Editorial

When communicating is what counts

Take a textbook case, a company with 600 employees and a turnover of FF 800 million, FF 350 million of which on the export market. Established in Picardy, this company is a world leader for product X. And it works closely with international groups in the service industries and the building and public works sector. Its strategy builds mainly on the search for new markets - the supply of special products for rehabilitating existing engineering works - in Central and Western Europe.
It has many needs - to be informed on public financing sources, to find partners in the French public sector with a view to forging contacts in the target countries, to optimize its work performed in France and abroad (Latin America, Asia). And it occasionally has to arrange visits to Paris for future customers.
What can ISTED offer? To make the company known through various media (periodicals, reference works, the Internet etc.), to enable it to attend international events, make easy contact with the French administration and appropriate organizations in Brussels or Washington, receive policy-makers in France or gain access to specialised background material.
For today, the team in charge of information and communication, whose responsibilities have been grouped together and extended, offers a wide range of services: organizing congresses and exhibitions in every corner of the world - an activity illustrated by several examples in the feature articles of this issue -, publishing and distributing reference works, guides, brochures and periodicals, developing computer tools, hosting foreign delegations...
A new momentum, not unrelated to the increasing involvement, beside the other public players, of the private sector in ISTED's activities.

Xavier Crépin,
Chief Executive Manager of ISTED

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