HFS Highlight: Capgemini prioritizes APAC region as the next growth engine

Last month, we attended Capgemini’s Asia Pacific Virtual Analyst & Advisor Meet 2020 to understand its overall focus on the APAC market including strategic levers, key client engagements, etc. Capgemini has doubled its APAC business since 2014 and also increased its delivery presence significantly in this region. It has around 400 clients in the APAC region primarily from the BFSI and manufacturing verticals and observed double-digit growth across its key verticals over the past few years. Overall, APAC is a key geography for Capgemini and is a key enabler for its next phase of growth given the strong client base.

Capgemini is focusing on both internal capability development and client relationship management in APAC

In the APAC region, Capgemini’s delivery count is 130,000+ that acts as a global delivery center also. For example, APAC delivery resources support several North America and Europe based client projects. It also has a strong partnership with leading ISVs such as Mulesoft, SAP, AWS, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, etc. to support different technology areas. For example, in March 2020, Capgemini acquired Australia-based MuleSoft consultancy provider WhiteSky Labs that has a presence in Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Singapore. To increase its client portfolio in APAC, Capgemini has prioritized three strategic levers.

• Talent acquisition and talent management: Capgemini has gone away from just-in-time talent-hiring practice (hiring only at the time of project requirements) and is focusing on more robust talent recruitment and nurturing both for junior and senior levels. It has a strong talent acquisition program for the APAC region that focuses on fresh hires from educational institutes, and diversity among others. This new talent management program is in place across APAC countries including India, China, Australia, Japan, etc.
• Account centricity: Capgemini is trying to deepen its client relationships particularly for strategic clients, initiating strategic level talks beyond technologies and walking the extra mile for the transformation initiatives. On the global level, Capgemini has identified around 250 strategic clients and the number for the same in APAC is 23. It has an internal account executive certification program to train the resources in a professional way to invest in the client relationship.
• Digital Manufacturing: As APAC is a global manufacturing hub, so Capgemini is focusing on digital manufacturing opportunities and is leveraging its Altran acquisition for the same. Altran is a leading engineering service provider with engineering design and embedded software capability across transportation and logistics, manufacturing, and life-sciences domains. So, the synergy is coming from Capgemini’s IT capability and Altran’s OT expertise, encompassing an end-to-end solutions portfolio in IoT and Industry 4.0. As the entire Altran workforce (approx. 50,000+) joined the Capgemini team, so it will also help Capgemini to increase the presence in downstream engineering capability.

Bottom Line: APAC countries are quite diversified in terms of business environment and culture – Capgemini needs to focus on these countries individually to expand its APAC portfolio

Capgemini is leveraging its growing APAC base through a focus on talent, client centricity, and digital technologies. APAC countries have very different business landscape and ways of working from each other. Also, due to COVID-19, the APAC economies have taken a huge hit due to limited export, travel restriction, and business operations. This effect also widely vary across countries as the key industries are different for each country. So, Capgemini needs to work on country-specific strategy formulation in order to fulfil its clients’ unique and varied needs across the region.