Inforca is April's Partner of the Month

The leading digital agency in Monaco – and the only one that Ibexa is partnering with in the principality – is Inforca. Since it was founded in 2005, the 60-person-strong company has worked closely with the Principality. As part of a reorientation towards digital experience and e-commerce, it spun out a DX subsidiary with a deep working knowledge of Ibexa DXP.

In May 2021, Inforca became an Ibexa Silver Partner. The strategic goal of the collaboration is for Inforca to become the go-to agency for e-commerce projects within the Principality and beyond.

“We want to be number one in Monaco for digital experience and e-commerce,” says Marc Stanciu, co-founder of Inforca. “And an important part of that is our partnership with Ibexa and the deployment of Ibexa Commerce.”

Inforca is our Partner of the Month for April.

Today, the agency has six Ibexa-certified engineers, “with more in the pipeline,” says Yohann Monnier, CTO of the DX subsidiary “Webforca”. Monnier and his team were involved in the migration and stunning redevelopment of the Aèroport de Nice site – a masterclass in seamless integration.

But the bulk of Inforca’s activity is centered around the digital footprint of the Government of Monaco. “There are three government IT departments,” says Stanciu, “and we work closely with all of them.”

Inforca maintains a host of official sites on eZ legacy platforms and is now working on migrating these to Ibexa DXP. “We centralized all the official government forms,” adds Monnier, “so they were protected by the security features in Ibexa DXP, even if [these forms] had not yet been migrated from the legacy sites.”

Alongside this, the agency has built a number of new sites on the Ibexa platform, including a Covid-19 site for the Principality’s inhabitants to book their vaccinations. “We did this in a matter of days using Ibexa’s Site Factory functionality,” says Monnier.

The team also developed a site that connects Monegasque students and employers.

The technological “backbone” of these and future sites is a design system developed with Monaco’s digital bureau, the Direction des Services Numériques (DSN). “We implement this design system on our sites,” says Monnier, “with the objective of reusing as many components as possible with Ibexa’s multisite system.”

Stanciu and Monnier regard Ibexa Commerce as the next big opportunity. “That’s because e-commerce is becoming increasingly important in Monaco,” says Stanciu.

The official sites of the Principality will be stored on Monaco Cloud, a state-owned server. “This idea of a sovereign cloud is unique in the world,” says Stanciu, “and is strategic for the Monaco government.”

Because the data for the Inforca/ Ibexa Commerce initiative is to be hosted on Monaco Cloud, Stanciu discussed the project with local government bodies.

“We have met with the Minister of Digital Transition to propose an end-to-end solution to drive e-commerce in Monaco. The solution is tripartite: there’s the state-owned cloud, the native e-commerce functionality of Ibexa DXP with which the DSN is of course very familiar, and ourselves, Inforca.”

Another important factor is the integration with online payment tools such as Paynum from Docaposte, the digital arm of the French post office group La Poste or that of the Lyra Group, a French company that is another major online payment tool provider. “We shall integrate Paynum [the payment services provider] with these systems as part of our e-commerce proposition,” says Monnier.

As part of the build-up to that launch, Inforca has implemented the e-commerce solution for Albanu, an established local luxury bracelet maker. “This will be our first reference site and the first phase of our strategic vision of becoming a leader in the e-commerce space,” says Stanciu.

Monnier and his team are already building on this vision. “We have a nice project in the pipeline that will involve ticketing – an e-commerce component – and we’ll go with Ibexa DXP for that,” says Monnier. “We want to build on these competencies. We want to go to headless commerce and are interested Ibexa Product Catalog (the native PIM functionality of Ibexa 4.0). We want to connect Ibexa with ERP systems for the entire order process. This is not completely implemented but it is our goal to collaborate closely with Ibexa to do this and to build new apps.

“Whatever Ibexa does, we make sure that we are right there alongside you.” This has always been Monnier’s approach; he was heavily involved in translating Ibexa DXP manuals into French.

Stanciu is equally positive. The Inforca/ Ibexa line-up, he believes, is the right formula to achieve a grand prix in e-commerce and digital experience.

If you would like to discuss a potential project around digital transformation or e-commerce with Inforca then please contact them by phone +377 97 77 25 52 or by email info@inforca.mc to have an initial discovery call.