Le Figaro talks about Umbeli

Le Figaro talks about Umbeli: design, code, AI and pedagogy

For an agency born in Trois-Rivières, sharing our approach in a major French daily is an important milestone. It is also an opportunity to reflect on what guides our daily work, and on what this approach changes for the companies we support in Quebec, France, Belgium, Ontario, and the United States.

Read the article on Le Figaro

Why Le Figaro?

Umbeli is based in Trois-Rivières, but a significant part of our activity is with France. This is no coincidence.

Brice Clain, co-founder of Umbeli, is originally from France. He maintains strong ties with the Hexagon, and a large part of the community he leads on social networks around development and AI is there. Many French business leaders discover us this way, then entrust us with their projects.

Speaking in Le Figaro was therefore a logical next step: to present our approach to French companies who already follow us, and to those looking for a partner able to bridge North American agility and European market expectations.

The initial observation: SMEs juggling too many tools

Most SME leaders we meet face the same problem. They have a website, an Excel file for clients, an overflowing email inbox with quote requests, and sometimes two or three software programs that don’t communicate.

Each tool was added to address a specific need. Over time, the whole system becomes cumbersome to manage, and it’s the teams who fill the gaps manually: re-entering information, following up with clients, compiling reports.

Artificial intelligence promises to solve all this. But you still need to know where to integrate it, how, and for what concrete result.

Design, code and AI: three professions, one team

With many providers, these three skills are separated. One agency does the design, a developer integrates, a consultant talks about AI. The client ends up coordinating all these people.

Our conviction is simple: these three professions must work together from day one.

• Design, because a tool nobody wants to use is useless. A website, a CRM, or a dashboard must be clear and pleasant for those who open it every morning.

• Code, because we build custom solutions. We don’t force a company to fit into generic software: we adapt the tool to its way of working.

• AI, because it now allows automating a large part of repetitive tasks, provided it is directly connected to the tools the team already uses.

This is what allows us to deliver websites, custom CRMs, and AI automation that form a coherent whole, instead of a stack of juxtaposed solutions.

Pedagogy, what makes the difference

Delivering a beautiful tool is not enough. If the team doesn’t understand how it works, or why it was designed that way, it ends up being bypassed and the Excel file comes back.

That’s why pedagogy is part of our method. We explain our choices, we show what AI does and what it doesn’t do, and we support teams until they are autonomous.

This desire to share doesn’t stop with our clients. Brice Clain, co-founder of Umbeli, shares every week his methods and discoveries in development and AI with a community of over 52,000 followers on TikTok. Making technology understandable is what truly enables an SME to adopt it.

Concretely, what does it change for an SME?

Here are the kinds of results this approach makes possible:

• A website that works for you: it clearly presents your services, captures requests, and sends them directly to the right place.

• A CRM designed for your business: your clients, your quotes, and your follow-ups gathered in a single tool, built around your actual processes.

• Automated repetitive tasks: writing quotes, follow-ups, sorting requests, answering frequent questions, data entry.

• A team that understands its tools: trained, autonomous, and able to evolve its usage.

The goal is not to add technology for technology’s sake. It’s to give teams back time for what really matters: serving their clients and growing the business.

Thank you, and what’s next

Thanks to our clients, who trust us project after project: the approach presented in this article was built with them.

Are you running an SME and feel your tools slow you down more than they help? Let’s talk. We will take the time to understand your way of working and see, together, what can be simplified or automated.

Schedule a meeting with the Umbeli team