The Digital Future

Cap Gemini S.A. is one of the notable global services company offering technology services, outsourcing, and consulting services.

Headquartered in France, with revenues of nearly $13 bn and 130, 000 employees, the company has offshore presence in India with nearly 40, 000 employees and India continues to be a strategic geo for the company. In the global market for services, Capgemini competes with the likes of Accenture, IBM, TCS and others. Dominant in Europe, the company is focused on leading growth in North America, which continues to be the hotspot for demand in global services. Though the company has been operating in North America since 1974, much of the scale up happened since 2000 when it acquired E&Y Consulting, one of the leading management consulting companies.

Lanny Cohen, CTO Global and Chairman of North America Board, Capgemini, identifies three key differentiators for the company. First, it works with its clients in a collaborative environment, which the company calls ‘collaborative business experience'. Second, is the focus on speed, which is founded on seeking the fastest path to value. Third, managing risk and focus on innovation. The company's leading story in the market is based on helping enterprises transform into the digital future. Cohen says, "As the uncertainty in global economy recedes, the ‘digital future' emerges". His premise is based on research findings that 86% of CEOs believe that the strategic contribution of IT to business will increase by 2014, 50% of the CEOs see IT as a way to change the rules of competition, and that 78% of senior executives believe that digital transformation is critical to their organization in the next two years.

Cohen says that digital transformation has three areas of impact: customer impact, operational process, and business model. Taken together, digital transformation has the potential to redefine the business. As the Global CTO of Capgemini, Cohen ascribes the role of technology transformation comprising cloud, mobility, analytics, and social as the key elements of digital strategy. Cohen's role at Capgemini is to develop the capability to appropriately apply these technologies to achieve digital transformation for its clients.

The question is whether such differentiators has helped Capgemini improve its revenues or not. Financial results reveal that it has. Capgemini's North America business grew 20% in first half of this financial year and the contribution of the region's business to group revenue grew to 20% from 11% in the past. This indicates improvement in market share and the organization's potential to exploit growth potential. One of the drivers of growth is the uptick in new business models, for example within SAP Service Line, which experienced a 30% boost with SAP Business-as-a-Service/Solutions in the US. Cohen says, "The idea is to focus on how the market is changing and what organizations need to move their businesses forward. Areas such as digital transformation, process transformation, big data, cloud and mobility provide more opportunities to better serve our clients."

There is further evidence of how the services portfolio contributed to this growth. Services related to demand-driven supply chain grew 88%, management of digital processes grew 75%, and all-channel customer experience management grew 172%.

As a services company, Capgemini's business strategy relies on providing faster path to value and co-innovating with alliance partners along with focus on developing its own IP to develop solutions that align with clients' growth agenda. According to Cohen, recent examples include enabling an oil industry consortium get back to work in US Gulf of Mexico post the BP oil spill, reducing the accounts receivables from 20% to 2.5% for an international paper company through its BPO services, and improving order processing by 50% for a Canadian telecom operator by implementing a CRM architecture.