I Feel Good

When you're feeling down and out, sometimes you stumble on a situation when your concerns suddenly appear insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Today's such a day for yours truly.

Ever since we announced the lost of the Desjardins account, I've been feeling - let me find the right word - depressed like a Lehman Brothers analyst managing a pool of subprime loans the day they went bust. Not a pretty sight. I could barely eat this past week-end, I was thinking about resigning from CGI and going back to my native Pembroke to raise livestock, something for which I have no experience but somewhat found appealing. Cleaning cows must be fun.

When I opened the newspaper this morning I saw the devastated face of Curly, and my troubles just went away like a snow ball in July. This guy is being torpedoed on a daily basis by problems and scandals of unprecedented magnitude. Muddy liberal party financing tactics, judge nominations dictated by influential party donors, not a day passes without some kind of huge scandal making headlines. The state runs into a deep deficit, and Happy Raymond's budget is still the subject of important resentment from everyone. Water is coming in from all decks, the ship is going down, and there's 2-3 years before the next election, so Curly here is aging fast. He's still in denial mode, at least when talking to reporters, but privately this guy must be gulping Rolaids like crazy. If you were a doctor and the wreck above would check into your office, how much time would you give the man?

So when I think about Curly, I feel good, I feel so light and free of worries. His livid face is a reminder that I'm full of energy, I can double the size of this company if I put my mind to it. I feel like dancing tonight, but don't tell this to CGI members from India.

I need to go now, I'll call a few Wall Street analysts tomorrow and tell them to put CGI on their "Strong buy" list, because we're going to crush the competition just using our will power. Profitable growth will ensue.

Back in therapy. Sigh.

With the sour announcement this week that Desjardins is kicking CGI's ass in April 2011, I am feeling awfully depressed - I tried watching a game of curling but it didn't cheer me up. I played bridge on my computer but that didn't do. I even tried listening to favourite tunes from Slim Whitman but even that didn't cheer me up. So I called Paul my therapist and asked if he had some time for me this week-end. Sure, he said, as long as you can pay me you are always welcomed.

So I go back to his office on Saturday, drops of rain were hitting my Mercedes like to punish me even further.

So how are you feeling Mike, my therapist asks. It's been a long time since I billed you.

I go, terrible, just terrible. I mean, you read the news, right? Desjardins is throwing us out the window, like an unfaithful husband after 10 years of marriage. CGI doesn't deserve this, I don't deserve this, GIB lost 3% on the TSX, Serge is calling me every hour to lecture me on how I fucked a profitable relation that he carefully put in place when he was the CEO.

Paul pulls out his iPhone and checks the stock chart for CGI. I see, this is really bad, Mike this is really bad, I gotta dump some at market price Monday morning. But let's get back to you feelings Mike, what do think happened?

I sink even further in the leather couch. You know, Desjardins is going through a major reorg and they want to move away from the mainframe platform. They say they burn too much money in IT, they want to cut 900 positions and save over $175M. Sure, there's a lot of bacon fat in IT but that's not a legitimate reason to put CGI in the garbage can, you know?

Paul grabs a copy of The Globe & Mail and scans one article about the CGI / Desjardins news. He goes, would it be possible that Desjardins' conscious desire to restructure their company is causing them to reconsider all prior decisions, even good ones? I see that in couple therapy, guy dumps the wife and then buys a new car even though the old one, the car I mean, was perfectly fine. It's called projection. You transpose your frustration into other entities.

Well, I go, I think we might have pushed our client toward bad decisions just to keep the gravy train rolling you know, the money was just too sweet and we never recommend a client to reconsider things like a mainframe or other goodies that keep the juicy contracts going. A mainframe is like a 24-hour rainbow with a pot of gold constantly replenishing itself, from the IT outsourcing standpoint that is. We don't want to kill the rainbow. We have loads of IT people specialized in mainframe technology.

Paul goes, so what are you going to do with those mainframe people when the contract will be over in April 2011?

I will fire them of course, what else could I do? But that's not the real issue. People are expendable. What matters is profitable growth, FY2011 will take a direct hit unless we find a mother load of outsourcing contracts in Poland or God knows where. Our company is structured for the investor to be happy as a clam, clients and employees are second-ranking beings. If I proceed with my accelerated path to profitable growth, I'll have to suffer the wrath of money managers everywhere.

Time's up, said Paul. Same time next week?

Sigh. Of course. Send me the bill.

We screwed up

Your humble servant is writing you today with tears in my eyes and red ink in my spreadsheet. We lost a major outsourcing contract with a long-time client, one for which we sucked about $1.2B in revenues during the past 10 years. Yeah, these things happen.

I gotta tell you, a 10-year outsourcing contract is like a marriage. The first year you cater every possible need of your wife, you buy her expensive gifts and you go the extra mile every day. After 10 years you spend most of your nights in strip clubs pretending you have important business meetings. It's the same with a client. After a few years you start to ignore complaints because clients whine all the time. You then become so integrated with the client business that you think you ARE the client, and the real client is just an obnoxious bug flying around you. The client complains that he's been stuck with Explorer 6 for the past 10 years, and you list all your other clients that are still using IE6 and are quite happy ignoring that there are newer versions out there.

The most insulting thing about the Desjardins story is that it happened in our own backyard in Montreal. Worse, these nitwits publicly said that they are only considering IBM and HP to replace their beloved CGI. Like that's gonna solve a problem.

Roach out, talk to you soon.