CEGID : "HumanForces" HR collaborative portal - Cegid enriches its solutions in order to support and ensure sustained development of online services offered by CPAs to their small business customers.

Cegid has entered into a new partnership agreement with Lille-based NovigoTech, a startup specializing in the online acquisition of HR data and automated data exchanges between small business customers and their accountants via its solution "HumanForces - collaborative management of Human Resources".

Under the partnership agreement, Cegid will acquire a stake in NovigoTech's share capital as part of a capital increase and will finance NovigoTech's innovation-related investments with a long-term view to acquiring all of NovigoTech's shares.

NovigoTech, a young company created in 2012, shares Cegid's vision of supporting accounting firms as they seek to increase their productivity and develop comprehensive consulting services for their small business customers.

With the "HumanForces" solution, Cegid offers accounting firms new services that enable them to:

• help small and mid-sized businesses manage their human resources (tracking activity, absences and vacation, expense reports, annual appraisals, training, etc.),
• increase their productivity and secure their payroll management assignments (collection of payroll variables, events affecting payroll or employee social security).

• Service portals developed for CPAs and their small business customers. Cegid offers CPAs additional tools that enable them to connect online to an increasing number of their customers. Currently, just over 1,000 new small businesses are using their CPA's Cegid software to connect online with their CPA each month, primarily for accounting-related activities. With the new payroll services offered by NovigoTech, Cegid's mid-term objective is to double, every month, the number of new small businesses connecting online to their CPA via Cegid's cloud services so as to rapidly reach 100,000 companies using one or more cloud services with their CPA. This new solution offered by Cegid/NovigoTech aims to support CPAs in their consulting assignments, which are increasingly in demand by the 2 million companies that have fewer than 50 employees.
• New service available to small businesses for managing their human resources With the basic level of payroll data exchange in place, NovigoTech's "HumanForces" solution enables users to pick and choose more sophisticated services such as expense reports, activity monitoring, vacation requests and annual employee appraisals. These solutions already exist in the market, but have been designed for mid-sized to large companies and function in project mode, and their deployment is long and often complex. NovigoTech's solution addresses the small business market as it is easy to deploy, has an intuitive interface and standardized settings, and is quick to learn. For CPAs with recognized expertise in payroll processing, NovigoTech's "HumanForces" modules offer them a seamless extension of their payroll outsourcing assignments, which at times require monitoring the qualifications and careers of highly-specific profiles.
• Supporting CPAs in the large-scale implementation of "DSN", the new nominative employee filing standard. This standard, which aims to unify and simplify all downstream payroll filing information, requires all upstream payroll data to be perfectly integrated. The new standard works on an "event-based" principle, meaning that any changes to data relating to employees or their work or family situation must be signalled to social welfare organizations within a "reasonable" timeframe, i.e. within around five days. NovigoTech's intuitive online portal, available in mobile format, will make employees active participants in the payroll process and ensure the required responsiveness.

The innovations and new services offered by the Cegid/NovigoTech solution will be premiered at Cegid Convention 2015, Cegid's 12th annual convention, attended by key elected officials, opinion leaders and Cegid's major accounting profession customers. The convention will be based on the theme of "adopting digital technologies so as to be the CPA of the future". It will take place in Monaco on July 2-3.

The accounting profession is eagerly awaiting the HumanForces solutions, in particular the online connection to CPAs via the "online payroll" and "CPA alert" modules, in order to expand the range of services they offer to their own small business customers and to ensure that the implementation of the new "DSN" nominative employee filing standard is properly managed.

Second-quarter sales and first-half 2015 earnings will be announced on July 22, 2015, after the market close. The full calendar of publication dates and upcoming events can be found at the following address: http://www.cegid.com/calendrier-financier
(The figures included in this press release are consolidated, unaudited, preliminary estimates).

This English translation is for the convenience of English-speaking readers. However, only the French text has legal value. Consequently, the translation may not be relied upon to sustain any legal claim, nor should it be used as the basis of any legal opinion. Cegid Group expressly disclaims all liability for any inaccuracy herein.

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