Pan-European technology services firm BearingPoint has extended its cooperation agreement with wayra, Telefónica’s incubator, to better support the needs of its customers and partners.
With seven wayra innovation hubs and business development support throughout the world, the cooperation enables BearingPoint to create added value for its clients by involving innovative startups in projects, it said.
In 2019, BearingPoint created with wayra the AI Transformation Model for clients struggling with finding the right approach to artificial intelligence (AI) integration. The joint service offering identifies company-specific AI use cases, finds the right solution provider and supports companies from implementation to integration.
“Combining wayra’s unique expertise in the startup realm with BearingPoint’s in-depth industry knowledge, BearingPoint can help its clients take their AI journey to the next level,” said BearingPoint. The cooperation is also creating added value for clients in the areas of mobility, sustainability, cybersecurity, IoT and 5G.
“Our cooperation with wayra has greatly benefitted our clients with its AI Transformation Model, and we expect more innovation to come out of it,” said Kiumars Hamidian (pictured), managing partner at BearingPoint. “To be innovative and create value for our clients is a big part of our Strategy 2025, and wayra fits well with our ambitions and where we are going.”
Katrin Bacic, managing director and head of venture development at wayra Germany, said: “With BearingPoint we can scale our portfolio startups as we are looking in the same technology fields and can get access to a different industry. We profit from more than seven years of expertise in the startup ecosystem and BearingPoint has a similar approach to digitalisation and innovation.”
BearingPoint has a global consulting network with more than 10,000 people and supports clients in over 70 countries. It had record revenues of €738m in 2018.
Last autumn, it restructured its European operations into three business units and regions. The first unit covers the consulting business, the second is a business services unit to provide IP-driven managed services, and a third provides software to help customers with their digital transformation and to address regulatory requirements.
To create synergies, BearingPoint also combined its practices into three regions. FBLA (France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Africa) is led by Eric Falque, GSA (Germany, Switzerland, Austria) is led by Iris Grewe, and GROW (Ireland, United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Netherlands) is headed up by James Rodger.
