The NRB Group achieved a turnover of € 317 million in the 2016 financial year. This means a 29% increase compared to the 2015 turnover of € 246 million. The Belgian ICT group’s Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) amounted to € 17.6 million or 5.57% of its revenues. The turnover increase is mainly attributable to the takeover of Trasys in October 2015.
The NRB Group consists of Belgian ICT service provider NRB, which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year, as well as five other ICT companies: Xperthis (provider of software for hospital management and electronic patient records), Civadis (provider of ICT solutions and services to local authorities in Wallonia and Brussels), Cevi and Logins (providers of ICT solutions and services to local authorities in Flanders) and Afelio (specialised developer of mobile and web applications). Established by NRB nv and Trasys Luxembourg PSF, the European Economic Interest Grouping branded Trasys International is also part of the NRB Group and is aimed at European and international public organisations and corporations.
Employing over 2,000 people, the NRB Group recorded 33% of its revenues in the public and social sector, 28% in the financial services sector, 16% in international organisations, 9% in the energy and utility industry, 9% in the healthcare sector and 5% in the industrial sector last year.
Milestones
Pascal Laffineur succeeded Ulrich Penzkofer as the NRB Group’s new CEO in October 2016.
2016 was the year the integration of the Trasys Group was finalised. The NRB Group acquired 100% of the Trasys Group’s shares in October 2015. Both companies merged their organisational structures as well as their portfolio of solutions and services in the course of 2016. By integrating Trasys, NRB expanded its onshore and nearshore software development portfolio and strengthened its market position especially in the industrial sector and in international public and corporate organisations. Trasys International was set up to ensure the business continuity towards the European and international public organisations and corporations.
The NRB Group’s subsidiaries also had to address several strategic challenges. Xperthis merged with Ciges and Mims, two companies providing software solutions to hospitals and medical experts that were acquired at the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015 respectively. The Adinfo Group, the parent company of Cevi, Logins and Civadis, provides specialised solutions and services to local authorities, and has invested a great deal in its ‘Smart Cities’ offering to assist cities and municipalities in their digital transformation. Within this context, the group took an equity participation in Letsgocity, a start-up that developed a mobile application serving as a unique digital interface between citizens and their municipalities.
In December 2016, NRB sold its print-shop activities, which were not part of its core business as an ICT service provider, to the Ipex Group, a specialist in this field.
From a commercial point of view, the NRB Group prospered in 2016 as it concluded contracts with ArcelorMittal, CILE, EDF Luminus, ENGIE Electrabel, Ethias, the Federal Public Service Finance, GSK, Ores, Partena, Smals, SWDE, Thales and Vinçotte. The majority of the NRB Group’s revenues is recurrent. Its commercial results exceeded the expectations.
In addition, the NRB Group decided to invest, together with the group Etix Everywhere, € 4.2 million in a new data centre called BelgiumDC in Villers-le-Bouillet in 2016. Construction started in March 2017 and the new data centre is scheduled to be operational by October.
The plans for the BelgiumDC site consist of three 300m² modules to be completed in stages. The new data centre will be linked by dark fibre to the 1,500m² data centre infrastructure 30 km away in Herstal, near Liège, where the NRB Group is headquartered. Through BelgiumDC, NRB aims to continue its investment in the provision of customised cloud services and ICT platforms such as SAP (ERP), Big Data and Smart City environments.
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About the NRB Group
With a consolidated turnover of € 317 million and over 2,000 employees, the NRB Group ranks in the top three of the Belgian ICT industry.
NRB helps its customers to benefit fully from ICT assets in order to optimise and accelerate their processes, innovate and allow their business to grow and evolve with a view to keeping up with the new digital reality.
Within this context, NRB provides a complete range of ICT services based on four key areas: consultancy, software, infrastructure & cloud services, and managed staffing.
The consultancy services include the work performed by ICT and business consultants who assist clients in their (digital) transformation. In addition, a team of ICT and cybersecurity specialists helps them develop and implement the appropriate policies (for GDPR, security and other standards) as well as ICT solutions aimed at ensuring the integrity of their organisation, systems and data.
The software services include the development of customised solutions by teams in Belgium and at a nearshore centre in Athens. The development teams have mastered a wide range of technologies for the creation of mobile and web applications as well as customised solutions for distributed or mainframe environments. In addition to customised services, NRB also provides packages (ERP, BI, SCADA…) from major software companies (SAP, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Software AG…) tailored to the specific needs of clients and their projects. Moreover, specialists ensure the implementation, integration and maintenance of the software solutions supplied.
NRB’s infrastructure and managed operations services encompass housing and hosting of mainframe, AS400 and distributed systems. To provide these services, NRB makes use of its own data centres located on two geo-resilient sites in Belgium; this infrastructure is compatible with the Uptime Institute’s Tier 3+ requirements.
It enables NRB to deliver integrated hybrid cloud services tailored to its customers’ needs. To fulfil these needs, NRB can make optimum use of three ICT environments: the customer’s on-premise infrastructure, the NRB private cloud and the public cloud, which NRB can connect, integrate and manage as required.
Finally, NRB provides managed staffing services aimed at offering the best profiles at the best possible price taking into account the customer’s requirements.
NRB focuses on Belgium’s largest sectors: the public and social sector, the energy and utility industry, the financial services sector and the industrial sector, while Trasys International, which is also part of the NRB Group, is aimed at European and international public and corporate organisations.
The NRB Group’s other subsidiaries offer specialised sector-specific solutions supported by the Group’s scale, ICT infrastructure and other assets. Xperthis provides specialised ICT solutions for the health care sector. Cevi and Logins in Flanders and Civadis in Brussels and Wallonia are specialised in ICT products and services for local authorities.
