"We are the partner for our clients in digital transformation!"
Interview with Thomas Breuer, CEO of Devoteam Germany
Digital transformation is relentlessly advancing in nearly all business environments – from the Who's Who of DAX corporations to the full spectrum of medium-sized businesses, a multitude of enterprise customers rely on the grown expertise of Devoteam as a strong technology partner to accompany them through this change. Speaking with Wirtschaftsforum, Devoteam Germany's CEO Thomas Breuer discussed current innovations and the enormous growth of his company.
Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Breuer, the IT organizations of your clients are currently undergoing significant changes - how exactly can Devoteam support them in these processes?
Thomas Breuer: We primarily see ourselves as an IT service provider and technology company, not so much as a classic consulting firm or system integrator. Thus, our consulting services, which we provide in close context to our services, do not focus on generic process management consulting, but specifically on the value of our technology for the respective customer environments and the resulting opportunities – because we are convinced that ultimately technology advances our clients. Not least through the enormous development steps of AI, we see our longstanding view confirmed. To consistently support the digital transformation at our clients, Devoteam has made substantial investments in relevant hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and AWS, as well as in the Service Now platform years ago – with corresponding services, we today generate the majority of our worldwide revenue, which now exceeds one billion EUR, and we also have the most certifications in the market.
Our strong focus on cloud-native development, along with associated hyper-agile and multinational cloud- and innovation-driven development services, also open up further disproportionate growth potential for the next few years, which we intend to specifically leverage.
Wirtschaftsforum: In particular, Devoteam was able to secure important know-how through impactful acquisitions – how did you manage to integrate the relevant entities into your corporate structures meaningfully?
Thomas Breuer: With most of our acquisitions, the founders of the companies we purchase remain on board – thus, their ideas and working methods, as well as the central vision behind their respective business approaches, are preserved. The resulting strong entrepreneurial culture is very valuable for Devoteam and is therefore carefully nurtured. At the same time, of course, a no less stringent framework is required so that all Devoteam members consistently work towards the same goals – otherwise, an organizational structure of 10,000 strong individual entrepreneurial personalities would only result in a conglomeration of lone fighters. That's why we have defined central pillars and values for ourselves, with which we consistently support our customers in their AI, platform, and technology transformation. This has allowed us to create a strong operational foundation on which we can then also take advantage of the positive frictions. Most recently, for instance, we acquired a still relatively small Singularity specialist in the field of Generative AI from Portugal, who has incredibly transformed himself into the corresponding business areas of his clients with his extremely specialized competence. For us, this represents a hugely stimulating addition to our own portfolio, simply because the Portuguese colleagues are several steps ahead of us in their tightly defined segment.
Wirtschaftsforum: What role do new working models play, which have gained enormous widespread impact, particularly since the coronavirus pandemic?
Thomas Breuer: This New Way of Working has become standard for us as for many of our clients – otherwise, offering our wide and yet specialized expertise would not be possible. An expert from Spain must be able to effortlessly collaborate with a colleague from Lithuania, for instance, to contribute together on a project in Morocco. At the same time, a clear physical presence in all our core markets throughout the EMEA region is of enormous importance – for example, we recently moved into new office spaces in the Global Tower in Frankfurt to demonstrate to the banking sector, from which many of our clients come, that we are here to stay.
Wirtschaftsforum: What impulses will determine Devoteam's commitment in the coming years?
Thomas Breuer: Our entrepreneurial spirit clearly points the way forward. In this context, we are currently making further comprehensive investments in the future, even though the economic situation is currently prompting many market participants to exercise caution. But especially in the context of increasingly complex customer environments, we consider a certain anti-frugality to be the most promising approach. Technologically, we also see ourselves clearly as Cloud People going forward and also recognize enormous potential in AI, which we want to target as a powerful business enabler. Last but not least, IT also has an important role to play in the context of sustainability, and can set numerous positive impulses here – a core competency that will certainly move more decisively onto the agenda of all stakeholders in the coming years.