EuroBusiness Media (EBM): Capgemini has announced the acquisition of Prosodie, a leading multi-channel services operator. Paul Hermelin welcome, you are the CEO of Capgemini. Georges Croix welcome, you are the CEO of Prosodie. Let’s begin with you, Georges Croix, as the CEO of Prosodie, perhaps you could begin by reminding us, in a few words, about your company, for those of us who are less familiar.
Georges Croix (GC): I am CEO of Prosodie since 2006 and I succeeded the founder of Prosodie, Alain Bernard. Alain at that period had decided to transmit his company to his top managers, André Saint-Mleux and myself. We decided to position the group only on B-to-B activities, especially in France, in Spain and also today in Belgium and in Italy. Prosodie today is the leader in France in the management of multi channels, transactional flows and we think with this project - with this potential acquisition - that it’s a very big opportunity for Prosodie to extend this competence in other countries in Europe.
EBM: Paul Hermelin, we just heard about Prosodie’s main areas of expertise, which are a bit different from Capgemini’s traditional businesses, what was your rationale for making this acquisition today and how does it fit in to your overall acquisition strategy?
Paul Hermelin (PH): This project is quite important because it’s something pretty new. We have accustomed the market with acquisitions, what we have called recently the “string of pearls strategy”, meaning that we are not looking for one big move but a collection of hopefully intelligent moves. Prosodie is a true extension of our scope and it is a decided willingness to go for new territories and what Georges just introduced you to is Prosodie is based on very strong proprietary knowledge. So it’s a world of IP, it’s a world of owning solutions and Capgemini wants to go there. So it’s a very big step and we know Prosodie is a leader in France, has a position in a few other countries, what I think is exciting is how to leverage that in France, that is a market we know well and how to expand that on a European basis.
EBM: Georges Croix, as CEO of Prosodie, why did you feel that it made sense for your company to join forces with Capgemini?
GC: We are very proud to be the big step for Capgemini and we are also very proud to be associated with the first European IT company. It’s very important because Prosodie designs, develops and above all we host all these applications that we develop and we think that the part of integration for this development it’s very, very sensible today and with this association for Prosodie it will be easier to win a lot of projects.
EBM: I understand that you must have some common clients and common partners. Paul Hermelin, what about the cultural fit with Prosodie?
PH: Capgemini has the DNA of a very entrepreneurial, somewhat decentralized organization, so for us, welcoming a company that itself is very entrepreneurial is relatively easy. It’s a very strong culture of engineers. That’s another common cultural feature between us. What will be a little more difficult is, most of Capgemini, we go to a customer, we try to understand what are the needs of the customer and then we kind of tailor a solution for them, trying to invent every time what would be the best fit. But I think we must change and we will learn from Prosodie, I think in the group there is high appetite for that so I expect a very strong, positive reaction, so overall I have no concern about the cultural integration. I think we are decentralized, so that new business model, Georges and his team will drive it, and then up to us to create the commercial synergies and to see hopefully the positive umbrella of a stronger international brand, to see how we can double Prosodie revenue and later on triple it.
GC: We understand that Prosodie and Capgemini are very complementary in terms of expertise over people, but also of business model. It’s very important to take advantage, we think, of this unique position on the market to become the leader in Europe and outside Europe in this business.
EBM: What are the next steps? What is your outlook and ambition for this acquisition?
PH: We will follow the legal process, so hopefully we will have completed the due diligence and hopefully we can close that transaction by the end of July so that we can start being operational in the market as of September and prepare 2012 together. What is remarkable about Prosodie, it’s a company that went through the recession still growing, so adding new customers, and that has always delivered a superb margin – a double digit margin – so quite accretive to the group. So we want to protect that, but we want to protect that while gaining scale and growing the business. We have joint projects in Germany, we will look at the UK market, that could go beyond Europe and I think the fall and then will be the preparation of the next three years and the 2012 budget - quite exciting!
EBM: Georges Croix, CEO of Prosodie, Paul Hermelin, CEO of Capgemini, thank you both very much.
PH, GC: Thank you.
