Unisys shifts to delivering business outcomes as a nimble, unified company

The Situation: At its annual Analyst and Advisor Event in June 2022, Unisys showcased its revamped management team and strategy for boosting its market position as a provider of application, security, cloud, and digital workplace services. The firm experienced a fair bit of change during the COVID pandemic, and CEO Peter Altabef brought to the event a lean, focused team to articulate its mission to serve clients better and grow market share. Unisys touched on all the hot topics and provided customer experiences highlighting its market capabilities to deliver outcomes.

Unisys’ size may play in its favor giving it the nimbleness needed to succeed

Enterprise buyers want to work with companies that know their industry and can connect the dots along their journey from cloud migration to exceptional user and customer experiences. While Unisys ticks all these boxes, it must come to market with a unified vision for its customers to unleash its full potential.

While some industry players are hiving out their infrastructure business from consulting, digital workplace, or security, such as IBM spinning off Kyndryl or Atos splitting into TFCo and SpinCo, Unisys is doubling down. So why should Unisys expect to be successful when these more prominent players are divesting many of the same assets Unisys is building its future on?

After listening to the Unisys pitch, paying close attention to the customer panel, and speaking directly with each, this analyst can see three reasons Unisys may succeed and three reasons it might not.

Exhibit 1: Unisys can drive success for its customers as long as it stays the course

Source: HFS Research, 2022

What factors make Unisys likely to succeed?

The company executes its vision for change beyond the halls of technology teams

Unisys reported revenues of $2.05 billion for FY21. It isn’t the biggest kid on the block, but it retains a strong brand and a stable of notable customers. At the event, CEO Peter Altabef clearly depicted Unisys values and 2022 growth metrics. Under his leadership, he promised will advance from technology-centric cloud & infrastructure (C&I) and traditional Web 2.0 digital workplace services (DWS) toward a business-outcome-focused mindset. His actions have been to recruit new technology practice, marketing, and sales leadership and empower them to execute on a vision based on helping its customers evolve their business for a cloud native future. He’s not jettisoning the past altogether. Unisys will still provide traditional managed services. Still, Mr. Altabef made it clear that his team’s success is about moving the conversations “upstairs” (into the executive office) about “what drives a business” rather than settling for how IT operations can be optimized.

A unified Unisys delivers workplace, cloud, applications, and security to their customers

Unisys is reshaping its leadership and lines of business. The firm’s long-time model of managed services and architecture support is being reduced in favor of new teams focused on business outcomes. For example, its recent acquisition of CompuGain, and the confidence to place CompuGain’s Manju Naglapur in charge of C&I practice (soon to be, in this analyst’s opinion, Apps & Data), speaks to a willingness to boost application modernization capabilities over infrastructure management. Paving the way for Mr. Naglapur should create new engagements around how his services can address a customer’s immediate need to develop agile, data-first culture delivered over hybrid cloud architectures. The combination of Mr. Naglapur and Unisys’ new Chief Marketing and Chief Commercial Officers is changing the Unisys brand from one focused on managing customer infrastructure to that of a company more inclined to seek challenging opportunities around creating value with modern applications and data capabilities, new ways of working and doing it securely.

Unisys’ customers achieve business outcomes and create exceptional experiences

In its customer panel, Unisys provided real-world examples about how it can deliver business outcomes. Its customer panel participants showed a willingness to take Unisys to the next level. The panel’s six customers, each from different industries, articulated why they hired Unisys as a technology partner but then shared how the relationship expanded to address measurable business needs. While each of the customers expressed how their journey began by shedding costs, improving control, or modernizing workflows. The benefits of working with Unisys became more apparent as each customer provided examples about how their partnership grew to deliver both experiences and outcomes that benefited frontline employees, customer services, or cybersecurity teams.

What three things may result in Unisys failing to achieve its objectives?

Mr. Altabef might not be able to keep his new team aligned if budgets tighten

From the DWS teams ‘wheel of fortune’ to the C&I teams ‘on-ramping’, there were different views on how they envisioned driving business outcomes. Each practice and commercial team must move beyond separate customer starting points and instead focus on a common finish line. To be exceptional at delivering the customer experiences each new client needs clarity on how Unisys will initially address technology pain points and then deliver sustainable business outcomes. Given the current economic environment, it’ll be easy for each group to fall back into a ‘me first’ mindset. Unisys must not let this happen.

Unisys’ customer success teams may stumble in gaining access to their customers’ C-suite

While Unisys can compete effectively to win new deals based on its IT acumen, it can’t expect clients to figure out other services that might be useful on their own to promote Unisys to their line of business leaders. Instead, Unisys continues to build on its pedigree to unearth business opportunities and engage outside the technology department. Unisys’ customers deserve to hear more about the firm’s data, applications, and domain capabilities and less about generic cloud and infrastructure solutions. By shifting to a proactive mindset, like acquiring CompuGain, Unisys is primed to unlock opportunities for many existing customers beyond traditional IT services. Yet, for Unisys to succeed, it must transition its focus from resting on its IT-centric wins and gain access to the business leaders to determine what outcomes are needed by its customers.

P&L based on old practices doesn’t reflect the new vision for Unisys

Unisys must raise their game above a P&L mentality. If its customers continue to perceive their partnership based on siloed solutions and services for specific DWS, AMS, C&I, or security practices, customers won’t look to Unisys to help break down their own silos. To achieve Mr. Altabef’s vision Unisys itself must ensure its leaders continue to share goals across practices and encourage them to only feel successful when customers stand up and articulate how partnering with Unisys led to a mindset change within their organization around how they define employee and customer experience.

The Bottom Line: Based on the insights gained from the event the potential for strong upside for Unisys is strong. However, success will be determined on how well Unisys executes its vision and delivers the outcomes they have promised.

To unleash growth, Unisys will need to execute in a manner that lifts them out of the IT department and allows their practice and customer success teams to communicate how their offerings are tied to delivering business outcomes. Mr. Altabef must keep his new leadership team focused on customer success and leverage the strong, trusted, and deep relationships as voiced at the event by their customers. Each leader must be aligned on how they are promoting and delivering a ‘one’ Unisys portfolio of offerings to deliver the exceptional customer experiences that Mr. Altabef prioritized in Boston.