| | 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 | |
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| | to move the goalposts in
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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