Paul Migliore, CEO of Citisoft North America, is going against the economic tide—in fact, he's actively recruiting. "A lot of firms will pull back and wait out the storm," says the PricewaterhouseCoopers alumnus. "We view it as a an opportunity to get top-level talent to meet our business objectives, so when the market turns, and it will turn, we're prepared to service our clients." With a New York office opening Aug. 1 and an eye to expansion in the Middle East and Australia, Migliore's 70-consultant crew, which specializes in asset management and financial services, is poised for global success. Consulting spoke with Migliore about Citisoft's plans for the future. Consulting: So you've just opened your New York office.
Migliore: We've always been a global consulting firm. We're not large; we're boutique. But we've always been global; in fact, the origin of Citisoft comes out of London. And when Citisoft expanded into the U.S., we expanded into Boston, and the idea was that Boston would service the North American marketplace, and over time what we've recognized is that in order to be successful in New York, you need to be in New York. We really aggressively are going to try to get local talent out of the New York area to make New York over time the same size as Boston.
Consulting: What's the growth plan talent wise?
Migliore: We're probably at 70 as a global firm right now; I would be very surprised if we weren't over 100 within a year's time. We'd love to grow faster, but in consulting, it's very difficult to grow 50, 60, 70 percent without experiencing some growing pains that would be quite visible to our clients.
Consulting: Are you finding that growth is realistic with the current market?
Migliore: From our perspective, it is. And it is because of the global nature of the growth that we're trying to do. If the model were that we were just going to continue to service our clients primarily out of London and Boston, then I would say, 'Yeah, given the current economic climate, I doubt very much that we'd grow at a 30 percent growth rate.' If you look at Dubai, for example, it has a trillion dollars of just free cash waiting to be invested. So when you look at the economic downturn in the U.S. and what you see in Europe and around the globe, there are areas where there is economic expansion still growing at double-digit rates.
Consulting: What other hotspots are you seeing globally?
Migliore: Well China is still a hot bed, but it has slowed down a bit. India is becoming so crowded now with firms that have extended their reach. You've got all the Indian consulting firms, such as our parent company, Satyam; you've got the U.S. firms that have spread in there like the Accentures and IBMs, and then you've got all of the global corporations that are setting up captive models in India.
From our perspective, Central South America is an area right now where we're seeing some expansion and growth going on. The Middle East is probably a big hot bed; Australia is still a hot bed right now.
Consulting: Are you seeing the length or type of engagement change much?
Migliore: A year ago, we were doing a lot of what I'd call market expansion type products where our clients were looking to get into alternative assets, they were looking to get into new product lines … to grow their revenue. Now it's been a little bit of a shift where those projects that were already in motion are continuing on, but now we're seeing our clients looking at the bottom line again and saying, 'How do I become more operationally efficient, i.e., how do I reduce my cost?' So they're now looking at ways to try to strengthen the bottom line by reducing the costs in their organization.
Consulting: Will you be expanding your offerings?
Migliore: Well we really have [been]. In fact, over the last year, we've now become an end-to-end consulting service provider to our financial services clients. A year-and-a-half ago we primarily focused in on systems selection, systems implementation and systems integration types of engagements primarily driven around the implementation of some sort of software application. We've now extended more into the front end of the consulting value chain where we do a significant amount of our revenue in strategic assessments and the strategy arena. And we've now extended further into the back end where, with the assistance of Satyam, we have the ability to do much more custom development work, more outsourcing and what we call operate where we can even help clients maintain and support their IT architecture or just physically run their operations for them.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.