Started in 1996 in Italy when internet was in its infancy, Tatiana Rizzante, CEO at Reply S.P.A, explained during an interview that Reply is a consulting and software firm with an initial focus on manufacturing sector. She quickly understood that internet would eventually “change information systems at the core” and started focusing on critical applications, contrary to other firms in the services business (webpage development, advertising, etc).
Initially, the application had nothing to do with the internet. “One of my first assignments was to rebuild the monitoring system for the secondary line… of the network that distributes gas,” said Rizzante. “We were using this technology to make things in a different way from the software perspective, that was more efficient, more usable.”
A European consultancy active across industries
The firm did its IPO on the Italian Nuovo Mercato, the growth segment of Borsa Italiana, in 2000 at the height of the internet bubble when 30 IPOs raised about €3.8bn.
Nowadays, Reply is made of more than 200 companies grouped in around 40 businesses. Rizzante remarked that each company is a brand that states a mission that systematically includes the word “Reply.” Their missions are either related to a specialisation by technology, by industry or an agency. She commented that each company is local without a “global delivery centre.”
Interestingly, the technology division is organised in terms of “specific technologies” such as the Microsoft Team, the Amazon Team, etc. Reply continues to serve the manufacturing sector such as automotive or aeronautic, but also financial services, which accounts for about 30%-35% of Reply’s turnover. “Not all brands are in all countries, like automotive,” remarked Rizzante.
Rizzante: “We are designed to serve large companies”
Gwenaël Gavray, partner at Avantage Reply in Luxembourg, commented that their activities sometimes cross its internal divisions such as when consultancy works for a financial firm includes the Microsoft stack (a group of technologies and tools developed by Microsoft that software engineers use to build applications).
The group’s clients count “most of the large banks” such as Intesa Sanpaolo, Unicredit and Generali in Italy but also other large European banks such as HSBC, Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas. In the automotive sector, its clients are Stellantis, BMW, Volkswagen and Toyota, and Marks and Spencer and Lidl in the retail sector. It will therefore not come as a surprise that sales of €30m at the IPO rose organically and through acquisitions to around €2.3bn by year-end 2024.
“Our philosophy is to have big shoulders,” said Rizzante, but argued that her firm has the agility of a small organisation. As a software engineer, it is not surprising that she “strongly believes” in expertise and automation and artificial intelligence.
Regarding its human resource setup, she commented that “we always refrain from building this kind of offshoring or near shoring.” She noted that near-shoring occurs in Poland for Germany, “not for cost reasons but because of its talent pool.”
Birth of Reply Luxembourg
Reply started its operations in Luxembourg because of its acquisition of Avantage in 2011, which had operations in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Out of the 200 companies in the Reply group, Gavray, partner at Avantage Reply, explained that Luxembourg now accounts for four of those companies: Avantage Reply (management consulting with a regulatory focus on risk, finance and compliance for the financial sector); Spike Reply (cyber risk and IT risk management for the financial sector); Zest Reply (generative AI for the financial sector) and Business Elements Reply.
We say local for locals
The last entity serves the technology sector across industries while Reply claimed having an expertise in “low code--no code” around various Microsoft tools. Moreover, Gavray outlined that Reply “invests heavily” in artificial intelligence in Luxembourg alongside the Microsoft Team.
Gavray considers that Avantage Reply “quite well represented” in the banking sector, but the visit of its CEO Rizzante in the autumn signalled to the market that it was serious to grow its “underrepresentation” in the asset management sector. He added that the firm has started to invest in the asset servicing and insurance industries where it wants to hire local people but also leverage on the current expertise. “We say local for locals,” stated Rizzante.
Talents to be found across sectors
“They’re currently working for banks or for asset managers, and they’re telling us internally that they could also go to the insurance sector, saying that they have knowledge and connections,” commented Gavray. He promotes these individuals in order to take the leap, but also to use their network to attract new talent that he thinks may help the firm make inroads in the insurance sector, for instance.
After a period of “incubation,” he thinks that growing a specialised team may at some point result into the spinoff of an Insurance Reply entity.