Accenture continues its staggering growth upwards and onwards with a 26% growth in revenues in its last fiscal year. With $61.6 bn in FY’22 revenues, it is the largest IT services company in the world, and by some margin. Accenture is present in 200 cities across 50 countries with close to 750,000 people. It is one of the most admired companies in the world with the strongest brand value amongst all IT services companies.
The high pace of growth continues globally as well as within the region. They have a strong local presence in Netherlands & Belgium with a long history, diverse client portfolio, more than 5500 local employees and a strong consulting capability.
Accenture continues to be a Leader within our Applications & Digital square. They have very strong capabilities and market impact in all 3 sub areas of Systems Integration, Applications Management and Digital Transformation. Accenture is also a strong player in Cloud and Security consulting services.
Building on its strong digital capabilities, Accenture has been making big investments in AI. In the next 3 years Accenture is expected to invest $3bn towards developing AI technology assets and solutions. In the last 4 months alone, Accenture reported $100 mn worth deals signed in gen AI.
Accenture is praised by clients for its business understanding, transformation capabilities, and ability to bring and apply global knowledge for its clients. They are considered a strong partner for build and change, whilst they are perceived as being expensive for commodity service. Despite its extensive size and global presence, it works as one integrated organization with a uniform way of working.
Netherlands
In the Netherlands, Accenture employees over 4000 people, this includes consulting as well. Accenture has built a formidable reputation as a digital transformation partner. In addition to Belgium, Accenture also comes out as of the three Leaders in the Applications and Digital space in the Netherlands. They had a solid client satisfaction rating of 3.6 and the highest market impact of any partner.
The acquisition of Sentia augurs well for Benelux. Sentia employs over 300 cloud specialists expanding on Accenture’s Cloud First capabilities locally in Benelux. While they do not feature in the Infrastructure and Cloud square this year, the first interview of Sentia customers indicates a high client satisfaction.
Belgium
Accenture had a high representation in our survey – with 15+ client contracts assessed. They have improved their satisfaction ratings in the Applications and Digital square from 3.5 last year to a very nice 3.8 this year.
Main Sectors
-
Large & Medium enterprises
-
All sectors except Government
# Contracts
10+ (NL)
20+ (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
POSITIVES
-
Business understanding and consulting mindset
-
Leading partner for complex transformation work
-
Less impacted by offshore attrition due to strong local workforce
NEGATIVES
-
Pricing is at a premium
-
Contracting and negotiation is more difficult
-
Strong culture does not fit with all clients
Atos is a global technology, infrastructure, and cloud services provider with €11.3bn in revenues, 110,000 employees and presence in over 70 countries. After a few quarters of declining revenues, Atos turned the tide in Q3 and Q4 with a 1.3% increase for the full year.
This year, Atos has split into two entities: Eviden (Data and Applications driven) and Atos (Infrastructure driven). Further, the company is in discussion to sell Atos to EP Equity Investment. While Eviden is expected to have positive growth straight away, Atos is expected to have slight growth after a period of recovery. Eviden had a +4.8% organic growth last year with 2022 revenue at €5.3bn while Atos (Tech Foundations) shrunk by 1.6% with 2022 revenue of €6.0bn.
Prior to the split Atos was one of the fewer companies that offered end to end solutions – Applications, Infra & Cloud. This was also reflected in large multi-tower engagements managed by them. This strength will unfortunately diminish in time, but their management believes that the split will enable a sharper focus by each entity and unleash stronger growth.
Atos has a mature portfolio including a strong Hybrid cloud offering leveraging the Atos OneCloud. Atos CloudCatalyst is another powerful solution specifically for cloud migration. We consider them as one of the leaders within Managed Security Services. Atos also has strong capabilities for workplace and service desk. Their Poland center comes in for praise by several clients.
Netherlands
Historically Atos has had a strong presence in Netherlands thanks to Origin which merged into Atos in 2000. They have very strong revenues and are high on the local market impact. They have strong representation across all industry sectors and government.
Whilst they have strong delivery record in data centers, client feedback indicates scope to improve on cloud transformation projects. Atos’ client satisfaction score is somewhat modest at 3.0 for Infrastructure & Cloud which causes them to miss out on a Leader position.
Belgium
While we did not see an impact of this uncertainty for their Applications customers (client satisfaction at 3.5), satisfaction for their Infrastructure and Cloud customers has fallen sharply from 3.6 last year to 2.9 this year, resulting in Atos falling out of the Leaders category this year. This is also reflected in the large number of multi-tower contracts – of which Atos has the highest number amongst all service providers in our study.
Their main challenge for applications remains to expand their footprint outside of the public sector (EU + government) which they can certainly achieve given their strong global capabilities.
Main Sectors
-
Large & Medium enterprises
-
Government / EU
# Contracts
11-15 (NL)
11-15 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Strong track record and capabilities in Infrastructure
-
Strong local presence in both Netherlands and Belgium
-
Good near-shore capabilities
NEGATIVES
-
Modest to low client satisfaction scores for cloud transformation
projects in Netherlands and Belgium
Capgemini is riding on a high with strong 2022 closing the last fiscal year with €22 bn in revenues and a 16.8% growth in constant currency. It has 360,000 employees globally and are committed to environmental sustainability and net zero goals.
They have a strong focus on Europe (50% of its revenues) and Benelux. Their 3 main service lines are: Strategy & Transformation (8%), Applications and Technology (63%) and Engineering (29%). The core Applications and Technology business grew 18% last year.
Under the leadership of Aiman Eizzat, Capgemini has consolidated its group companies under 4 brands - Capgemini, Capgemini Invent (consulting), Capgemini Sogeti (testing and capacity services) & Capgemini Engineering (Altran). Capgemini has strong capabilities in SAP and is a leader in S/4 HANA transformations across Europe. With Capgemini Engineering (Altran acquisition), they are one of the leaders in product engineering. Capgemini group provides a very broad spectrum of offering which combined together offers tremendous value for their customer.
Netherlands
With over 6500 employees, Capgemini is the one of the largest IT Service providers in NL. More than a third of revenues comes from Public sector followed by manufacturing and retail. Capgemini NL has local capabilities in infrastructure and cloud. The Utrecht center also hosts Applied Innovation Exchange which is used to co-curate innovative technologies with their customers. Recently, a digital cockpit was developed for KLM using VR technologies to simulate flight trainings. They also are one of the leaders for Security services in Netherlands with a very large practice and a big number of customer SOCs that they operate.
Customer satisfaction score for applications and digital services comes in at a solid 3.6. They come out as one of the three Leaders for this square. Customers find Capgemini delivery to be stable. They are praised for their strong customer focus and for maintaining good relationship at all levels. Clients consistently talk about a strong cultural fit. They are doing well on both support and projects / transformation.
Belgium
Capgemini has strong local delivery capability in Belgium with close to 2000 people. They are able to seamlessly blend rightshore capability for applications and operations with local capability for consulting, projects and transformation work.
They remain a Leader square for Application & Digital Services in our Belgium square. This assessment comes on back of the strength of their local business, maturity and completeness of service offering and high customer satisfaction scores. They have also been able to leverage group capabilities from Invent to drive transformations for clients. We also consider them to be a leader for Managed Security Services in Belgium.
Client satisfaction scores in Belgium for Applications & Digital services remain strong at 3.5 (3.6 last year). Client satisfaction for Cloud and Infrastructure services showed a small improvement with 3.1 (3 last year).
Main Sectors
-
Large & Medium enterprises
-
All sectors
# Contracts
10 (NL)
11-15 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Global reach with local presence offering good cultural fit
-
Strong capabilities across – strategy, transformation, digital and cloud, and security
-
Strong growth trajectory
NEGATIVES
-
Cloud practice underrepresented in Belgium
-
Stable delivery, but often lack of pro-activeness
Cegeka is a European IT services company with €744mn in last reported annual revenues with a growth of 16%. Cegeka has more than 5500 employees across 11 European countries. Cegeka is betting on the trinity of 5G, AI and cloud to drive their growth for the next decade.
Now having completed 30 years, this family owned business has grown both organically and through acquisitions. Recent acquisitions include KPN Consulting and cyber security specialist SecurIT in the Netherlands and Microsoft Azure specialist DexMach in Belgium.
Belgium still represents a little over half of the total revenues with the Netherlands being another 30%. They have a balanced portfolio across infrastructure and applications services. In Belgium, the business is split 40-40-20 across infrastructure services, application services and professional services (capacity services).
Cegeka is particularly active in the mid market and lower end of the upper market. Public/Social and Healthcare are their two biggest areas. They also have strong market share with the smaller banks and insurance companies. Cegeka has some very strong examples of improving the life of the citizens through initiatives such as Smartschool and nexuzhealth. They are a partner for Digital Flanders for both Digital Workplace and Applications services.
Cegeka are a strong player in infrastructure/cloud services. They have a complete portfolio across datacenter, workplace, service desk and cloud transformation services. Within applications, they are mostly active in custom development and portal development largely within the government and healthcare sectors. They have a Business Solutions offering based on Microsoft technology.
Cegeka differentiates itself from its competition on proximity & cultural fit. A family owned company “in close cooperation” with their clients. This is recognized by their clients, who give them satisfaction scores of 3.3 for Applications and Digital (3 last year) and a score of 3 for Cloud/Infrastructure (3.1 last year).
Main Sectors
-
Medium & small enterprises
-
Public-Social, Healthcare
# Contracts
10 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Strong local presence and cultural fit
-
Strong Infra practice with good cloud transformation capabilities
-
Building vertical solutions leveraging new technologies
-
DexMach acquisition strengthens cloud capabilities
NEGATIVES
-
No offshore / global capability
-
Applications capabilities and credentials are not at par with the leaders
Cognizant is a global IT services and digital transformation company with 350,000 employees and annual revenues of $19.4 bn. While they are traditionally strong in Financial Services and Healthcare, over time they have developed a more balanced portfolio with growth in Products & Resources and CMT. Notably, Cognizant works for all of the top 30 pharma companies and 9 of the top 10 European banks.
North America still represents a large portion of their revenues at 75% with Europe being just under 20%. They have been growing 5% YoY globally as of Q4-2022 with a slight negative growth in the last quarter (Q2-2023).
Voluntary attrition which has plagued Cognizant in the last year has dropped to 20% compared to 30% a year ago but has to stabilize further. The change of leadership with Infosys veteran Ravi Kumar as the new CEO, was largely welcomed both internally and on the stock market. His focus is to steady the ship and put the company back on growth path.
The new CEO is focused on accelerating growth, simplifying operations and building employee trust. His task is eased owing to long-standing customer relationships and a strong industry focused organization. Acquisition of Mobica, which has very strong IoT embedded capabilities adds to Cognizant’s strength in engineering as well as nearshore delivery capabilities in Poland.
Netherlands
Cognizant has a good presence in Netherlands with 1650 local consultants. It is serving customers across key verticals like Banking & Financial Services, Manufacturing, Life science, Telecom and Technology. Cognizant has been delivering E2E services to several customers bringing together its expertise in infrastructure and applications. It has also led the multi-cloud/hybrid transformation for companies in Netherlands.
Cognizant has strong local capabilities in digital marketing and customer experience. The delivery center in Amsterdam also hosts the digital studio that helps customer to prototype and collaborate digital solutions.
Cognizant’s customer satisfaction score for Applications and Digital services comes in at a strong 3.6 whilst for Infrastructure and Cloud it stands at an even better 3.7. Customers are appreciative of Cognizant’s industry expertise and advisory capabilities. However, customers do believe there is scope to improve upon areas such as resource fulfilment and replacement.
Belgium
Cognizant Belgium has been growing faster in the last years fueled by 15-20% growth locally. In Belgium, Cognizant has a strong presence in Banking, Healthcare and Telco sectors and a growing presence in Industry. They have strong local leadership in Belgium focusing on account management and delivery, with 500 local associates and a strong global delivery network.
We see them as particularly strong in applications management and digital transformation. Client satisfaction levels for Applications and Digital services remain very consistent with last year at 3.4. They have been identified as one of the Digital Transformation Leaders.
Main Sectors
-
Large & Medium enterprises
-
Banking, Telecom, Lifesciences
# Contracts
11-15 (NL)
11-15 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
POSITIVES
-
They have a strong presence in Banking and growing in other industry sectors
-
Nearshore capabilities in Gdansk, Poland with
7500 consultants -
Strong growth in and focus on the local geography
NEGATIVES
-
Voluntary attrition levels still remain in the range of 20%
Founded in 1991 as a 1 person company, the Cronos group has grown to 8000 individuals and €970 mn in revenues serving 5000+ customers in BeNeLux. The group has a unique strategy of operating as small entrepreneurial companies that are specialists in niche or emerging technologies. The group is also an early stage investor, incubator, integrator and venture capital firm.
The group strategy is to select certain technologies, actively form knowledge cells and encourage potential entrepreneurs within the knowledge cells to pursue the technology in question. The group itself keeps a low profile but some of their brands like Flexso and Cloudar are well known. They also have some interesting company names such as Sidekick and Three Headed Giant. The combined entity is largest IT services company in Belgium, a phenomenal achievement for a Belgian start-up.
The Cronos group companies tend to be typically small. They tend to split when they reach a size of ~20 people. Flexso, the company most represented in our survey is an exception with more than 350 SAP specialists.
Customer feedback for Cronos has always remained very positive. This year they score a 3.3 for Applications & Digital (compared to 3.6 last year). However, we hear more and more customers, particularly in public services that they would like to add Cronos as a strategic partner. They seem to be the go-to company when things go wrong on a project or you need niche skills that are very difficult to find on the market. Their knowledgeable and likeable employees are praised by many clients.
The Cronos group companies are typically more active in the small and medium enterprises though we see more large firms start to work with them as a niche player.
One drawback of Cronos is their inability to pool together their resources and combine forces across different Cronos entities. This sometimes hinders them from taking on larger and diversified projects.
Main Sectors
-
Small and Mid-tier clients
# Contracts
10+ (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
POSITIVES
-
Strong technical competencies in niche technologies
-
Good cultural fit for the small and medium enterprises
-
Very high client satisfaction scores
NEGATIVES
-
Lack of a global delivery model or global capabilities
-
They are a loosely coupled set of companies, unable to bring together combined group capabilities
Delaware is a Belgium based technology services company that is focused on the mid market segment. They have revenues of $500mn globally with exceptional growth in the last few years. They have presence in Europe, US and Asia. Belgium represents about half of their global business.
They are one of the largest players within the applications and digital domain in Belgium with 1200 employees and longstanding relationships with their clients. Delaware is particularly strong in SAP and Microsoft. They have even been recently named as the latest Platinum partner for SAP. 80% of their business is project based – though they start to expand on managed services. Delaware has a very strong digital workplace practice. They are helping several clients to envision and realize the digital workplace of the future.
From an industry presence, they have grown beyond manufacturing into the wider industry, into food, retail and a dominant presence in utilities. Presence within finance and telecom is still limited.
They have both offshore (China, Malaysia, Philippines) and nearshore (Brazil, Hungary) capabilities – though the scale is limited when compared to their global peers.
With our revised evaluation criteria for Market Impact, Delaware has seen a big upwards shift. Owing to their very large number of customers in Belgium and sizeable local revenues, they have moved up from being a Niche Provider to be one of the Challengers. We believe this is more reflective of the strong market impact they have on the local geography.
In terms of client satisfaction, they have dropped a bit from 3.5 last year to 3.4 this year.
Main Sectors
-
Medium & Small enterprises
-
Industry, Utilities
# Contracts
5-10 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Strong on SAP and Microsoft with deep technical skills
-
Flexible and customer focused
-
Fractional FTE model works well for the small to medium sized customers
-
Long term trust based relationships, cultural fit
NEGATIVES
-
Scale and global reach is an issue for large, multinational customers
-
Lacking consulting mindset and business understanding
Deloitte is a global Tax, Audit, Business Consulting and IT services organization with revenues of $59.3bn in FY2022 (an increase of 20% in local currency). They have 415,000 people worldwide and work with 90% of the Fortune Global 500 companies. Brand Finance has recognized Deloitte as the strongest and most valuable commercial services brand in the world for the 4th year running. Close to half of their workforce is under 30 years of age and also women represent close to half (48%) of the workforce in EMEA.
Consulting services represents about $26bn in revenues. Enterprise Technology & Performance (a sub-group of Consulting) focusses on providing technology strategy, digital transformation and IT project services. They are one of our three identified leaders for Transformation services – with a large portfolio of systems integration or complex technology projects and technology strategy and digital transformation.
In Belgium, Deloitte is particularly strong in the areas of SAP and Salesforce. In addition, they have strong teams in finance and supply chain / network operations.
Feedback from clients remains overwhelmingly positive. Deloitte had a high satisfaction score of 3.6 for applications and digital services – (compared to 3.7 last year). Deloitte is praised for its business acumen, consulting and transformation mindset, ability to take the customer together on the journey and very positive relations with the business. They are seen as thought leaders and strategic partners.
Deloitte has strongly benefitted from our revised assessment mechanism looking at local market impact – moving from the niche category to a challenger, on back of their strong revenues and client base for transformation work. While they seem to offer Applications Management services globally, we have not seen any instance of that locally in Belgium.
Deloitte is not a company but a global network of independent firms. This is often reflected in business behaviour - ability to coordinate across countries sometimes seems challenging.
Main Sectors
-
Large & Medium enterprises
-
All sectors
# Contracts
5-10 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
POSITIVES
-
Strong consulting mindset and business understanding
-
Their business model still affords the right attention to Belgium
-
Ability to engage and drive both business and IT stakeholders
NEGATIVES
-
Weaker global delivery model and ability to act as one global company
-
Limited portfolio of IT services
DXC is a global applications, digital transformation and infrastructure/cloud services company with $14.4bn in fiscal 2023 revenues (organic decline of 2.7%) and 130,000 employees. They are one of the few companies active on both applications and infrastructure business.
DXC is organized along two major service lines. Global Business Services (GBS) which comprises of Analytics & Engineering, Applications and Business Process Services. And Global Infrastructure Services (GIS) which comprises of Cloud & Security, IT Outsourcing and Modern Workplace, both of which are of almost equal size. The story of DXC is a story of two contrasting themes – a growing and more profitable GBS business (7 quarters of continuous growth) and a shrinking and less profitable GIS business (7 quarters of decline). This is reflective of the wider market trend whereby the Infrastructure service revenues of the service providers are declining as increasing loads move to the public cloud.
Under its new leadership, DXC has been undergoing a transformation and is focused on building modern applications on a secure cloud platform. DXC’s operating model is now structured around 6 key offerings - Analytics & Engineering, Applications, Insurance Software, Security, Cloud & ITO, Modern Workplace. DXC has adopted an asset light strategy and exiting the capital intensive data center business.
DXC is very strong when it comes to modernization of application and data. Luxsoft acquisition adds to it’s digital capabilities especially in analytics, UX/UI, IoT, cloud and DevOps. DXC is particularly strong in the Insurance sector where they have their own insurance platform and provide not only IT but also business process services.
Netherlands
Bucking its global numbers DXC in Netherlands has a higher share of business from GIS (60% of revenue), this is also reflected in the portfolio mix of customer we have surveyed. Locally DXC has very strong presence in public sector clients followed by Retail, Manufacturing and Financial Services/Insurance. DXC has around 1100 consultants in Netherland, with nearshore capabilities in Poland & Bulgaria.
In our Infrastructure & Cloud Square DXC’s satisfaction score is a strong 3.5. They have been appreciated for their delivery capabilities in workplace and end user computing. Whilst the feedback on infrastructure & cloud operations was positive, the cloud transformation project delivery needs some attention.
Belgium
While GBS is 50% of their global revenues, in BeLux it even represents 75% of their business highlighting the focus of the company.
They have close to 1000 people in Belgium and are a key player particularly within the government sector where they have a lot of strong credentials around Digital Transformation for public services and the citizen. Consequently, they have been identified as one of the Leaders for Digital Transformation services in Belgium.
They continue to have very good satisfaction scores on Applications with a score of 3.6 and this year have also had a big improvement in their score for Cloud/Infrastructure services with a score of 3.6 (compared to 3.1 last year). Their scores have improved as anticipated by us in the past reports thanks to their renewed focus and move out of some problem deals that bogged them for some years.
DXC has also been one of the winners in terms of their Market Impact positioning for Applications with our renewed evaluation criteria. This has seen them move from the Niche Players category into one of the Challengers.
Main Sectors
-
Large & Medium enterprises
-
Government
# Contracts
11-15 (NL)
15+ (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Balanced portfolio across applications and infrastructure
-
Strong in custom applications modernization and digital transformation
-
Very strong in the government sector in Belgium
NEGATIVES
-
While turnaround is underway, revenues are still declining
-
Customer feedback on cloud transformation is not consistent
Fujitsu is a global technology services company that has 130,000 employees and revenues of $32bn. While 70% of their revenues come from Japan, they are truly global with a presence in over 180 countries. Technology Services comprises 65% of their revenues (the other being products). Sustainability is high on their agenda with their global mission statement being - to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation. After a few declining quarters, Fujitsu services returned to growth in the last quarter.
For infrastructure / cloud services, they are one of the biggest players in the world. Its one of the few companies to offer complete end to end solutions that span applications and devices in several industries e.g. in Retail and Healthcare. They want to leverage these capabilities to be a true digital transformer offering sustainable solutions.
In Belgium, they are one of the most important players for Infrastructure and Cloud services. Fujitsu has 650 people in Belgium and another 700 working from global delivery centers for Belgian clients. They offer datacenter, infrastructure management, cloud transformation, service desk and workplace services. They also have their global CoE for blockchain in Belgium and a strong ServiceNow practice.
Almost half of Fujitsu’s business comes from the European institutions and government sector. We believe that with their mature delivery capabilities and flexible model, they are a very strong fit for mid-market clients where they have a good cultural fit. Within the industry, while we see them often in the European arm of large Japanese conglomerates.
Fujitsu is praised by clients for their delivery capability, flexibility and ability to adapt to different client situations and requirements. Fujitsu relied extensively on its Kazan delivery center in Russia to service Belgian clients. In wake of the Ukraine war, Fujitsu pulled out of Kazan and clients were migrated mostly to India while a small proportion was moved to Poland. This transition did lead to some service issues at a few clients. However, the overall client satisfaction with Fujitsu remains stable at 3.1 (compared to 3.0 last year).
Main Sectors
-
Medium & Small enterprises
-
EU, Government, Industry
# Contracts
10+ (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Mature service portfolio and flexible client centric approach
-
Very strong fit for mid-market clients
-
Ability to offer end to end digital solutions
NEGATIVES
-
Less industrialized compared to some of their peers
-
Weak presence outside of European institutions and Japanese companies
HCLTech is a global IT services company with revenues of $12.6 billion (FY2023) and 225,000 employees. Their services business grew by 15% last year and they expect growth in 2024 to be in the high single digits. HCLTech is organized into the following business segments: IT & Business services (72%), Engineering & R&D services (16%), and Products & Platforms (12%).
Through HCL Cloud SMART they offer comprehensive cloud strategy, cloud migration, cloud operations and cloud native development capabilities. HCL has leveraged their product and platform capabilities along with strong ecosystem partnerships & industry capabilities to develop this cloud offering.
Their platform solutions such as HCL Notes, Domino, Unica provide certain stickiness with their customers. They also have a strong digital workplace offering. Clients appreciate HCLTech for their knowledge, service delivery, flexibility and willingness to work together with a positive mindset.
While their portfolio of IT and Business services comprises of Applications, Cloud/Infrastructure and BPO services with sizeable business in each of these areas in Netherlands and Belgium. They employ over 1000 employees in the Benelux region who service smaller number of high-profile clients.
Netherlands
In the Netherlands HCL has customers across industry sectors like Banking, Hi-Tech, Health care and Manufacturing. HCL delivers end to end services (Infra, workplace & Apps) for several customers in Netherlands. HCL has signed multi-year contracts to modernize core IT systems and transform clients into a cloud first, agile organization.
HCL has scores of 3.7 in our Application & Digital Square and a very strong 3.9 in our Cloud & Infrastructure square. HCL is seen as reliable and flexible partner by Dutch clients.
Belgium
While HCLTech does not have the market share of a Kyndryl or Atos in Belgium, they have a small number of clients who are top names within their industry. Not bogged down with legacy datacenters or a large ageing local workforce they have a public cloud first mentality which we don’t often see with all providers. They have an agreement with Proximus’ Enterprise Business Unit to focus on the small and mid tier market for the provision of hybrid cloud services.
This year they had a client satisfaction score of 3.6 (a drop from 3.9 in the last year).
Main Sectors
-
Large & Medium enterprises
-
All sectors except Public
# Contracts
11-15 (NL)
5-10 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Strong cloud transformation capabilities with cloud first mindset
-
Strength across engineering, products & platforms
-
Strong in integrated service across towers
NEGATIVES
-
Local presence not at the level of competition
-
Perceived to be too sales oriented
IBM is a global consulting services and technology solutions & platforms company with $60.5 bn in revenues and people across 175 countries in the world.
IBM consulting spans business transformation, experience design, technology consulting and applications operations. It represents about 30% of the global business ($18bn in 2021) with 150,000+ people across 150+ countries helping clients in their digital transformation, build open hybrid cloud architectures, manage and deploy applications and provide business operations services. This is a healthy growing business, with a 12% increase last year on the back of some large deals like CIBC, Delta Airlines, Bank of America, Samsung Electronics, Barclays and Citi. They have a strong book to bill of 1.1 and are particularly strong in the Financial sector.
This shows that the strategy of spinning off Kyndryl (which is returning to growth independently) is paying off, IBM having reversing several years of decline and returning both entities to growth. With the spin off, IBM is betting big on AI and open hybrid cloud driven by their Red Hat platform to drive future growth.
In Belgium IBM is particularly focussed on financial services and public/EU – which together represent 85% of its business. They are focussed on the larger deals and clients that have a significant transformation aspect.
While capabilities are quite mature and offerings quite wide – IBM scored very poorly on client satisfaction with average score being 2.5 (compared with 2.8 last year). Clients complain of rigid processes and organization, over complexified solutions, low client centricity and difficulty to do business with. To clients it seems like a very large ship that is hard to steer.
Main Sectors
-
Large enterprises
-
Financial Services, Government / EU
# Contracts
5-10 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
End User
Services
POSITIVES
-
Strong open hybrid cloud offering based on Redhat
-
Significant R&D investment and innovation globally
-
Strategic relationships and traction at large clients
NEGATIVES
-
Large and complex organization with low flexibility
-
Not always able to bring its global expertise and innovation to local clients
-
Over complexified solutions and processes
Infosys is a global technology services and digital transformation company who had $18.2 bn revenues (FY2022-23) and 300,000 employees. Infosys grew 15.4% in the last fiscal year and 4.2% in Q1 2023-24. They have a healthy operating margin of 21%. Infosys has emerged as the 3rd most valuable IT services brand in the Brand Finance report 2023.
Their core offerings are divided into ‘Scale Digital Agile’ (62% of business) driven by data analytics, digital and cloud transformation; and ‘Energize the Core’ (38% of business) that focusses on management and modernization of client legacy systems. Infosys has also developed ‘Cobalt’ - a set of services, solutions, and platforms for enterprises to accelerate their cloud journey.
Infosys has a strong products and platform offering with several industry leading offerings such as Finacle (digital banking platform), Equinox (ecommerce and digital marketing platform), Panaya (cloud based test management and change intelligence), edgeverve (RPA platform) and Stater (mortgage processing market leader in BeNeLux).
Compared to their Indian peers, we find Infosys to be traditionally stronger in large transformation programs. They may be large scale SAP roll outs for the likes of AB Inbev and Friesland Campina, ecommerce platform for Heineken, or Finacle implementation for leading banks.
Netherlands
Infosys has long standing customer relationship in Netherlands, some of them spanning decades. They work with most of the leading banks and insurance companies in Netherlands. Stater founded in 1997 as a subsidiary of Bouwfonds and the leading mortgage processor, is now majority owned by Infosys. In addition, Infosys works across a cross section of industries including telecom, retail, logistics, energy & utilities. Infosys has leveraged its experience in agile to deliver to key projects for its Dutch customers.
Infosys has been recognized by their customers for delivering stable services, they are a reliable partner for agile development. Customers note the emphasis Infosys places on process and knowledge management. Infosys comes in with a customer satisfaction score of 3.2 for applications and digital square.
Belgium
In Belgium, Infosys is particularly strong in the telco and manufacturing sectors where they long have a long history and truly strategic relationships. Their industry focussed verticals that roll into Europe means that we often do not see Infosys in new competitive deals at the smaller Belgian clients. Across BeNeLux, Infosys has is a clear leader in Financial Services and Telco while they have a strong European footprint for Manufacturing.
Infosys had a client satisfaction score of 3.3 (slightly up from 3.2 last year).
Main Sectors
-
Large enterprises
-
Telecom, Manufacturing
# Contracts
5-10 (NL)
5-10 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
POSITIVES
-
Long established client relationships in Belgium and Netherland
-
Deep industry knowledge and capability
-
Strong products and platform based delivery
-
Deep C-level relationships with the large clients
NEGATIVES
-
Limited visibility on new competitive deals in Belgium
-
High concentration around few clients
-
European P&L structure affords lesser focus on individual countries
Kyndryl is the world’s largest provider of infrastructure services. With 4000+ customers including 75% of the Fortune 100, Kyndryl continues to be the partner of choice for the most complex transformation projects and engagements. Kyndryl closed fiscal 2023 at $17bn in revenues. Their guidance remains muted for the next year with the last reported quarter (Q1 2023-24) showing a decline of 1%.
In the past year they have signed new contracts with global enterprise customers like Michelin, CaixaBank, BMW, Bangalore International Airport, Carrefour Belgium and Singapore Airlines. They operate half of the world’s mainframe systems.
This year Kyndryl marked the one year anniversary of its spin-off from IBM. While they started with a $19bn business and 90,000 employees, they were confronted with declining revenues, years of underinvestment and a unwavering focus on all things IBM. The spin-off was in a sense a freeing of shackles for Kyndryl. Since then they have focused on forging new alliances with hyperscalers and best in class technology providers, and on skills building (they have doubled the number of hyperscaler certifications in 1 year, and growing to 50,000 certifications in 2023).
Kyndryl is focussed on providing managed infrastructure and cloud transformation services on a best of breed hybrid cloud platform. They are organized by six key practices including the core offerings of Cloud (33%), Core Enterprise and z-cloud (33%) and the other practices of Security & Resiliency (13%) Application, Data & AI (4%), Network & Edge (8%) and Digital Workplace (8%).
In Oct 2022, Kyndryl launched a new platform, Kyndryl Bridge, to Orchestrate IT estates. Kyndryl Bridge is platform agonistic and can be implemented amidst existing ITSM and monitoring tools. The platform provides real-time insights into complex IT estate of enterprises. It allows business to minimize outages and reduce risks.
Netherlands
Kyndryl comes out as a Leader in our Infrastructure and Cloud services square for the Netherlands. They are the largest Infrastructure services provider by scale with a client base spread across several industry sectors including Financial Services, Automotive, Engineering, Telcom and Public services.
Kyndryl continues strong delivery in operations drawing from their strength in Mainframe systems. Most of Kyndryl customers are multi-national companies with global presence. With its global presence, Kyndryl is able to serve customers across all locations globally.
Kyndryl scores a very impressive customer satisfaction of 3.9 in our Cloud and Infrastructure Square. Customers find them very dependable for delivery of delivering core services. They are also working with several customers to modernize their IT, enabling public cloud migration and transforming into agile & DevOps setup. Customer would like to Kyndryl to improve on their proactiveness, especially towards new technology adoption.
Belgium
In Belgium they are one of the largest IT services companies despite the split. The size of their infrastructure services practice is double that of the nearest competitor. They have a large client base with financial services being more than 50% of their business, but also a large presence within manufacturing. They have a decent client satisfaction score of 3.4 (unchanged from last year).
Main Sectors
-
Large enterprises
-
Financial Services, Government / EU
# Contracts
5-10 (NL)
11-15 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Leader in complex infrastructure / mainframe services
-
Strong hybrid cloud capability with own datacenters with shared solutions
-
Trusted long-term partnership of thousands of enterprise customers
NEGATIVES
-
Several scope dependencies on IBM in certain areas (particularly linked to consulting and applications)
-
Still perceived as conservative when it comes to new technology adoption
PwC is one of the world’s leading professional services companies delivering Audit & Assurance, Advisory services, and Tax & Legal services. They service 84% of the Global Fortune 500 companies and had revenues of $50bn last year (up by 13%). They have 328,000 people across 152 countries.
Advisory services represent about $20.7bn globally. This includes both business advisory (majority) and technology advisory. In terms of Technology capabilities, PwC offers technology strategy, cloud, cybersecurity, data & analytics, business application services and services on new technologies like AI or 5G.
In Belgium they are coming very strong on business transformation projects, on platforms like S/4HANA, Salesforce, Workday, etc. They also have deep skills on cloud and data analytics. Clients praise PwC for their business acumen, consulting and transformation mindset, and deeply skilled people who fit well culturally with their clients.
They are the latest entrant to our Applications and Digital square and they have arrived in some style! This year they have the highest client satisfaction scores in this category and we have also identified them as one of the Digital Transformation Leaders in Belgium. While they do not have the scale of a Deloitte or Accenture, they are doing very impressive work combining business consulting with technology transformation across several Belgian clients.
Main Sectors
-
Large & medium sized enterprises
-
Government
# Contracts
5-10 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
POSITIVES
-
Best in class client satisfaction
-
Technology transformation with a strong business transformation angle
-
Fit well with large but also small to medium organizations
NEGATIVES
-
Smaller scale compared to the larger competition
Stefanini is small but global company with roots in South America but a presence across the world. They have $1bn in revenues with 30,000 people and a presence in 41 countries. They offer workplace and infrastructure services, application and digital services and cybersecurity services. While 20,000 of their people are in South America, they have 3200+ employees in Europe. Brussels is their European HQ and they have delivery centers in Romania and Poland. They have a diverse client portfolio well split across different industries – the most important being financial services and manufacturing.
Stefanini continues to make a mark in Belgium, particularly for their core strength which is Service Desk and Digital Workplace where we perceive them to be amongst the strongest players. They support clients in 45 languages. While their revenues and number of customers in Belgium are not at the same level as the bigger players, they continue to grow fast.
They have extremely satisfied clients and continue to have a high satisfaction score of 4 (a small drop compared to last year’s score of 4.2).
Feedback is consistently positive. Clients almost uniformly praise them for their customer focus, service delivery, cultural fit and flexibility. They are not the most industrialized of players – but the human touch and personal fit, particularly to the small and mid-tier clients seems very powerful. They are a family owned business and the strong culture and behavior of a mid-sized firm seems to fit very well with some clients.
In Belgium, they are particularly strong and focused on the Manufacturing sector. They are quite interesting if you need multi-lingual support across Europe.
Main Sectors
-
Small and medium enterprises
-
Manufacturing
# Contracts
5-10 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Consistently top notch client feedback
-
Client focus and flexibility
NEGATIVES
-
Small footprint in the BeNeLux
-
Credentials limited to Digital Workplace and Service Desk
Part of the Tata group, India's largest multinational business corporation, TCS is also the largest and most impactful of the Indian IT services companies. With FY’23 revenues of $28 bn, TCS has over 615,000 consultants across 55 countries. After a period of sluggish growth, TCS has returned to strong growth in the last few quarters with a strong book-to-bill and an industry leading operating margin of 25%. They are also the most visible of the Indian IT services companies both globally and locally.
New CEO Krithivasan took over the reins of the company starting June this year after the surprise exit of Rajesh Gopinathan. Krithi is a 30 year TCS veteran who wants to double down on the TCS core values of ‘customer & people centricity’. While he is cautious about meeting double digit growth in FY2023, he is certainly buoyant of meeting the profit margins of 25%.
TCS caters to every breadth of technology, they have built a portfolio of products and offerings that help customer in their digital journeys – TCS MasterCraft (transformation & modernization), TCS Cognix (Intelligent Automation).
Netherlands
TCS has a presence in Netherlands for over 3 decades now and works with customers across multiple industry segments – Banking, Insurance, Airlines, Specialty Chemicals, Technology and Retail. Some of these customers have been associated with TCS for two decades. Netherlands is one of the biggest markets for TCS in Europe. Even in this uncertain times, they continue to grow market share by new customers wins.
In our application and digital square for Netherlands TCS comes up with a customer satisfaction score of 3.7. TCS has steadily built a reputation of being a trusted partner for their customers. TCS can cover all technology skills and services. They have developed excellent reputation for delivering reliable and stable operations. While they continue to improve on digital transformation, cloud and project delivery.
TCS has established Paceport (innovation and experience center) in Amsterdam. TCS has ideated and co-developed a B2B2C digital mobility platform for one of its insurance customer using agile development approach.
Belgium
TCS continues to perform very strongly in Belgium. They remain as one of the Leaders within our Applications and Digital square, with a much improved client satisfaction score of 4 (compared to the already good 3.7 last year). In 2022, they have won significant new work in Cloud/ Infrastructure services and we expect them to be on our Cloud/Infra square next year.
TCS has a long history in Belgium with a presence dating back to almost 30 years. They have close to 4000 people working for 35+ very satisfied Belgian customers.
TCS is the strongest player for Application Management services. They have very strong delivery capabilities, a robust delivery network and wide technology coverage.
They are seen as dependable and reliable and in a year marked by difficult circumstances and challenges due to global attrition, TCS has stood out on client feedback. They have been perceived as being a customer focused and loyal partner with two clients scoring them at the maximum score of 5 (beyond expectations) and not a single client scoring them below 3 (satisfied).
Main Sectors
-
Large & Medium enterprises
-
All sectors
# Contracts
11-15 (NL)
11-15 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
POSITIVES
-
Client focused and reliable; Very high satisfaction scores
-
Strongest capabilities on Applications Management
-
Vast coverage of technologies and skills
NEGATIVES
-
Lack of consulting / transformation culture
-
Large part of workforce still Indian; takes time to integrate culturally with European clients
TechM is a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting and business process services with annual revenues of $6,6 billion. 50% of its revenues comes from America region, followed by 30% from Europe and 20% from rest of the world.
Considering TechM’s genesis in the telecom industry (it started as a JV between the Mahindra group and BT), it is no big surprise that 40% of its revenues comes from this sector. Such is TechM’s strength in telecom that they work with the top telco providers in 90 countries. Riding on this strength TechM has been spearheading 5G rollouts for its customers, this business alone generating over $1 bn.
Over the years, TechM has diversified into other key sectors such as Banking & Financial Services, Manufacturing, Technology and Retail. TechM’s technology offerings are evenly spread across Cloud, Networks, Engineering, Enterprise Solutions (SAP), Customer Service, Data & Analytics, Automation.
TechM continues to invest and grow in new emerging technologies and platforms including IoT, Metaverse and AI. It has curated a NXT.NOW framework to accelerate transformation initiatives of their customer leveraging these emerging technologies. Globally 5G, network modernisation, cloud, cyber security continues to be the key focus area for TechM.
TechM has a built a comprehensive suite of solutions for the cloud called CloudNXT.NOW. It offers frameworks, assets and tooling for cloud migration, muti-cloud management and DevOps. TechM also has alliances will all leading hyperscalers including AWS, Azure, GCP and Oracle.
Netherlands
In the Netherlands, TechM has some top customer names across multiple industry sectors including Telecom, Automotive, Consumer Goods & Pharma. They are present on both our Applications and Infrastructure squares. Being a relatively new entrant, they don’t yet have the scale of the bigger players – but this makes them more hungry for business and an attractive partner for clients seeking higher provider attention.
They provide a range of services cutting across applications, cloud and end user computing. They have delivered multiple cloud migration success stories in the Netherlands. They are also particularly good at end user computing.
TechM had very strong client satisfaction scores of 3.7 in the Applications & Digital square and 3.9 in Cloud and Infra square respectively.
Main Sectors
-
Large enterprises
-
Telecom, Automotive
# Contracts
11-15 (NL)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
✓
POSITIVES
-
Very satisfied customers in the Netherlands
-
Successful delivery of multiple cloud transformation projects
-
Perceived to be flexible and value for money
-
Hungry to grow, with more attention to clients
NEGATIVES
-
Not seen to be delivering on innovation and business transformation
-
Lower scale and visibility compared to peers
Wipro has returned to growth in the last year with the last three quarters growing at 17%, 13% and 10%. They reported annual revenues of $11.2 bn in FY2023 with 260,000 employees.
The last year has been a good year for Wipro in the BeNeLux with some important client wins such as Mazda in Belgium. With their recent reorganization, Wipro's new structure affords them a very strong geography focus. A new leadership team in BeNeLux and a European CEO results in a very strong strong focus on BeNeLux. They are also strengthening their sales and pre-sales teams. We expect them to grow strongly in this region.
Wipro has strong capabilities on both Applications and Digital services and Cloud transformation. They operate as two global business lines – iDEAS (Integrated Digital, Engineering & Application Services) and iCORE (Integrated Cloud Operations, Risk & Enterprise security). They have strong capabilities on Salesforce through the 4C acquisition some years ago – for which there is strong client feedback especially in Belgium.
We have seen a particularly mature cloud transformation offering and strong team at a European level. Wipro is benefitting from its investment of $1 bn in Cloud technologies. Wipro FullStride Cloud Services enables businesses to accelerate their cloud transformation by leveraging its platform, IP and talent. Wipro also is looking to expand in newer areas like SAP Rise, Low code platform development and Generative AI.
NETHERLANDS
Wipro has had some long-standing relationship with several top customers in Netherlands such as Philips, Shell, DAF, NXP and Friesland Campina. They have been able to retain and expand significantly in key accounts. Wipro has performed strongly in application service and digital workplace services. Wipro also won an innovation award at Philips, for scaling beyond being an IT partner, towards areas like Connected Care.
Wipro has a customer satisfaction score of 3.7 in our Applications and Digital square. While they have a score of 3.6 in our Infrastructure and Cloud square.
BELGIUM
Wipro won a couple of important customers, for which they have now completed the transition. Wipro has had relatively small presence in Belgium, we now expect Wipro to be a strong challenger for new deals in Belgium given their local focus and ambition.
Wipro has a customer satisfaction score of 3.4 in our Applications and Digital square.
Main Sectors
-
Technology, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Dairy
-
Public services for 4C
# Contracts
10+ (NL)
5-10 (BE)
APPLICATIONS
MANAGEMENT
✓
SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
✓
DATACENTER /
CLOUD
✓
End User
Services
POSITIVES
-
Good global capabilities across applications and cloud
-
Strong management attention to grow Benelux
-
Strong sense of CSR through the Wipro and Azim Premji foundation
NEGATIVES
-
Relatively smaller footprint in region compared to peers
-
Lack of consulting/ transformation mindset
- Attrition although stabilizing still high