We’re pretty much the only company that offers that feature at that level in the industry. Towards next year, obviously you can expect to have more features that I cannot reveal right now. That’s the case. Why don’t you come to [inaudible 00:04:42], visit us at our booth-

I’ve been to [inaudible 00:04:43].

… And you find out.

I’m not sure I will visit your booth but I will come. I’ll come to your booth as well.

And only… Well, that’s one part, but the other thing you can expect from Chili, excuse me, is a lot more partnerships.

Yeah.

In the industry.

Partnerships has always been important to you, right?

It’s increasingly important, I would say. And actually that’s become apparent…

One of the things that you mentioned before when you spoke was that you have a partnership with Sitecore.

Right.

And, I mean, for most people in the [inaudible 00:05:07] may not know Sitecore but Sitecore is one larger players when it comes to CMS systems. Why is that a logical move?

Well, Site Core bought Style Labs, right? And Style Labs is known for their own graphic cards, for the Dam system, for everything they do around templates.

So, that is the Dam system that drives that integration?

Correct. Yeah. It’s the connection between Chili Publisher and the content hub, their Dam system. So we’re pretty much Sitecore’s web to print partner, you could say.

Wow. So, if you really want to have a web to print solutions which is on steroids, you will take your Sitecore solutions and integrate it with Chili Publishing?

It would be very good pill to swallow.

As a good starting point, you say?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, I appreciate your time. It was… I’m thrilled that you’re here in Copenhagen.

I’m so happy as well. Yeah.

I hope to see you next year as well.

I will definitely be here. Yeah.

Okay. And then to the audience, I just want to share something that I really liked about your email, because when we sent out the invites, I can quote you on this.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Fabian said, I’m not so fond of events but since it’s a non-event, I would like to attend.

Absolutely.

So-

Yeah.

… Thank you very much.

Thank you.

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