Colas

Colas specializes in construction and maintenance of transport infrastructure (road, railway and air), urban planning and recreational installations. Their mission is to design, promote and implement infrastructure solutions for responsible mobility.

Today, Colas is present in 50 countries spread across every continent. Colas manages roughly 100,000 worksites every year and is a world leader in road construction and maintenance.

Key business numbers: €13.2 billion in revenue, present in 50 countries, 57,000 employees.

Challenge

Previously, Colas managed proposals independently in every branch. Most proposal writers used Word, sometimes InDesign. It meant a lot of copying and pasting, with all the associated risks of mistakes, typos and errors.

Design-wise, there were as many layouts as there were branches – no coherence visually and a graphic charter that really suffered. Overall, they spent a lot of time struggling with formatting and design, and the results weren’t great.

The growing focus on technical notes in rating criteria led Colas to start using a proposal writing tool. This led their sales management to seek out proposal management software. XaitProposal was one of two software solutions they shortlisted. A head-to-head comparison of the two solutions led Colas to select XaitProposal.

“Its information security and the knowledge base that all users in a company share really made it stand out,” says Jean-Luc Gillot, Head of Department at Colas.