It’s like playing in a rock band.

Andreas Sjöström

Sogeti Sweden, Mobility & Microsoft Expert

I am a proud consultant at Sogeti and that’s a label I’m very happy to wear. I’ve been with the company for 11 years, my area is mobile solutions, and this is how I go about it.

It’s about passion, being passionate about what you do. My passion for technology started with my first home computer when I was ten years old. When I was 13, I wrote an essay about happiness in school, and the first sentence was: “Happiness is about developing applications”. I have been walking that path ever since – being happy and being passionate about building software.

When I talk to client companies and my co-workers, it’s generally about two key things. First is mobility – mobile devices, mobile solutions that companies are deploying nowadays to accelerate their business. The other is the feeling of passion, drive, fire. What’s your passion? What’s your drive?

Ten years ago I was sitting in a Paris café with colleague, Christian Forsberg, when he produced out of his pocket a mobile device and started to scribble some notes on it. I asked him if I could have a look at it, because it looked like it had Windows. And it did! That was 1998. That was the first time I’d seen a PDA, a mobile device, running Windows. I was astounded; it was like falling in love. I knew Windows and its development tools; I already used it as a platform for building software. With Windows on a mobile, I could start thinking about a whole new class of applications. It was in this split second that I had this revelatory chain of thoughts. I could push out functionality and information to these devices and help customers to accelerate their businesses.

I remember looking out of the café window, seeing the people in the street and thinking: I know something about what’s going to be in their pockets in the near future that they don’t know themselves - they’re going to carry smart devices very, very soon. And here we are today. People do carry smart devices. Quite a few of them have Windows Mobile. I decided to make this my ‘apple tree’; to plant this apple tree, to nourish it and to make mobile solutions my space and to provide value for Sogeti and Sogeti’s customers in this space. That was when the passion started.

It was a mind-blowing experience. The first thing I did was to go to my manager. I said: “Look at this, it’s incredible. We can develop a profitable business for Sogeti and our customers based on these types of solutions.” My manager reacted: “We don’t do toys; this is not an area we’re interested in.”

Now, I don’t want to make fun of this remark. From the business and mobile solutions perspectives, at that time - 1998 - this was the correct answer. I understand that now and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because if my manager had gone along with me and said: “This is great, Andreas, let’s build a business on the back of this”, in 1998, nothing would have happened. The technology was not mature enough, our customers were not ready in their thinking, and I would have been quite alone in terms of understanding the technology’s potential and being able to do something about it. His reaction was a good reaction. But it also taught me that my passion is not necessarily owned by my manager, it is not owned by the company I work for. It is mine, and I need to take responsibility for my own passion and be smart about it, and understand how and when to apply it in my work with Sogeti and our customers.

When I talk about professional passion, within Sogeti and externally, I encourage consultants to pursue their entrepreneurial thinking and their focus on what drives them, and to do it in that order, instead of the other way around. It is about their thought leadership and their passion, and about exploring and taking responsibility. When I first started to talk about these matters, Sogeti managers were very encouraging and it has opened up this kind of thinking to others in the organization. This is typical of Sogeti´s community of experts: always moving forward.

Personally, I see three really important words when describing Sogeti: vibrant, value, and velocity. ‘Vibrant’ means being alive, moving, and organic. It means that you will kill the essential aspects of an initiative if you try to box it in. At Sogeti, that’s well understood. Although Sogeti is a big company and so has its structures, the way it is managed gives room for entrepreneurship and thought leadership among vibrant groups of experts. Sharing knowledge and the way we interact – social and digital networks – are part of this vibrancy. I focus on the external aspects of knowledge sharing. We have so much value in this company - knowledge and thought leadership – that we should open it up and make it available to consultants outside Sogeti, for instance, with the blogs which we initiated a year ago that have proven to be very valuable.

‘Value’ for the customer is the next important word. Making the right offer to the right customer. Again that needs to align with your passion. For example, when I started with my ‘apple tree’, I felt it was really important to be visible and establish a ‘platform’ externally. I asked myself; “what kind of customer do I want to have?” I decided it had to be Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. He would be a great customer, one I’d like to have.

Ballmer’s worry at that time was Linux. So, combining my passion for mobile technology and my role as ‘CEO of myself’, I decided to make a move on this customer by writing a report on Linux’s position in the mobile market. I researched the thinking of other industry players, the communities of skilled people on the Internet; I looked at the development tools and where Linux was in the mobile market and wrote this 30-page report. I knew some people that worked close to Steve Ballmer and I discussed the report with them, and then one day, in 2003, I was called by the Microsoft HQ and I was asked if I could meet Ballmer in Berlin. He’d like to have a roundtable discussion about Linux! I went to Berlin and we had a two-hour intense discussion. So thinking externally and out-of-the-box is really important, when it comes to being vibrant and delivery value.

At Sogeti, because of our close relationship with our customers, we really understand the business in which they operate. Our vibrant community of experts also provides thought leadership in IT. So by combining the two elements, business and IT, we provide real value to our customers.

Velocity is the third word. Speed, acceleration. Let’s look at aspects of velocity. It is being able to respond quickly by being pro-active. This is where mobile solutions often come in place. Today we find numerous often paper-based processes - in paper forms and manual routines and double-handling of information. By getting rid of paper and capturing information digitally from the start, we can accelerate businesses. So mobile solutions equals increased velocity.

Mobile solutions play a key part in the digital ‘nervous system’ of companies today. We are more and more mobile - co-workers and customers. We can push out both functionality and information using digital processes that can continue to add value and acceleration. So velocity is also important from a customer’s perspective, and this is where Sogeti, with its understanding of business and technology, can add real value.

Technology has never been more exciting than today. IT and technology have really found their way into the core of business. So many businesses not only rely, but also use, technology to realize their products, realize their services. So technology plays an absolutely key part. And all of this moves faster and faster. We’ve created server platforms all the way to desktops and we’re now talking about connected appliances and connected devices that make information flow more freely. So velocity and technology development are also what drives value for customers, and when we are hooked into this pace, this velocity, we become ‘vibrant’. So vibrant, value and velocity are what we are talking about. 

What next? For me in my professional life at Sogeti, my career is not the typical ladder, but instead it’s a chessboard, a maze, a labyrinth, where the next move is not necessarily moving upwards, but striving towards a passion. That’s a much more exciting way for me to look at my career. I know I will end up really enjoying what I’m doing, being passionate about what I do, working hard on my client projects and seeing my clients’ businesses excel in their markets. That is my career. If I have my apple tree, I am happy.

I think working for Sogeti is more like playing in a rock band than anything else. When you are doing it, you are playing for an audience, and our audience is our customers. You would never ask a rock band what their next career move would be! They are already living the dream, and this is what it’s like being a Sogeti consultant. Finding your passion is about exploring your talents and this adds to Sogeti’s vibrancy, customer value and business velocity.