Duration: 43:21
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context 💼
This talk, delivered at an Odoo Experience event, chronicles the 40-year journey of the Belgian family business XLG—from a founder-led federation of autonomous local entities to an integrated group, and from a traditional “employment contract” mindset toward a mutual engagement culture. The speaker (a second-generation leader) reflects on the company’s origins, values, structural evolution, and the pivotal role of Odoo in unifying operations. XLG today operates across Belgium, Luxembourg, and northern France, with 30+ trades, 25,000+ clients, and 12 operational centers; by the end of 2023 it reached approximately 9,000 people and €290M in revenue.
Core ideas & innovations 🧠
XLG’s founding story begins with an entrepreneurial leap: the speaker’s father left a secure finance leadership role to build a small cleaning firm. The early DNA combined hard-edged performance with genuine care—what the speaker analogizes as the essential “father” (targets, finance, competitiveness) and “mother” (care, listening, authenticity) forces any organization needs. The founder scaled by trusting regional leaders with significant autonomy and equity. Management discipline relied on four weekly pillars—finance, administration, production, and social—ensuring accountability while cultivating entrepreneurial independence.
This autonomy delivered speed and growth but also seeded fragmentation: competing entities, divergent brands, no group-wide functions (no centralized sales, IT, HR, or marketing), multiple ERPs, and stark inconsistencies across regions. Following the founder’s illness and passing (2016), the second generation led a strategic turn: unify shareholding, consolidate brands, align on a common catalog of services, and build central functions and shared platforms. A critical plank was moving all business units onto a single ERP/CRM—standardizing on Odoo for a shared database, consistent pricing and quoting, and repeatable processes across hubs.
Culturally, the shift meant rebalancing autonomy with collaboration. Leaders were re-assigned from “generalist CEOs” of their local companies to roles focused on their strengths (two top leaders—B2B and B2C—replaced 13 local “bosses”), and the company reorganized into hubs to encourage daily proximity and cross‑selling. The speaker frames the transformation as moving “from an employment contract to a convention of mutual engagement,” where performance and human meaning matter in equal measure—“as much focus on financial EBITDA as on a human ‘EBITDA’.” The result: national credibility to bid for multi-million contracts, clearer brand, better process discipline, and sustained margins—all without a growth “air pocket.”
Impact & takeaways ⚙️💬
The integrated model lifted XLG from a “many logos, many systems” federation to a cohesive brand with centralized capabilities and shared data. Odoo was chosen among three ERPs already in use (notably in Brussels) for its open source approach and release velocity, seen as a hedge against lock-in and a path to continuous evolution. XLG built an internal Odoo team of four—two managing releases and two traveling trainers—while partnering with Nalios for development. The payoff is price coherence across regions, a unified CRM, and consistent quoting practices that underpin cross-regional selling.
Scale brought tangible upsides: credibility with large enterprise buyers, stronger financial resilience, and improved knowledge-sharing. It also raised new complexities: more union exposure with ~9,000 employees, reputational interdependence under one brand, and the need to harmonize regional cultures. The company met these with dialogue, governance, and continuous investment in people and processes.
Looking forward, “XLG 3.0” aims to double revenue by 2030, create four new hubs, and expand internationally (potentially via JVs or acquisitions)—possibly with external investment, unlike its historically organic, low-capex growth. The central lesson is strategic balance: keep entrepreneurial grit and local accountability while adding shared platforms, common data, and a unifying culture of collaboration. When technology and governance reinforce trust, generosity, and coaching, the leap from a “contract for work” to a mutual engagement ethos becomes real, durable, and scalable.
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo’s vision.
What resonates most here is the relentless pursuit of simplicity. When fragmented companies choose to integrate—not just their software, but their way of working—they unlock compound value. Standardizing on Odoo gave XLG a common language for CRM, pricing, and operations, but the software succeeded because the people were aligned on collaboration first.
Open source is a mindset: the freedom to adapt, the speed to evolve, and the community to learn with. XLG’s hubs and cross-selling echo that spirit—teams contributing, improving, and sharing wins. That is exactly where integrated software shines: fewer silos, faster feedback, and a culture where every improvement scales across the whole organization.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
XLG’s story is a strong example of how integration and culture can create enterprise-scale credibility. The move to a single ERP/CRM and central functions is a clear win for operational discipline. The challenge ahead will be scaling governance for multi-country operations—taxation, HR compliance, data residency, and sector regulation vary widely. As the footprint grows, the need for robust auditability, segregation of duties, and standardized master data becomes non-negotiable.
They will also need to maintain UX consistency while accommodating regional and business-unit nuance. International expansion often stresses data models, reporting hierarchies, and security frameworks. Balancing their collaborative DNA with enterprise-grade controls and compliance will determine how quickly they can expand beyond Belgium and sustain margins at scale.
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.