CESAR and Thales Join Forces for R&D Projects

Thales Group, a French multinational company that creates deep-tech innovations for critical applications – including the aerospace, defense, transportation and security sectors – is on a mission to “build a future we can all trust”. The global tech leader is on the forefront of making our skies safer to fly, protecting our data in a cloud-based world, pushing the boundaries of science to advance quantum computing, and developing A.I. systems we can all trust, to name a few of the many objectives it’s pushing forward on with 77,000 employees on five continents.

As a champion of open innovation and digital transformation, the Paris-based
innovation powerhouse is collaborating with CESAR – one of the world’s top innovation centers that researches, designs and iterates on advanced technologies from GenA.I. and machine learning to quantum computing and open-source software architecture – to create custom-built software and applications that help Thales boost its productivity, revenue, and innovation output.

In a recent conversation, Sandro Faria, R&D manager at Thales, shed light on why the global giant chose to work with CESAR to co-develop tailor-made internal tools to benefit some of their key business units. The reasons are even more interesting than you might think.

But first, a bit on what CESAR developed in collaboration with Thales’s teams. As a part of its engagement, CESAR has co-developed two tools, code-named THEIA and PIG:

THEIA: a lightweight, customizable alternative to mainstream BI platforms

The main motivation behind creating THEIA was to provide a lightweight and customizable alternative to using more bulky, off-the-shelf business intelligence (BI) software. Traditional BI tools often require complex setups, including VPN connections, website logins, and account configurations. THEIA, on the other hand, lets its users work with various data-entry points such as text files or Excel spreadsheets, and it offers a simple, user-friendly interface that accepts different file formats without the need for extensive corporate frameworks.

One of the key objectives of THEIA is to enable the management and analysis of non-structured data that may not be easily accessible through the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This new capability lets business operation managers gather their own data from diverse sources and convert it into organized information for improved monitoring and decision-making. THEIA makes it fast and easy to create and share customizable dashboards that display relevant metrics and key insights related to sales orders, production timelines, and operational efficiencies.

PIG: an automated workflow system to improve efficiency and collaboration

Project PIG (an acronym for Python Input Generator) is an automated tool designed to enhance the workflow between software developers and project managers engaged on bank payment system (BPS) applications by generating functional test files to validate banking projects.

This new online system provides for seamless collaboration in a simple, efficient, and autonomous manner. It effectively translates input code from developers into a user-friendly module that project managers can then manipulate to cover a variety of customer specifications, scenarios, and parameters.

Why Thales chose CESAR as its innovation partner

Aside from the clear value of the productivity improvement generated by these two innovations, there are six primary reasons Thales decided to join forces with CESAR:

• Cultural fit: “What we really admire is CESAR is so diverse in terms of knowledge, culture, and skills. They are headquartered in Recife, but they have people with various expertises all across Brazil and abroad. It’s a very rich ecosystem through which you may visualize many ways to understand the same concept, and they can bring knowledge from several fields and from people with different skills and from different cultures,” said Sandro Faria, R&D manager at Thales.
• Trust and compliance: Faria explained Thales follows a strict governance process and maintains a list of trusted suppliers. CESAR, having undergone thorough ethical, corporate policy, and background checks, met Thales’s stringent criteria. In addition, CESAR is already in compliance with U.S. and European regulations, which was a vital aspect of their selection process.
• Knowledge and expertise: Faria noted that CESAR had already worked on previous projects with Thales. This familiarity with its operations and business, coupled with CESAR’s industry-specific expertise and its collection of successful case studies, made CESAR an ideal vendor for these projects.
• Favorable tax situation: Another significant factor was the eligibility for CESAR customers and partners to reduce overall costs due to two Brazilian laws to encourage more RD&I collaboration to take place in the country: Brazil’s informatics law and its R&D tax allowance law. These laws were put into place to encourage technological and economic progress to benefit Brazilian society and to provide monetary benefits for both global and domestic customers seeking help from Brazilian companies, universities, and innovation centers carrying out technology RD&I activities on behalf of clients.
• Flexibility: “CESAR is a very professional company, yet they have the spirit of a startup, so working with them is fun. They’re very up-to-speed and flexible; it’s easy to reach out and communicate with them whenever we like without having to book a formal meeting with them,” exclaimed Faria.
• Scope-appropriate solutions: Hiring CESAR gave Thales the ability to release scaled innovations to improve efficiency that are tailor-made for individual business units. The alternative would have required Thales to make a much larger investment to roll out less targeted, enterprise-wide software.

Thales’s decision to work with CESAR as a trusted vendor stemmed from multiple factors: CESAR’s diversity of talent, pre-alignment with global regulatory requirements, deep knowledge and their subject-matter expertise. Coupled with CESAR’s proven ability to deliver custom-built, scope-appropriate solutions in a fast and flexible manner made the Brazil-based innovation center an ideal partner for Thales’s strategic RD&I projects. The collaboration between Thales and CESAR demonstrates the power of strategic vendor partnerships in driving successful outcomes, valuable outputs, and continuous innovation.

If your organization needs expert research, design, and innovation support, please contact CESAR about tapping into hundreds of software architects, coders, designers, researchers, UX experts, and innovation project managers. Please contact us here.