“Our company has had a new look since the beginning of this year, and now we have a new portfolio of services,” says Daniel Demanet, General Manager for Getronics in Luxembourg. “We want to be the workspace company, doing everything around the workspace: we want to help people collaborate, give the devices, prepare everything and give the necessary support if there are problems.” As well as workspace, the new portfolio encompasses connectivity and datacentres, with “consultancy services provided for all those activities. This makes up the new portfolio and shows we offer what is very much an end-to-end package.” The new direction brings Getronics Luxembourg into step with Getronics worldwide, but David Cindric, Sales Manager for this country, states that the new portfolio, launched on 7 September, “is nevertheless relevant and tailored to our activities in the Belux market. Our strong image on the global level will thus transfer to this local level.”

Pre-empting a question, Demanet claims that “there are two principal reasons for a new portfolio: the prevailing trends in the market-place, and then the customers’ needs.” Indeed, business priorities have changed in accordance with the times. According to a Gartner survey dated from March this year, the main priority as reported by CIOs was “improving business processes” in both 2008 and 2009, but “attracting and retaining new customers” and “creating new products or services (innovation)” were replaced by “reducing enterprise costs” and “improving enterprise workforce effectiveness” in second and third positions, from last year to this. It all ties in with how Demanet and Cindric viewed the crisis when they were interviewed in the same month as the survey was released: the crisis presented an opportunity, but emerging from it clearly presents another, and the company is quick on the uptake and to adapt.

Core business focus

“We want to do consulting. It is very important for us. We want to give ICT business consultancy on strategy and governance, change management and project management. Also important is workspace optimisation,” insists Demanet. Going back to the Gartner survey, Demanet continues, “that is the way we have found to reduce cost for enterprises. That is the importance of our consultancy services. On application consultancy, we are working with everything around content and document management.” Overall, when discussing consultancy, Getronics focuses on two things: “value for money and workforce productivity. We have two workshops on these topics where we can see with the customer what we can do for them. These are our drivers,” says Demanet. Cindric adds that they “wish to position Getronics as a trusted advisor. It is very important to specify that on one hand we cover end-to-end solutions, and on the other that we maintain a strong image: to be in line with the global portfolio and have this strong image locally is vital.”

The decision to sell their subsidiary, Infotechnique, which is a document outsourcing processor, is part of Getronics’ overall strategy to focus on the four elements of their portfolio. “There is no problem between us and Infotechnique,” insists Demanet, “their services simply are not in the portfolio. We would be happy to work with them again in the future. Nothing has actually changed. We still have our strategy to develop in Luxembourg. This is why David joined us,” he continues, nodding at Cindric, “now it is about gaining new business as well as keeping old.”

“I think 2009 has been a period of crisis for everybody but there has been no downsizing for us. That said, there has been no growth either,” reflects Demanet on this year. And for the coming year? “Back to growth,” is Cindric’s quick-fire response. A lot of projects are delayed, they admit. However, the company is refining and streamlining, and customers must keep up with technological changes. This is how they will get back to growth. Is it a new mantra? Put it this way: neither Demanet nor Cindric waited until the end of the interview to say it...