Capgemini, the 40-40 Rule, and the rise of the robots

Capgemini recently hosted a few dozen consultants and industry analysts to Chicago for their two-day Analyst and Advisor Day event. The presentations were held at the firm’s very impressive Accelerated Solutions Environment facility, with its dramatic curved glass exterior and prime views across the Chicago River to the famous Merchandise Mart. Unfortunately, it was typical Chicago winter weather with sub-zero windchills and snow flurries, but for those who braved the conditions it was a very interesting and informative event. Things appear to be going well at Capgemini. Even though organic growth in revenue was only 3.4% in 2014 (to EU 10.5B), bookings were up 13%, operating margins were improved by 70 basis points (to 9.2%), and profit jumped by a full 31%. The financial services business (covering banking, insurance, and the securities industries) provided Capgemini with significant sales momentum into 2015, with Q4 growth of 9.2% (second only to the firm’s public sector services business). In the financial services sector, Capgemini’s business theme was digital transformation, which in their view would be driven by the replacement of knowledge workers by automation and algorithms. During Q4, Capgemini signed an important deal with First Data Corporation (FDC) to take over application management responsibility for its VisionPLUS card processing platform. VisionPLUS is FDC’s international card platform and serves over 180 clients in 70 plus markets in Central and South America, Europe and the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. John Elkins, FDC’s Chairman of International, came to Chicago to talk up the new partnership, and it appears that FDC is very pleased that Capgemini is taking over responsibility for maintaining and expanding the functional coverage of VisionPLUS. Essentially, Capgemini will work with FDC to continue the build out of the platform, FDC will use the software to drive its own processing business, and the partners will share certain license and managed services revenues for new bank clients. Paul Nannetti’s made an interesting key note presentation covering emerging trends in Capgemini’s business, and several times he mentioned the “40-40 Rule”. This was a new buzz word for me, so I was happy when another analyst asked Paul what he meant by the 40-40 Rule. According to Paul, the 40-40 Rule says that 40% of the scope of new outsourcing contracts will be suitable for digitization (automation), and that within this realm, digitization will drive out 40% of existing labor content. In other words, global outsourcing companies like Capgemini will need 40% less FTEs to process the same work load due to the introduction of automation to its business processes. This brings us to the issue of robots. A few weeks ago, I had read an article about the opening of a futuristic hotel in Japan called Henn-na Hotel (apparently translated as “Strange Hotel”) that will be almost entirely staffed by robots. The hotel will employ robots to clean rooms, staff the front desk, and run the bag room, and guests will be able to unlock their rooms through facial recognition. Hotel president Mr. Hideo Sawada was quoted in the Japan Times as saying “We will make the most efficient hotel in the world. In the future, we’d like to have more than 90 percent of hotel services operated by robots.” Capgemini’s Global CTO Lanny Cohen shared that indeed robotics and artificial intelligence technologies were under close scrutiny at the firm, and the firm maintains a global network of 40 innovation labs to investigate this and other areas of emerging technologies. For a firm like Capgemini whose financial success over the past 10 years has been in large part based on managing a very large off-shore workforce, this is indeed a bold strategy. And that's also very good news for Mr. Roboto, who may have a future in banking and insurance if he ever tires of his current gig at the Henn-na Hotel. Stay tuned. You can follow the conversation about the day on Twitter here.