I do not think that cybersecurity is more important today than it was five years ago. It s always been critically import- ant, but the fallout of a failure is much greater. You have to take an integrated approach to handling these threats, from protecting the organization and customers to how you communicate on your response.

How do you see Capgemini s role in the integration? It was clear to us that the faster we could bring the business together on one platform, the faster business syn- ergies, business process capabilities, and IT synergies could be attained. Partnering with Capgemini has sped things up in two important ways. First, by not having to allocate our own inter- nal resources to managing and main- taining our applications, our teams can work on other high-value projects. Second, more and more functions are using Capgemini as the subject mat- ter expert on given processes prior to them being integrated. This speeds up their integration.

What have been the business benefits of the relationship with Capgemini? One of the reasons we made the deci- sion to partner with Capgemini was to bring in best practices and increase the level of automation of our testing. Here, we see real opportunities in

terms of time. By increasing the level of testing automation, we can deliver more releases to the business with the right level of quality. Therefore, I see Capgemini helping us introduce technology quickly that will improve business results and support the inte- gration as well. We have a partnership that cuts across and enables multiple priorities.

How is this transforming IT at Office Depot? Doing things faster and in a smarter and better way positions us as busi- ness partner, rather than a utility ser- vice. We listen to and understand what the business units need from a tech- nology perspective. Then we find new operating models, like we ve done in analytics, business intelligence, mar- keting and e-commerce.

This requires the business to trust IT and for IT to work with trusted ven- dors like Capgemini. You are forth- right, transparent and pragmatic in your approach. You are willing to take a step back and do things a little dif- ferently. The relationship between our two companies is about collaboration, being pragmatic, understanding what we are trying to accomplish, and put- ting something together that works for both of us.

Throttling Up Integration Capgemini recently signed a contract with Office Depot to support its merger with OfficeMax(1). We will provide business process outsourcing, application maintenance and testing services worldwide. Office Depot Inc. extended its relationship with us to consolidate and standardize its financial and accounting processes across the combined global operations with OfficeMax. We began working with Office Depot in 2011 to streamline its end-to-end finance processes and are now expanding our services post-merger.

Interview Office Depot

Office Depot, Inc. resulted from the merger between Office Depot and OfficeMax in November 2013. It is a worldwide US supplier of products, services and solutions for work environments in offices, homes, schools etc.

(1) In February 2015, Staples and Office Depot announced they were in advanced talks to merge the two companies.

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