French multinational Capgemini is betting that more integrated creative and service design firepower can make customer transformations deliver promised returns amid increasing executive scrutiny of major martech investment and results.

Julie Raoux, Chief Customer Officer Capgemini Invent AUNZ and MD of design and innovation unit, Frog, told Mi3 that a key reason that CX overhauls – such as a Salesforce or Adobe integration – risk under-delivery is firstly because marketing teams are not those involved in the process, and secondly because the crucial last rollout mile can be dogged by fatigue.

“The problem is, when they [marketers] have that new shiny thing, they are not ready to leverage it. It is a bit like ‘okay, here is the child, now learn to make him walk’.”

She said putting strategic flesh on the tech bones has to start much earlier to avoid being stuck in functional and financial crawl mode.

“We are working with a major retailer, moving them to Adobe Cloud, and it's going to be 12 months. The thing we are telling them right now is we need to do content strategy, audience strategy, map the concept that's going to talk to your audience and make your brand shine even more, in addition to just having a new website on Adobe.”

The former Salesforce, HSBC, Allianz and BNP Paribas exec suggested failure to develop and execute those strategies in tandem had contributed to undercooked martech gains and irate CFOs questioning outlay.

“I think the problem on the return on investment, it's not because of the cost of implementation or not because of the solution, it is because the baby is carried from one hand to the others, and they are really struggling to make something like that make sense as a whole,” she said.

Weariness at the end of long implementations can also mean that “there are some projects and they don’t have the energy to go the extra mile to do a nice campaign and activation around it. It’s often not a marginal effort. So we help them factor that in very, very early in the process.”

Demand shifts

Demand for user experience and user interface projects remains “very strong”, she said, though the firm has seen “a bit of a shift in growth strategy and innovation – it's maybe more, ‘how do you help me make efficiencies that will make sure I'm future-proof to grow again?’”

While UX and UI remain “the biggest entry points” to Frog’s ANZ business, brand and creative are gaining traction, per Raoux, following the group’s ingestion of creative agency The Works.

Each function then feeds each other, she added, as disruption across categories is forcing companies to move much more quickly – requiring greater flexibility and fluidity across capabilities from those providing solutions.

“Everything is going so fast. Customers don't want 12 month roadmaps, they want to start and if they see an impact, they want to move on into go to market straight away,” said Raoux. “So that's what we are bringing to them, that speed of whatever works well – when we do ideation and concept, we can prototype, we can go to market, we can rebrand very, very quickly.”

Hence more brands buying the bundle.

“To transform you need branding strategy, customer experience, UI, UX, campaign, data, tech… so I would say pretty much all of our customers are leveraging more than one capability.

“Sometime it's three, sometime it's two, but it's really rare when it's just one.”

End-to-end game

Jerome Gaslain, head of brand and creative function after overseeing the integration of The Works into the group over the last year, thinks Frog can now compete more squarely with other consulting majors selling end-to-end transformation services – and cross-sell more effectively as clients seek supply chain consolidation.

It has tried that approach since soft launching in Australia in early 2022, though less successfully than its major consulting-backed rivals. Raoux says that’s because it couldn’t “offer a full value proposition, as we were missing branding and creative”.

With those parts fully rolled into Frog, Gaslain thinks the race for efficiency as marketers adjust to a new, lower spending normal and trim rosters provides tailwind to suppliers that can deliver end-to-end services from brand to customer and broader transformation. Few groups can walk the talk, he suggests, though the likes of Deloitte Digital and Accenture Song would disagree.

“In brand and creative, Accenture Song, you’re going to meet them everywhere, because it’s hard to find where they are not. So of course, a lot of people will say it’s a competition – and they are very successful,” said Gaslain. “I think the difference for us is that we have less layers … I was with a client last week, telling him that he will not see multiple layers. He will not see people billable that don’t work on the account.”

A veteran of agencies and groups including M&C Saatchi, Dentsu, Omnicom and most recently WPP, Gaslain thinks Frog’s integrated model sets it apart from his former holding company employers.

“It’s quite a big change from working for holdcos … this business doesn’t rely on one part. We are all on the same floor here. We can easily talk within the team at Frog, but even outside of Frog, with Capgemini Invent and Capgemini, we can go outside and talk capabilities, talk expertise. That's something that I think traditional advertising agencies can't provide … It just offers more capabilities,” he suggests. “It makes my life a bit easier.”

But he is still running into the traditional agencies in most brand pitches.

“We are in a country that has the most independent agencies in the world, so of course, we run into all of the independents that are doing brilliant work, we run into all the holdcos. But I think we are in quite a unique position.

Creative selling

Capgemini has to get better at telling and selling that story to a wider audience – and Gaslain thinks that applies across the broader consulting business as it competes for major services contracts.

“There is storytelling needed even if you talk about an IT transformation over the next 10 years – storytelling needed on how you present, how you pitch, how you answer or reassure the client.

“I think we're going to do that more and more. So the service and capabilities we have in-house is for external clients. But it's also internal – and with that, we create even more relationship, not just in Australia and New Zealand, but globally.”