Last week we had the chance to catch up with les grands fromages of Steria at the company’s annual analyst event. The venue was Microsoft’s Paris campus, a building which also houses Steria’s corporate headquarters. The fact that this major IT services firm would base its HQ and a flagship event on another company’s site probably says as much about its refreshing lack of corporate ego as it does about its appetite for close partnerships.
A number of points stood out from the discussions on the day, and we will bring eligible subscribers more details and comment soon. For one thing, it’s clear that the UK business has much to share with the rest of Steria, despite some recent disappointments (see Steria: a shaky UK performance). It is well ahead of the likes of France and Germany in key growth areas like offshoring and shared services. We also agree with Steria’s determination to focus on select verticals and European geographies - a player of its size simply cannot fight on all fronts. Indeed CEO Francois Enaud and his team continually emphasised how the business cannot compete on scale and is targeting what he labelled “transformational opportunities”. That applies doubly in infrastructure services, where Steria naturally needs infrastructure capability to support transformational projects, but is wisely cautious about big infrastructure-heavy deals.