Lyon automates its production lines. Not its admin processes.
Renault Trucks in Vénissieux has robots at every assembly station. Chemical plants in the Vallée de la Chimie run on industrial automation 24/7. But inside the offices of those same companies, the procurement team copies purchase orders from one system to another. Compliance reports get compiled by hand in Excel every month. Supplier follow-ups happen when someone remembers to check the shared file.
In pharma, the problem is even more visible. Sanofi in Gerland, BioMérieux in Marcy-l'Étoile: batch records pass through three systems, pharmacovigilance reports get reviewed, reformatted, and re-entered before regulatory submission. Filing packages are assembled manually from dozens of sources. This isn't a skills problem. It's a tools-not-talking-to-each-other problem.
Lyon's food industry, same story. Supply chain tracking, HACCP compliance documentation, supplier management: everything runs on spreadsheets that someone updates by hand. Restaurants in the Bocuse group manage supplier orders across three different systems. Mid-size companies of 200 people are stuck between Excel and an ERP configured in 2015 that nobody dares touch.
Lyon is a major logistics hub at the crossroads of the A6 and A7 motorways. Freight tracking, customs paperwork, multi-carrier reconciliation: processes still running on copy-paste between portals and spreadsheets. French Tech Lyon startups aren't doing better. They scale too fast for manual processes but not fast enough to justify an internal ops team.
What I do for Lyon businesses
Process audit and lost-hours mapping
I look at how your teams actually work day to day. Not the process posted on the intranet, not the Visio diagram from 2018. The reality: copy-pasting between SAP and the tracking spreadsheet, batch records transcribed from one system to another, pharmacovigilance reports reformatted by hand before submission. I quantify the time lost on each task and rank them by ROI. A mid-size company near Part-Dieu once described their supplier reconciliation process. Four tools, six manual steps, one full-time person on it. Every week.
Building automated workflows
This is where the hours come back. I connect your tools so data flows without anyone touching it. The purchase order lands in the ERP, the delivery note generates itself, the supplier gets a confirmation, the tracking sheet updates. All on its own. For multi-site companies (Lyon + Saint-Étienne + Grenoble, a standard setup in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes), I unify workflows so every site feeds the same reporting without re-entry. I use n8n for orchestration, Google Apps Script for the Google ecosystem, Python when the data processing gets heavier or for automated regulatory document extraction.
Monitoring and maintenance
Automated workflows break. An API changes, a file format shifts, a supplier redesigns their portal. I set up alerts so you know when something stops working before your clients or regulators notice. And I document everything. The goal is that your team understands what runs, can fix simple issues, and doesn't depend on me for day-to-day operations.
How it works
Tech stack
Frequently asked questions
Video calls, shared documents, async updates. Process automation is work on your tools and data, not in your offices. I connect to your systems remotely, deliver workflows, and we validate together on calls. I grew up in Haute-Savoie, right next to Lyon. For sensitive phases, I travel. But most of the time, your team doesn't need me at their Part-Dieu desks. They need their processes running without manual intervention.
An ERP integrator sells you a license and configures software. I look at what happens between your software. The gaps in the flow, the manual steps nobody automated because they don't fit any standard module. That's usually where the lost hours hide. Lyon mid-size companies often have SAP or Sage well in place. The problem is everything happening around it.
That's a standard setup in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Each site has its own tools, its own habits, its own spreadsheets. Headquarters in Lyon expects a consolidated report that someone compiles by hand. I unify the data flows so every site feeds the same source of truth automatically. One workflow, multiple inputs, zero re-entry.
A simple workflow (syncing two tools, automatic notifications) takes a few days. A broader project with multiple interconnected systems, a few weeks. The initial call is free and it's there to scope the project. If it's not worth the investment, I'll tell you before we start.