Capgemini Has New SBU – Consulting, Largest in Europe, 4,000 Consultants

Capgemini just announced a new Strategic Business Unit, Capgemini Consulting Services with revenues of EUR 700 million (8 % of Capgemini 2008 revenues of EUR 8.7 Billion) and over 4,000 expert strategy and management consultants in more than 30 countries as part of a corporate reorganization.

The firm appears to be responding to clients’ need for “action-oriented business
transformation, from strategy to execution to enable them to transform and perform
through technologies”. With this, Capgemini claims that its Consulting unit will become the largest European consulting firm. In addition, it enhances the brand, much like Deloitte Consulting, and brings together existing country-focused consulting units into a global umbrella in order to provide clients with seamless industry-specific or issue-related expertise from a common single platform.

The intent: help clients better manage through this unprecedented economic crisis with an integrated approach.

There are three Global Practice Networks in this structure, all focused on “Transformation”:

Strategy & Transformation: helps clients adapt their strategy and business to radical shifts in the market;

Operations Transformation: optimizes processes in Marketing, Sales & Service (MSS), Finance & Employee Transformation (FET) and Supply Chain Management (SCM);

Technology Transformation: help choose right technology IT levers and in IT transformation

One point we found of interest is that Capgemini will help clients with “Social Networking tools and communities, which enable both direct collaboration between clients and the relevant Capgemini experts..”

Interestingly, the 4,000 consultants comprise about 4% of the 91,000 Capgemini staff but account for 8% of the revenues, which indicates that these professionals have generally higher billing rates than the average, as also that they are a select few within the larger organization.

This brings together several elements which we have seen before in other consulting organizations:

Brand identity: A new name, new organization and a new start, much like Deloitte Consulting
Globalize: Bring disparate country-focused consultants into a worldwide organization
Match Multinational Clients: Provide a single point solution to increasingly global and complex needs of international clients
Thought Leadership: Enable real consultants to craft unique solutions to client issues and win engagement at the C-level
Separate from Outsourcing: Distinguish higher-end Consulting from lower-end Outsourcing, much like Accenture

This is somewhat new ground for Capgemini and they are quite open that it is in response to client needs in a tough economic environment. The challenge is now to bring together all the pieces in an integrated way, build brand-identity with clients and start to compete more head to head with some established players in this space.

We’ll see how this plays out in the marketplace.

If there are Capgemini Consulting folks out there, we would love to hear your comments on this change.