Interview
Capgemini chose Opole – interview with Marcin Nowak
Outsourcing&More: Capgemini is a great example of a company from the modern services sector growing dynamically in Poland. You already have operating centres in Warsaw, Katowice, Kraków and Wrocław, and now it’s time for Opole. What was the rationale behind selecting Opole as your next location? Marcin Nowak: Similarly as with our other locations the first key criterion is the personnel. Above all our company is built by people – they are our main capital. Therefore the first thing we need to do is check whether we will be able to hire the required number of specialists both from the business and the IT pool. It is true that Opole is the first city that is not a major agglomeration like Katowice or Kraków, however due to its location on the communication map it fits perfectly as a natural continuation of the sequence of agglomerations in the south of Poland. O&M: What is the intended size of the operational centre in Opole and what type of processes will be delivered at this location? M.N.: We began our activities in Opole by launching the Infrastructure Services centre. It provides services to Germanspeaking customers and ensures IT support. We started from standard customer service and are currently developing more advance areas of our customers’ infrastructure. O&M: You are an example of a company that offers a very broad range of services. What other processes do you deliver in Poland, apart from those supported in Opole? M.N.: In Poland we provide all services covering the outsourcing of business and IT processes, but we also manage business transformation projects covering strategic advisory and comprehensive IT implementations, mainly within the scope of business management, business processes management and customer relations management. Where the business requirements go beyond ready-made solutions
78
we prepare customised solutions based on the industryspecific expertise of our business analysts, programmers, and engineers. O&M: And finally a question about the staff. What type of skills are you looking for in the people who want to work at your delivery centre in Opole? What does the perfect candidate for work at Capgemini look like? Do the schools in Opole prepare the right sort of candidates for work at Capgemini? M.N.: First of all we are looking for people with excellent command of German. That is the basic condition because the work involves dealing with German customers. Additionally, the candidates should be communicative in English. Depending on the experience and education we can offer positions in teams in managerial roles and in independent positions in the area of customer service, IT infrastructure support, creating and updating technology support processes used by our customers. We expect all candidates to be good team players, capable of independent thinking, and resultoriented. It is crucial that the candidates be interested in further development and learning, as through multilevel training cycles we prepare our employees to take on new tasks, at the same time enabling them comprehensive professional development in the world of IT. From the beginning of our operations in Opole we have cooperated with local universities. We give lectures, organize meetings and workshops for the students, and we have also established effective dialogue with university authorities, as it is crucial for the developing of curricula that meet the demands of today’s business world. Working together with universities we prepare students and graduates to work in the modern business services sector, showing at the same time the broad application of information technologies in customer service, and great opportunities for using the knowledge gained during the course of studies in day-to-day work in the IT services sector.
nr 5/2013 (September/October)