Europe, Middle East and Australasia

A clear vision

EMEA has been restructured into four new delivery sectors in the UK: Consulting, Applied Technologies, Integrated Systems and Managed Services. EMEA also welcomes the acquired Australian companies under a single holding company, QinetiQ Pty Ltd. Clive Richardson, COO EMEA, recalls: “When I joined in June last year the UK business had over 100 business units all competing for work and trying to make a profit. Simplifying the organisational structure gives us scope to run bigger businesses, each with a greater capacity to grow.”

The four UK sectors will work together towards a set of common strategic goals. The first of these goals is to strengthen EMEA’s position with its biggest customer, the UK Ministry of Defence. “We’ve spent the last few months getting the right structures and leadership in place,” explains Clive. “This, together with an emphasis on project delivery, will enable us to stabilise the UK defence business and get greater consistency in the way we deliver to and deal with customers.”

“The second element of the strategy is to build new home markets in defence,” states Clive. “Our expertise and track record is largely in defence so it’s logical to leverage this position in other domestic markets. EMEA has already started to execute against this element with three advice side acquisitions in Australia: AeroStructures, Ball Solutions and Novare.”

In addition, two markets which are adjacent to defence and where EMEA had capability have been selected - Security and Energy & Environment. Across all of these markets the customer must come first, Teams are being asked to maintain business focus and only pursue work which is linked to fulfilling a customer requirement. EMEA’s portfolio of products and capabilities will continue to be aggressively managed and reviewed to ensure they meet a real customer need.

The EMEA strategy is supported by the six objectives which are stated below.

The Sectors

Applied Technologies
Applied Technologies is headed up by Simon Bennett. The approach for this sector will be to understand customer requirements, apply technological know-how to these requirements and ultimately deliver competitive offerings against these requirements in a repeatable way.

The sector needs to focus on getting these value propositions right but to achieve this a number of other activities must fall into place. Simon explains: “I have two priorities, first to have to have an outstanding delivery team and second to nurture a rich pool of base technologies to pull new solutions from.” Outstanding delivery teams will require a range of external partnerships as well as working with people from elsewhere in EMEA. Focus on the research base means supporting people who are engaged in a healthy and financially viable research business. Simon’s team will not only support sustainable research in the Applied Technologies sector, they will also lead an initiative to grow the research business right across EMEA.

Consulting
With over 1,100 staff and associates, covering a broad range of disciplines, the Consulting sector is one of the largest technical consulting organisations in Europe. It is led by Neville Salkeld, who will also lead the new EMEA Strategic Markets Organisation.

Neville believes that the Consulting sector vision ‘To become a top-ranked international technical consultancy’ is a realistic goal: “QinetiQ has a unique combination of skills to offer in the marketplace. My team will draw on their distinctive knowledge and skills and, importantly, their deep domain experience and range of proprietary supporting tools available from across the business.” Eight practices within Consulting will build value as a trusted adviser with offerings that improve clients’ own performance and capability, for example, by reducing risks or costs, or shortening times to market.

Integrated Systems
Integrated Systems is led by Mary Carver. The sector is responsible for building on QinetiQ’s research capability and applying it to solve specific customer problems through integrated systems. These systems, sub-systems or technology could be information, mission or platform based. Mary explains: “We’ve decided to focus effort on a number of specific areas including autonomous systems, secure deployable networks, distributed simulation and training, integrated airborne surveillance and protection.”

Priorities for Integrated Systems this year are to stabilise the delivery element of the business to become a trusted partner for customers, management and shareholders; to develop and grow the sector’s share in their chosen defence markets and start to develop the security business.

Managed Services
Neil Irvine runs iX Managed Services and is looking forward to building on their reputation as a trusted adviser: “I want us to be recognised internationally as the organisation that helps realise the potential of people and technology. We’ll do this by helping our customers to meet their challenges by delivering advice and support they can always depend on.” Managed Services is responsible for the development and delivery of EMEA’s managed services and accreditation services propositions. The sector focuses on transformational opportunities through applying technology from QinetiQ and from other suppliers, integrating the technology with human factors; all underpinned by a culture of continuous improvement.

The sector’s strategy remains the same: to develop and deliver core defence propositions in the UK and to take them to overseas markets; and to secure profitable growth in markets adjacent to defence, in particular Government, Energy and Environment, and Transportation.

The Strategic Markets Organisation

Defence
The Defence Key Accounts organisation is led by Ron Finlayson: “Our role is to act as catalyst for growth in EMEA’s key defence accounts by helping solve customers’ difficult problems and bringing value to the business through our intimate knowledge of our customers’ needs.”

For Defence Key Accounts the most important defence customer remains the UK Ministry of Defence. Currently 80% of EMEA business is done either directly with UK MOD or through the supply chain. The new team is configured to understand really where the MOD’s current and future needs lie, whether for research, client-side advice, technology or managed services. Small teams will cover maritime, land, air, C4ISTAR and research, with a weapons team embedded within the Managed Services sector. Within those teams the team will also manage relationships with the most important companies with which we work, whether for MOD or other end customers.

Security
Richard Chisnall’s Security team transfers across virtually unchanged from the former S&DU Sector. The team covers both key account management and strategic business development for QinetiQ’s security business, both Government and civil. The team already have relationships with many of the Government security customers, including the intelligence agencies, law enforcement and the Home Office. The team will also work with each of the sectors to lead engagements with similar Government bodies in other countries.

The team will need to build deeper relationships within the civil area. Richard explains where their initial focus will be: “Our first main strategic thrusts will be into Port & Harbour Security and Oil & Gas Security and we are setting up account teams across QinetiQ to accelerate our growth in these markets. We are here to help the sectors exploit the best opportunities for growth in the security arena by understanding the customer needs and acting as thought leaders in the marketplace.”

Energy & Environment
Mark Roberts is leading the team focusing on Energy and Environment (E&E) markets. Mark explains: “There’s a lot of work being done across EMEA which could fall under the banner of Energy and Environment but it’s currently very fragmented. The challenge for me and my team is to organise these offerings into competitive solutions, products and services which solve customer problems, whilst building a trusted reputation in this field.”

“Our current focus is in four key areas – Primary Energy, Renewable Energy, Lower Carbon Transport and Pollution. We will be working closely with the four sectors to develop and implement a coherent strategy for each of them. At the moment we provide a number of niche services into each of these areas but often without being able to articulate what we want to be famous for in the longer term.” A pan-EMEA Energy and Environment Leadership Team comprising key people from each of the four Sectors has been established. The team will be responsible for driving growth across EMEA in the Energy and Environment area.