Capgemini and onio: Capgemini announced the acquisition of oinio, one of Europe’s leading Salesforce partners. This acquisition will expand Capgemini’s Digital Strategy Group growth by augmenting Capgemini’s capabilities in providing digital transformation services around the Salesforce solutions and platform across Europe and Asia. Oinio, based in Munich, has become one of the major European players in the consulting and deployment of Salesforce cloud-based CRM and digital marketing solutions. Oonia has more than 600 projects for a portfolio of international clients in life sciences, manufacturing, financial services, high tech and utilities.
Statements from the Executives on The Acquisition: Maic Stohr, CEO of oinio commented, “As part of Capgemini, a global leader in digital business transformation, we’ll be able to offer Salesforce based agile innovation to enterprise customers at scale, to drive quicker business outcomes. It’s a commitment to our customers, our team and to the digital era.”
Dennis Flüchter, COO and CFO of oinio, said, “Joining Capgemini with its worldwide reach is an opportunity to accelerate our growth in Germany and on a global basis too. We’re proud to become part of the Capgemini family.”
And Jean Lassignardie, Corporate Vice President and Group Head of Salesforce Expert and Transformation Services at Capgemini stated, “The recognized expertise of oinio will allow us to reinforce our position in the European and Asian markets, while strengthening our partnership with Salesforce globally. Together, we will be able to quickly deploy the most innovative solutions to support our customers in their business transformation and growth acceleration.”
What Does This Mean? What I find interesting about this acquisition is the pace at which the foreign markets are understanding the value of digital transformation. This type of acquisition clearly shows that both Capgemini and oinio are seeing the desire and need for consulting services in the digital transformation area. System integrators of yesteryear were known for implementing large, on-premise solutions, taking years to implement, many of which were given up on.
Today, system integrators have had to reinvent themselves as the advent of SaaS / cloud solutions replacing the on-premise projects. But smart systems integrators have become trusted advisors in the role of aiding digital transformation. Because there is so much about a business that has to be transformed, in reality there is a huge market for systems integrators that realize that the transition from the old way of doing business, to truly being digital requires a transformation of people, process, leadership and technology. And there is no shortage of actual work that has to get done to make that all happen.
The future? Look to see which systems integrators are understanding what digital transformation means and who is leading companies to transform their culture, the mindset, their leadership, their workforce, their processes (how work gets done and how customers are interacted with and engaged) and what technologies are chosen to make this a reality in the short term. The longer companies wait to take on this type of endeavor, the more danger they put themselves in becoming extinct, i.e., irrelevant to their customers and unfortunately, for some really great brands, the certainty of going out of business.
@DrNatalie VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Covering Customer-facing Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Strategies and Technologies and System Integrators