| | By Mick James
The UK may no longer
be in recession but
there’s more than enough
turmoil around to keep
any doom-monger happy.
The consultancy industry
certainly seems to be
happy to treat the “two
impostors” of success
and failure just the
same: while some firms
issue profit warnings in
the face of their
exposure to the public
sector, others, riding
the upsurge in demand
for financial services
work, are practically
reduced to fighting each
other in the street for
staff.
In the midst of all
this hubbub, calmer
voices are seeing an
opportunity to reshape
not just their
businesses but the
industry as a whole and
stack the deck in their
favour. I recently met
up with Tom Blacksell of
Capgemini, in suitably
bullish mood as befits
the CEO on the eve of an
office move from Soho to
a state-of-the-art
office in Holborn.
“I’d love everything
to settle down but we
live in the world in
which we live,” he says.
“We can’t deny the
fiscal position of UK
plc and we have to be
responsive to the market
in which we live; we
have to find ways round
it.”
This includes
tactical moves such as
redeploying public
sector specialists from
the UK to Capgemini’s
operations in the Middle
East, but increasingly
the firm is looking to
exploit and expand its
global position as a
source of competitive
advantage. The firm’s
expansion strategy
depends partly on a
“fostering” relationship
between established
countries and
development targets. So
the UK “fosters” the
Middle East, while
France “fosters” China.
The company is also
targeting
country-specific
acquisitions – Blacksell
says the recent
acquisition of a
controlling interest in
Brazilian IT services
company CPM Braxis has
provoked a flood of
enquiries from clients
with interests in the
region.
I’ve written in the
past about how
multinational operations
have often seemed to be
more of a headache than
a boon to large firms,
but Blacksell believes
Capgemini’s spreading
tentacles give it both
“defensive” and
“offensive” capability.
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“Take hospital
transformation – there’s
a lot going on in
France, there’s a lot of
commonality between the
UK and Dutch markets,”
he says. “So we’re not
going to shut down acute
transformation because
we have a broader base
to work from in terms of
business development.
And when the need in the
UK market arrives, we
will have a quicker
response time because we
won’t have to go out and
hire an acute
transformation team.”
But Blacksell’s
vision goes beyond using
the company’s global
reach to respond
tactically to changes in
the market:
“We are working hard
at making ourselves not
just excellent but
becoming standard
makers,” he says. “We
will achieve that
through our work with
customers who are
standard-makers
themselves, and you only
need a few of those, not
legions and legions.”
Blacksell gives as an
example the company’s
investment in
e-procurement (through
the acquisition of
specialist player IBX)
and its combination of
this new capability with
its existing strength in
procurement and business
process outsourcing.
“We can go into a big
company and take all of
their sourcing
organisation and do it
for them,” says
Blacksell. “That
dovetails with BPO and
the whole deal can be
based on outcomes.”
This has massive
interest for the UK
government, he adds, as
it tackles the massive
fragmentation in public
sector procurement, for
example by bringing in
Arcadia’s Sir Philip
Green as an adviser:
“Yes, the public
sector situation is
affecting us but we look
at the cycle beyond the
next two or three
months,” he says. “If
you take the Philip
Green situation and the
fact that the public
finances are so extreme
that they pull in a
reasonably celebrity
figure to tackle the
fray, it hits the
headlines. It’s good for
us because it
accelerates the debate
we are trying to have
with multiple people in
multiple departments.”
“Debate” is a word
Blacksell uses a lot,
particularly when
considering how
Capgemini can play to
its strengths to move | |
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consulting:
“We are pushing new
commercial and operating
models, we are trying to
move the debate away
from classic risk and
reward to outcome-based
pricing where you only
get a percentage of the
outcome when the money’s
in the bank, which could
be months later. That’s
a heavy cashflow issue
and creates a different
basket of risks from the
usual ones in
consultancy of
utilisation and
headcount.”
Blacksell also
believes that Capgemini
can use its size and
global spread to win in
the war for talent. The
company has developed a
global competency model
and has revamped its
core consultancy
training against that
model:
“In the ‘80s and ‘90s
there was a lot of money
paid for people who were
not properly trained in
an industry which is all
about content,” he says.
“You can’t enable a
business if you’re just
fighting for talent on
the basis that you’ve
all got the smartest
people.”
Instead Capgemini is
focusing on the
“value-added” it
delivers to staff,
partly through major
investments in building
virtual training
modules:
“We’re committed to
doing the same level of
face-to-face training
but a course will no
longer be a two-day
face-to-face session but
a three-month module. So
the value people get
from the face-to-face
session is massively
enhanced.”
The ability to add
value to staffing this
way – as well as
facilitate its desire to
work globally –adds to
Capgemini’s “stickiness”
in a world where the
competition for talent
is relentless. The only
response, says
Blacksell, is to be
“remorseless” in
return:
“We’re always not
good enough – as soon as
you get to the point of
what you thought was
good enough, you’re
already in danger of
being left behind,” he
says. “If you don’t do
all these things you
won’t be able to attract
the best people, you
won’t attract the best
customers and you won’t
be able to serve them in
a different dimension.” | |
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