Successful external growth: testimonial from KLS Group

External growth is a genuine means of development and innovation for a company. Frédéric Chazelle, responsible for this activity at Dynergie, has already argued this in his two articles External growth to develop your company and how to innovate through external growth.

Let's look at a concrete case of an External Growth operation finalized at the end of 2017 by KLS Logistic Systems, which has since become KLS Group following the acquisition of Logtimum.

In order to remain faithful to the contribution represented by this operation for the company KLS, we return to you without filter the experiment of its protagonists in the form of an interview testimony of Mr. Gilbert Garcia, CEO founder of the company, and of his son Gregoire Garcia, Deputy DG of the company.

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Why expand through external growth?

Who is KLS Group? Originally KLS Logistic Systems

KLS Logistic is a company that I created in 1986 (Gilbert Garcia), a publisher in the world of supply chain management that designs, produces and markets WMS (Warehouse System Management) solutions. In other words, the management of flows in warehouses.

We intervene mainly in Health, e-commerce and Luxury in small Europe (France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland) and punctually in follow-up of specific customers in Africa and Asia.

At the end of 2017, we were 30 people for 3 million euros in turnover, with our headquarters located in Meylan in the Grenoble area.

Why did you decide to carry out an external growth operation?

It was a decision taken 18 months ago by the Management Committee in consultation, to complete our organic growth which was fully satisfying us but which only allowed us to cover part of the perimeter of our customers' needs. Thus, regularly during consultations, we had to combine our services with the horizontal and vertical skills of our partners.  

At the time, we were just coming out of the crisis, and the time was right to rebound strongly and take advantage of the recovery with an expanded service offering.

We also wanted to export our values and apply our 30-year proven methodology to other areas.

External growth: challenges and difficulties

What were the stakes of the approach for KLS Group?

For us(Grégoire and Gilbert Garcia, left), it was a matter of finding functional business connections to complement our WMS (Warehouse Management System).

We were looking either for a solution in the field of TMS (Transport System Management) or APS (Consumption and Order Forecasting), or by acquiring additional sector expertise in hospitalization or e-commerce, in order to consolidate our position as national leader and challenger respectively.

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