Capgemini

Charting sustainable paths in digital

TRANSFORMATION

Capgemini has taken up the sustainability mantle, responding to growing demand from companies and public institutions seeking to become more responsible. Executive Vice President & Managing Director of Capgemini

Invent in Norway & Sustainability Lead for Capgemini Northern Europe Karl Thomas Reinertsen along with Vice President, Head of Automotive, Capgemini

Invent in Sweden, Denmark and Finland and Head of Sustainability, Capgemini Group Nordics Per Holmblad outlined the company’s mission to change the world. Report by Richard Hagan.

Headquartered in Paris and part of the broader Capgemini Group, Capgemini Invent is a leading strategic partner helping businesses harness the power of technology. The company applies its expertise and solutions to address the full range of business needs across key areas, including strategy and transformation, applications and technology, engineering, and operations.

An evolving market

Just as the technology that powers its solutions is constantly evolving, so is Capgemini’s own operations. “We have evolved significantly since our founding in 1967 by Serge Kampf,” said Karl Thomas Reinertsen, Executive Vice President & Managing Director of Capgemini Invent in Norway & Sustainability Lead for Capgemini Northern Europe. “We evolve our services

as client needs evolve, to help our clients become more relevant and efficient in all areas.”

Capgemini’s clients can be found in several industries, including financial services, telecommunications, energy and utilities, automotive, and consumer products. Capgemini proudly works with a number of very large companies, most of them boasting global footprints. “We provide our professional services across IT, Data, Engineering, Strategy, Innovation and business transformation to help our clients move from yesterday's successes into tomorrow’s triumphs within the contexts of each respective sector,” explained Per Holmblad, Vice President, Head of Automotive, Capgemini Invent in Sweden, Denmark and Finland and Head of Sustainability, Capgemini Group Nordics. In the automotive industry, for instance , Capgemini is assisting companies as they shift gears from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. “We help

our clients innovate and make these changes embedded and true within their organisations,” Mr Holmblad said.

Since its establishment several decades ago with only a handful of employees, Capgemini has continuously grown both organically and through acquisitions to its present impressive size. Today, it is a formidable presence on the Paris Stock Exchange, employing 350,000 staff spread across 50 countries. This includes a significant presence in the Nordics where it has 6,000 employees alone, in all the region’s major cities.

Further afield, Capgemini also has dozens of locations in 50 countries on most continents, including offices in Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East.

A Nordic speciality

Capgemini’s geographic presence in the Nordics in particular, uniquely positions it to capitalise on the region’s dynamic

tech scene and its practical approach to tech innovation, as Mr Holmblad shared: “The Nordic countries are primarily production economies. Their pragmatic foundation leads to solutions that are well integrated into a process or industry need.”

At last year’s Nordic Sustainability Tech Awards, an award founded to champion companies using technology to create innovative solutions that limit the environmental and societal impact of climate change, the winning innovations frequently offered profound solutions to real operational needs, like ensuring clean oils and recycling of materials.

Mr Reinertsen also noted the advantages of being based in a region where sustainability is taken seriously. “Companies in

Denmark, for example, are very strong in wind energy solutions production,” he said. “They not only build a lot of wind turbines, but they also ensure that old ones are recycled. Norway’s energy production landscape, meanwhile, is shifting to hydropower and other renewable solutions.” He noted that these efforts, amongst many others in the region, pave the way for a broader shift towards sustainable solutions.

In support of sustainability

Embracing sustainability at its core, Capgemini has worked on several transformative projects.

One such initiative was a collaboration with a global auto OEM’s shared mobility business. The goal was to create an easy

and seamless service that customers would actually use, while ensuring that the technology enabled the OEM to understand what a customer needs at the right time.

Capgemini’s role was to study and understand how such a service could help the client reach its sustainability goals through a reduction in privately owned vehicles. Mr Holmblad recalled: “They started with the goal of having one shared car replace eight privatelyowned ones. By tweaking the system’s usage and efficiency, they moved up to replacing nine cars. We helped them understand the impact of the car-sharing service and the capabilities that the client has in relation to its sustainability goals.”

In this digital age, Capgemini is keenly aware that the future belongs to companies

that successfully integrate technology into their operations. “Data is at the core of new technologies like AI, machine learning and blockchain,” said Mr Reinertsen. “It’s about how you organise and capture data whilst ensuring that you have a proper data source. That’s what most companies are heavily focusing on right now, and it’s been the most important factor in our growth in the past decade.”

He explained that cloud computing will play an especially vital role in the future of most businesses. “Cloud computing has been driving a lot of business for our industry. Our clients are increasingly using the cloud – not only to be more agile but also to be more sustainable while making use of safer, more industrialised solutions.

“Both we and our clients have ambitious sustainability and carbon neutral targets.

I expect that the cloud computing market and related services will continue to help our clients be more sustainable and will therefore grow significantly.”

Making a change for the future

Looking towards the future, Mr Reinertsen emphasised Capgemini’s commitment to staying relevant to its clients’ needs, which increasingly span the realms of strategy, operations, technology and sustainability. “We are constantly investing in new capabilities and hiring new talent to stay ahead of our client’s needs. Our mission is to ensure that we accelerate our relevance and that we’re capable of helping our clients with the important questions we’ve discussed here.”

Mr Holmblad agreed. “That’s what makes this work intriguing,” he concluded. “Our people have inspiring levels of ambition because, for us, every day is about making a difference for our people, clients and society at large.” n

Per Holmblad, Vice President & Head of Automotive for Sweden, Finland and Denmark & Sustainability Leader at Invent & Business Unit Nordic

Karl Thomas Reinertsen Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Capgemini Invent in Norway & Sustainability Lead for Capgemini Northern Europe

TUCKING IN TO A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE