FUJITSU Americas — the parent company of Fujitsu Caribbean (Jamaica) Limited — said it is hunting for acquisitions in key areas that will help it grow its new Uvance solution.

Asif Poonja, CEO of Fujitsu Americas, outlined the target in an interview with the Jamaica Observer in April. Poonja was in the island as part of a series of official visits he’s been making to the region since taking over the post as the Japanese multinational’s lead man for its business in all of the Americas on April 1 last year. He has been with Fujitsu for the past 10 years in various roles before taking the helm at the Toronto, Canada, offices from where he overseas operations in the western hemisphere.

“We are looking for acquisitions that will fulfil some of the areas we want to drive in Uvance,” Poonja said. “On which entities we are looking at acquiring, I can’t share too much now, you can understand confidentiality. What I will say is that we have looked at the key focus areas in North America and Caribbean and South America…and in them we are looking at areas of trusted society,” he added.

“The other is sustainable manufacturing, in looking at the whole sustainability play, how do we make manufacturers have a circular economy. So take all the goods that they produce and the waste and how can they put it back into the manufacturing cycle. So sustainable manufacturing is another one,” he continued.

Both trusted society and sustainable manufacturing are part of seven key focus areas for Fujitsu Uvance, the company’s latest technology solution it uses to connect people, technology and ideas — and creating a more sustainable world, according to its website. Poonja said Uvance is a made up word through the merging of the words ‘universal’ and ‘advancement’ and indicates the types of solutions Fujitsu will bring to several issues.

“If you look at Fujitsu’s purpose, it is to make the world more sustainable by leveraging technology. So if you take our strength, our strength is in technology, and will be deploying that,” he added.

Apart from trusted society and sustainable manufacturing, Fujitsu Uvance focuses on solutions that improve customer experience, healthy living, digital shifts, business applications, and hybrid IT. All includes it deploying technology to improve experiences, drive down costs in business, and improve profitability.

The company is currently working with the Government on the roll-out of the national identification system (NIDS). Poonja said the pace of work is slower than expected but said it’s due to issues that are being discovered with some of the births, deaths, and marriage certificates badly damaged and having to be meticulously recreated in some instances. Still, he said, more than half of the records have been digitised already.

But acquisitions are not the only growth solution Poonja is targeting for his managers to grow the business during his tenure. “When I got appointed last January to start in April, it was the beginning of what we call our three-year midterm plan from 2023 to 2025. We are in year two. In the year we had discussions with the board and executive [about] where we want to take Americas. We laid out significant growth numbers, and in those growth numbers, year one was setting the stage. So making sure that we had a solid foundation. We were clear on the services vision we want to take looking at the global strategy and how do we deploy that in the Americas and then spending time in each of our key regions, which is why I am on these trips as well, to better understand our base.”

“Year two is when we want to see the next level of effort on the growth plan, and to be transparent, we’ve been in discussions with several investment bankers, advisers around mergers and acquisitions, and in that, that is part of our acquisition growth plan. And so if you look at our growth plan for the three years, we have an organic portion which we aim to grow faster than market.”

The company has been growing faster than market already. Fujitsu’s consolidated revenues for 2023 increased by 2.2 per cent to JP¥3.756 trillion (US$24.14 billion). Its services solutions revenue grew by approximately 10 per cent to JP¥2.1375 trillion (US$13.7 billion), while its adjusted operating profit surged by 45.5 per cent. As for its Fujitsu Uvance solution that Poonja is promoting in the region, the revenues went up 84 per cent last year, reaching JP¥ 367.9 billion (US$2.4 billion). Consolidated adjusted operating profit decreased by 11.6 per cent due to restructuring and sales demand decline. Fujitsu plans to achieve a revenue of JP¥3.76 trillion (US$24.17 billion) and an adjusted operating profit of JP¥330 billion (US$2.12 billion) in 2024.

“We are close to a US$30-billion business with 120,000 employees, and so looking at what we are doing in Japan, for example, we are number one in Japan in the IT services market. Looking at what we are doing in the Asia-Pacific and Europe, different stories to tell, and how do you bring the strength of that to customers and governments in the region is a very powerful message,” he said.

He has been taking that powerful message to the region, particularly Jamaica, and also to Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago — the three main islands that the company serves. He made trips to Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados ahead of arriving in Jamaica to assess the business in the island and craft solutions for the region.

“When you look at the Caribbean, I am trying to understand from the team here: Where are we? What are the challenges facing these countries and what are the opportunities? The next step for us is we have not deployed Uvance in the region. We started last year in North America and a little bit in Brazil. So we are now in discussions, what parts of Uvance make sense [for the Caribbean].”

He said from the trips and assessments made, “it’s a no-brainer” that the trusted society solution is the one more fitting for the region right now. He said the solutions under trusted society will target governments with whom the company is doing various digitisation and modernisation projects, but also financial services firms after he witnessed and read about issues of trust between consumers and local banks.

“In North America, there is trust at your bank. You might not like your bank, you might not like the fees that they charge you, but there is trust that when you do an interact transaction, you know it will get done in the next few seconds. You know that there will be always money at the bank machines that you go to.”

“I know that the country is trying to get it right. I met with the governor of the Bank of Jamaica and I learnt a lot. We had a great conversation. I met with the CEOs of several financial institutions as well. They are all trying to be more citizen-centric and they know the issues and also want to solve them.”

Apart from solutions to improve trust between businesses and consumers and Government and citizens, Poonja said other areas of Uvance hold promise for the region and can help Fujitsu improve its business relations, revenues, and profitability from the Caribbean.

“We will discuss what the next two are as well and then how do we continue to push that message out, continue to adapt and build the skill sets that are needed. And that is our strategy as we continue to think about the next level with the Caribbean.”