Ali Boumediene is the founder of Bomare Company, the Algerian electronics manufacturer. By 2025 he hopes to be producing 7.5 million televisions a year, and exporting 90 percent of them. He explains how he developed Bomare from a company that simply imported products from Europe for Algerian distribution, to an assembler and manufacturer that now exports high quality products back to Europe. His 7.5 million units goal will help create an atmosphere for Algerian engineers to build a successful life without having to go overseas, and help diversify Algeria’s economy so it isn’t so heavily dependent on oil and gas production.

European CEO: Why did you create Bomare Company, and how is it positioned in the electronics industry today?

Ali Boumediene: Well, I started my business in 1992; I just imported the product from Europe and distributed it to the Algerian market. And I had one time received an invitation from a big group in South Korea; I came back from my trip and decided definitely to manufacture my own product and export it to Europe.

I wanted to make a quality product, to international standard. This is a big challenge, because Algeria, don’t forget, it just makes oil and gas. It’s not a manufacturing country, it’s not an exporting country. So you have a lot of problems before, but, you know, this is a challenge. And until now I’m very happy to see my product in Europe.

European CEO: Bomare was identified by the London Stock Exchange Group as a Company to Inspire Africa; what does this mean to you? How important is it that you’re creating something for Algeria?

Ali Boumediene: To me it’s a big success. To give more chances to the people of Algeria.

For example, now: engineers coming from university, I want to train them, and give them a chance to open their own company. And I’ll buy the product from them to integrate their product in our product, and export. No need to fly to Canada or the US or Europe to work in this industry. So we have here the opportunity to work in Algeria.

If I can finish this project, with 7.5 million TVs, we will have to create a minimum of 1,000 companies: like medium, small, some start-up companies. So this for me, it’s a challenge in these 10 years, between 2020 and 2030.

European CEO: And what are you most proud of within Bomare Company? What drives you and your staff to succeed?

Ali Boumediene: You know, everybody now working in Bomare, when they see 20 years before, you imported some products from Europe, but now today they are manufacturing products and exporting to Europe, this for us is a big success for everybody.

When you have this challenge, you know, you are very satisfied to move from being completely importing and consuming people, and to manufacture and to export to the same market you imported from before? It’s a big success.

And now I have many managers pushing me more, to make this project. Because they know what the value is for Algeria, for Algerian people. And what you can do in future for Africa. Because you know, the next step for me is the complete African market. I need to create some companies in Africa to do the same as in Algeria, 20 years before. So for example, if I export to some country in Africa, starting to export finished products, definitely the next step is to start doing assembly there, and then the final step, you need to go for the innovation: completely LED.

“When you’re processing 20-25,000 tax returns and 146 audits a year, it’s extremely important to have a partner like Vertex that you can rely on,” says Sandra Blair, Head of Indirect Tax for Siemens in the US.

Sandra Blair: I’m head of indirect tax for Siemens in the US. We are a global conglomerate in the top 50 throughout the world. We have locations in every country in the world.

We were seeking a new tax calculation engine provider. In conjunction with the Vertex consultants, the DMA alliance partner, we were able to move seven SAP systems off of our previous provider, onto the new Vertex tax calculation engine. Move 3.5 million tax exemption certificates, and set up our use-tax accrual program in less than six months.

After a bit of stabilisation, we then moved our Oracle system in three weeks from our previous provider, onto the Vertex solution.

One of the big benefits that we have been able to obtain from Vertex is putting our destiny in our control. We are no longer having to reach out to IT to make changes once a configuration is identified, or an overpayment, or an over-accrual on the use tax, we’re immediately able to go into Vertex, test our solution, correct it, and get it rolled into production. So a five to six month process has now been taken down to a day, if needed. So it’s been a huge benefit, cost reduction, savings.

We have also had a report customised, so any of these changes that we have made because of Vertex, we were able to identify down to the penny how much we’ve been able to save. So it’s setting us up to take us into the future, into the digitalisation environment and economy. And Vertex, with their content, has given us a broader range to handle our conglomerate and all the service lines that we sell.

When you’re processing 20-25,000 tax returns a year, and 146 audits a year, it’s extremely important to have a partner through, like Vertex, that you can rely on. Their tax calculations, you know they’re right. That provides the right answer when it comes back in to your system.

Working with Vertex has enabled my shared service organisation to take on additional work without additional headcount. It has allowed us to increase our accuracy on our consumers use-tax filing, our accuracy on our customer billings, which has led to helping us increase our customer satisfaction scores from a tax department perspective: making sure that everything is compliant, and that we’re responding in the most efficient and effective manner.

Tax and IT departments today face an uphill battle, with constantly evolving tax rules and business changes. A Vertex tax engine provides a powerful solution to automate, streamline, and centralise indirect tax, so companies can reduce risk and increase scalability.

Vertex takes tax determination out of each individual transaction system, and puts it in a single global tax engine to support the sales and purchasing side of your business. No matter how many financial systems you use.

With Vertex, indirect tax is managed in one place – but leveraged across all of your business units around the world.
A Vertex tax engine delivers robust capabilities for the end-to-end tax process.

Continually updated tax content, maintained by the Vertex research team, supports sales, use, and value-added tax; plus industry-specific content for retail, leasing, food and beverage, and communications services.

Configurable tax rules let you configure your system to support your specific products and complex business needs.

Real-time address cleansing and precise jurisdiction assignment improve tax accuracy, regardless of where the transaction takes place.

Robust integrations seamlessly pass transaction details and tax calculations between Vertex and your financial systems in real-time.

Integrated tools to help you collect, track, and store exemption certificates. Reporting and data to automate compliance and support audit management. And options to let you deploy the tax engine in whatever way meets your business and IT requirements: in the cloud, on premise, or a hybrid approach that combines the benefits of both.

Find out how a Vertex tax engine can help you: reduce audit exposure, improve compliance, improve global scalability, centralise tax management, and increase productivity.

Integrate Vertex with your financial systems today, to make your end-to-end tax processes more efficient, agile, and scalable. Contact Vertex today to learn more or schedule a demonstration.

All tax departments collect data. But are you using it in an intelligent and insightful way?

Tax has access to one of the largest, most detailed datasets in the company: sales, purchases, expenses, payroll, and more. But many use that goldmine of information merely to support the monthly compliance process. You use data to generate and validate the monthly returns.

A truly value-driven tax function uses that data for more than just compliance. It leverages data intelligence tools to not only improve the accuracy of the returns, but unlock time, capacity, and insight, to become a more strategic tax function and drive better business outcomes.

You’ll reduce the time spent on compliance and focus more on higher value functions: like audit defence and planning to support the business.

Data Intelligence leverages every data point that already exists in various business systems, and turns it into insight for the tax function to enhance business outcomes.

Data Intelligence tools gives you insight about your customers, your vendors, your taxes collected and paid. Your newly released products and services. Your new selling and buying locations.

You can easily identify changes and trends; and pinpoint areas of risk that you can address more proactively, to impact the business sooner.

Data Intelligence turns raw data into insight; insight you can use immediately, to not only optimise tax performance, but to model, predict, and influence business decision-making to drive business growth.

It’s the key to moving your tax department out in front of the business, and becoming a profit centre; rather than just a cost centre that handles regulatory reporting.

With Data Intelligence, you’ll use tax data to identify new business opportunities, and influence business growth strategy beyond the tax department. You’ll become more proactive, not just reactive. You’ll measure the value contributed, not just the tasks executed.

A manual spreadsheet approach to VAT reporting is labour-intensive, error-prone, and costly. Keeping up with the latest regulatory changes is challenging at best; and the effort required to support business expansion can hinder a company’s agility to respond to market opportunity.

Vertex offers a cloud-based VAT-reporting solution to reduce risk, automate and improve process efficiency, improve data quality, and keep the business in line with the latest regulatory changes.

Import tax data from multiple ERPs, a tax determination engine, and all other financial systems – even Excel files.
Perform data quality checks and make necessary enhancements.

Map data easily to generate signature-ready, multi-language VAT/GST returns, reports, and AP/AR ledgers. E-file right in the application.

Access workflow tools, dashboards and reports, designed to let tax preparers and managers alike track progress across the end-to-end compliance process: from filing preparation, to approvals, to submissions.

And support audits with drill-down capability to detail transaction data and complete audit logs.

Vertex Cloud VAT Compliance enables multinational corporations to support business growth without additional VAT/GST process burden.

Built-in up-to-date tax content ensures you keep pace with the latest return forms and regulatory changes.
And efficient cloud access reduces the need for IT infrastructure and maintenance, accelerates deployment, and scales easily to support business growth.

Leverage a robust, multi-country VAT-reporting solution across the enterprise: ideal for decentralised tax departments and shared service centres.

Add Vertex Cloud VAT Compliance to your tax operations today, to: streamline process efficiency and reduce manual error, enhance data accuracy and transparency, improve audit performance, and accelerate scalability.

Since 2015, Fleur Hicks has led the onefourzero group overseeing its growth from a small consultancy to a thriving data-led commercial consulting firm. A strategic marketing and commercial operations professional with over eighteen years of experience managing blue-chip digital and broadcast brands, as well as turnaround situations in the B2C and B2B sectors, Fleur has delivered industry-leading digital and transformation strategies at board level in consultative and client-side roles.

European CEO gave this Manager’s Statement regarding picking Fleur Hicks as the overall winner:

“As the Manager and custodian of the European CEO Awards, I am truly delighted that Ms Fleur Hicks, for the first time, has been recognised by the readers of European CEO in winning this award.

Considering the scope and depth of these awards with the Chief Executive’s across 28 countries in Europe, the high calibre of participants and nominees, being named a winner is truly a wonderful achievement.

There is one quote that the judging panel and I feel perfectly encapsulates Ms Fleur Hicks and her success, ‘great companies in the way they work start with great leaders’.

People need to feel their self-worth, and when they do not we need to help them recognise it

The judging panel noted that Ms Hicks is not only the CEO, but the founder of onefourzero Group, a company that Ms Hicks has led since 2015. The panel were greatly impressed that Ms Hicks had the ability and foresight not only to identify a need in the market, but to back herself in believing that her firm could do it better.

Ms Hicks also impressed the judging panel in the fact that through her leadership, experience, determination and an ability to bring people together, Ms Hicks has led onefourzero Group to become an outright leader in their field in just six years.

Ms Fleur Hicks embodies all of the qualities, such as leadership, accountability, ability to inspire others, that help elevate and make these awards what they are.

Once again, I would like to congratulate Ms Fleur Hicks on her awards success in our 2021 CEO of the year awards”.

A leader with substance
Fleur is also a mentor with The Migrant Help Dream Academy, a member of the Supper Club and a member of Level 20, empowering women within STEM, Finance and Technology.

Fleur has worked hard to make the visions she had for onefourzero come to life, knowing an idea can be hard to achieve, but that change is possible if the work is put in. Fleur knows that a large part of growing a company is hiring the right people who have the talents to flourish and help make the company grow. Hiring people who possess the right combination of skills is also an essential aspect of her leadership, leading to success. Fleur recognises the importance of being comfortable with seeking out the help and experience of others in order to grow.

This is why at onefourzero the values that Fleur leads with are kindness, empathy, collaboration and integrity, believing deeply in leading more as a team than alone. She is a leader who listens to her team and their suggestions and wants every voice to be heard even among the recent growth.

Success is built from teamwork, a collegiate ethos, respect and integrity

Fleur’s leadership allows both her and the team to go above and beyond what other companies can offer and provide. The team at onefourzero offers clients a range of tech-enabled products to assist with M&A Advisory, Asset Monitoring and Value Creation. The platform also enables the use of multiple data sets from myriad sources in one central database. This one-stop platform consistently offers clients a means of using AI to transform data into a usable form for detailed analysis. The tech-led, big data, analytical approach that onefourzero takes allows clients to save time and money.

In regards to the inspirations which shaped her into the leader she is today, Fleur said: “I think my leadership style came from seeing how brilliantly things can be done through mentors such as Michel Cassius who led, nurtured and encouraged. That and holding my personal values true within my business life – plus a sprinkling of humour to get us through the day”.

The value of people
When asked what has led to her success, Fleur said: “it is essential to treat all people in any company as team members – whether you are the boss or not. I’ve never been scared to employ people a lot smarter than me, and I want to nurture their development for the betterment of the company and them”. It is crucial to be building up your team as you are building up your company to see the vision of growth you imagine come to life. “You can’t be scared to lose people through empowering them, they may leave, but you will have gotten the best from them while they worked with you,” says Fleur, noting that it is important to leave the door open for talent to come and go too. “Success is built from teamwork, a collegiate ethos, respect and integrity. This is a significant cultural value for me. I aim to act with absolute integrity at all times”.

Fleur recognises the importance of empowering people no matter what level they are working at within onefourzero “people need to feel their self-worth, and when they do not we need to help them recognise it. Everyone has the right to feel special and valued in whatever part they play in the company”.

The overriding philosophy of encouraging and equipping others is far reaching, Hicks believes in empowering people from diverse backgrounds as she comes from a multicultural, multinational, liberal family. “Neither gender, race nor nationality has ever been a consideration to me in regards to being better or worse for any task, role or job. It does not occur to me and continues to surprise me that people will consider this prejudice in any form, consciously or not. I am not so ignorant not to see that society still holds endemic prejudices against people, so I work to extend that sense of empowerment and respect beyond my company through mentoring and volunteering. Maybe if I can help one other person recognise their value and self-worth and go after their dreams then that will help their world”.

Fleur Hicks continues to lead onefourzero with a flexible and barrier-breaking style, celebrating the success of others and constantly trying to improve herself as a leader. This leadership style of never being static has been a defining attribute that has led to her success in the European CEO Awards 2021.

Eccelsa Aviation, a company wholly controlled by the airport management company Geasar SpA, is charged with making arriving in the Costa Smeralda a seamless experience for a range of demanding clientele. From Hollywood A-listers to HNWIs and heads of state, a who’s who of international travellers regularly transit through Olbia’s fixed-base operator (FBO). During the busy summer season, visitors arrive from all over the globe to stay in the region’s leading hotels and exclusive private villas. Others will spend their time aboard sleek super yachts, and with Olbia Costa Smeralda airport just a stone’s throw away from the Marina di Olbia, guests can find themselves relaxing on the stunning turquoise waters off the coast, minutes after landing.

The purpose-built FBO at Olbia Airport is an architectural masterpiece in its own right. Seen from on high it looks like an immense aircraft door, while from ground level its clean, sleek lines seem to swoop skyward like giant wings. As passengers relax in the cocoon-like comfort of the terminal, its elegant lines and the beautifully designed natural and artificial lighting create a sense of absolute privacy and tranquillity.

The terminal covers more than 4,000 square metres, and features a selection of luxury commercial activities to cater to passengers during their transit through the airport. A coffee shop and bar allow anyone transiting in the FBO to enjoy a local speciality, a glass of good wine, spumante or prosecco from the region while waiting to board their aircraft.

A glittering symphony of glass, steel and beautiful local yellow-hued granite, the terminal boasts one special design feature that makes it absolutely unique in Europe: a distinctive outer wing that allows guests to enter and exit the terminal directly from their aircraft Where this is not possible, passengers are accompanied for the short distances between the terminal and their aircraft on board a fleet of top-end Audi models, while a competent and well trained team handles their precious luggage with care and professionalism. The wing is big enough to provide shelter even to large executive B737s, A319s and A320s, the nearest thing there is to an airborne villa, offering hundreds of square metres of cabin space and including up to three bedrooms, four or five bathrooms, a lounge, office and enough fuel capacity to cross the Atlantic.

A professional team of around 50 is completely geared towards a culture of service, with a passion for problem-solving in order to meet even the most unusual requests that arrive on the Eccelsa Aviation operational desks on a daily basis. “In the industry of service, service is everything” is the motto here, and the culture of excellent service means making every effort to accommodate all requests. “We are all very much aware that tourism is a genuine asset to be taken care of and nourished, not only for Eccelsa and the Airport, but also for the entire region, as it provides a significant contribution to our economy, as well as our social and cultural heritage”, says Francesco Cossu, Eccelsa GM.

The terminal’s concierge service is on hand to organise everything visitors might desire to make their stay a perfect one: horse trekking, private aircraft or helicopters, Ferrari, Bentley or Aston Martin rentals, yacht charters – both bare-boat or with a skipper and crew. Eccelsa, throughout its sister company Cortesa, also provides first class in-flight catering, offering a menu of 100 top-quality dishes, ranging from simple sandwiches to fresh lobster, local Sardinian and Italian specialities, and fine wines.

July and August are the busiest months in the skies over the Costa Smeralda, with about 4,000 arrivals and departures monthly. Privacy and security, together with comfort, are among the qualities that private aircraft passengers most value from Eccelsa Aviation.

Eccelsa has an agreement with an on-site maintenance team to deliver first-rate ground assistance, integrated services for flight crews, and the option to house the aircraft in a hangar for the entire length of stay in Olbia. Air taxi companies and their crews are also well catered for, as these now account for up to 60 percent of traffic coming into Olbia Costa Smeralda.

Eccelsa Aviation may not be the reason why habitués of the Costa Smeralda choose to visit this renowned destination, but it certainly contributes to making sure that people have a truly special holiday in a truly special place, and encourages them to return to Sardinia again and again. On an island where hospitality, quality and first-class service are second nature, an incredible number of different cultures come together in total harmony for the entire summer season. And Eccelsa Aviation is there to cater perfectly to all their private aviation needs.