Frank Jons: chromatic explosions!
He could have ended up as a partner in an auditing firm, but a job interview convinced him to follow his true calling: painting. Interview.
Fabien Zuili and Mauro Rocco (Cap4 Group): From Luxembourg to the World
©DR
In a fast-changing global economy, Luxembourg’s ability to thrive depends on supporting home-grown companies. For Fabien Zuili, CEO of Cap4 Group, and Mauro Rocco, the company’s Global Head of Operations, that support has led to international success.
Can you present Cap4 Group in a few words?
Founded in Luxembourg, digital consultancy Cap4 Group now works worldwide. It has 250 employees serving clients in 17 countries around the world, from locations such as Costa Rica, China, Germany, and Switzerland. “We specialise in e-commerce, customer relationship management, and data lifecycle,” Zuili explains, “providing end-to-end solutions on a global scale.” It’s a high-value, high-responsibility service, in which Cap4 Group supports clients with operations such as data integration and production infrastructure. Millions of euros can be lost if there’s a failure or fault. “Sometimes twelve or thirteen million euros in an hour,” Rocco says, discussing one of their clients. But Cap4 Group has kept its customers happy by avoiding such disasters.
Fabien Zuili
©DR
How has Luxembourg’s ecosystem supported Cap4 Group’s growth and innovation, particularly in the area of digital transformation?
This work is grounded in Luxembourg’s ongoing digital transformation. “We already find a solid foundation in Luxembourg,” Rocco says, “but sometimes we don’t realize the enormous potential we have, so we don’t use it enough.” Cap4 Group’s own success shows why the country’s companies should have more confidence. Luxembourg provides a great testing ground for professions. “For instance, in the development of APIs—application programming interfaces,” Zuili explains. “We shine thanks to the experimentation we were able to conduct in Luxembourg before going abroad.” ADEM provided basic training which Cap4 Group built upon, leading to huge growth in skills, and this has fed back in employment of local people. “75% of our employees come from ADEM’s programs and are in professional retraining”. “5% of Luxembourgers work in private companies,” Zuili says, “but we have 25% Luxembourgers.”
“It’s no longer the world of holding companies, it’s no longer about large investment funds.”
Mauro Rocco
©DR
What steps should Luxembourg take to become a more attractive base for international operational companies?
Cap4 Group is now looking to the future and what can make Luxembourg more appealing for other companies. “We need to appeal to operational companies that want to set up in Luxembourg or expand into Europe,” Rocco says. “Working with clients in China we see a strong interest in developing operational deployments in Europe to serve as a bridge to the rest of the world. Luxembourg has the infrastructure and the skills, but we still need to create a framework that allows these companies to set up easily in Luxembourg.” To do that means establishing companies that can offer high-level support services in Europe and beyond, and it means moving from holding companies to go after real substance—employees, decision-makers, and investments. More than that, it means imagining where emerging trends will go next. As Zuili says, “In terms of training, we need to anticipate new professions for the years to come.”