Mater Dei Hospital is, according to Willem van de Ven, G4S regional chief executive officer for Europe, the best example of how a business relationship can grow from supplier to partnership.
“We are extremely happy to have Mater Dei Hospital as our customer,” Mr van de Ven said after visiting the hospital and presenting certificates to a number of G4S employees who attended specialist training. “What better customer could you wish for than someone who likes to listen but also a customer who is demanding?”
As an example, he mentioned how staff training of G4S personnel at the hospital came about: “We discovered from both sides that there was a gap in experience and the need to train our people, and from both sides we spent money, time and energy to bring people to a higher standard.
“The nice thing about this customer is that they allowed us to do that. They take security seriously and want to walk together down the path of increasing the quality of the service because they understand that it serves both,” he added.
Mr van de Ven, who was on his first visit to Malta since being appointed to his current post last July, described Mater Dei Hospital as a “loyal customer we are proud to have” and sees many opportunities to widen its product line. G4S is involved in traditional man guarding, parking, and the provision of clerical staff and receptionists.
“G4S is a total solutions company with the ability to take the workflow and related problems out of the hands of the client,” he said. He sees opportunities in facility management as a total approach with a focus on security and cash services.
G4S has a 35 per cent market share in a total local market of 1,300 guards. “There is still space for growth and we also want to widen our scope and our product line,” he said. “I think there is much more than just guarding of security services. We can gain more than we can lose.”
The global security group is proud of its local management structure and, reflecting its international set-up following the global financial crisis, is “lean and mean”. Mr van de Ven observed: “We have a very dynamic management team and we will be aggressive in the market in terms of the quality of our service and the value-added offered. I really believe Malta is huge for us. We are very happy with Mater Dei Hospital as our customer but we must remember that there is no finish line. We have to keep on improving our services, we have to keep on improving our business, and we have to keep on proving to the customers how good we are.”
Coming from a human resources background, Mr van de Ven knows how important it is to focus on internal employee satisfaction. “Internal employee satisfaction produces employee loyalty, which creates satisfied customers; satisfied customers create loyal customers; and loyal customers create more business,” he said.
Originally from the Netherlands, Mr van de Ven, 51, has spent 20 years in the security business. He worked with the Randstad group, where he was promoted to regional director, before joining Randon, a temping agency which also owned a security company and a cleaning company. The security company was sold since it was considered not a core business and Mr van de Ven went with it first as HR director and later managing director of Securicor, the first MD to be elected by his peers. In 2003 he moved to Africa as Regional President, expanding the business from operations in 14 countries to 26 countries up to last July when he was promoted to his current post, and increasing profits from £7 million sterling to about £50 million last year. Securicor had meanwhile merged with Group 4 in 2004 to form G4S.
His current remit covers 26 countries in Europe with 75,000 employees and close to €2 billion turnover. Although he lives in Barcelona, his office is close to Heathrow since it is easier for members of his regional team to fly to and better connected.
His team consists of a chief finance officer, a business development director, a cash specialist director, a technical solutions director, a marketing communications director, a legal counsel director, an HR director, a procurement manager and an IT manager
Yet, apart from having these specialists on tap within the region, he can also call on anyone from within the G4S Group worldwide. “G4S has a matrix organisation, with specialists within the group in oil and gas, aviation, and ports so in every product line we know exactly where the specialist is and how to support the local countries. Our philosophy is: think globally, act locally.”
As an example, Mr van de Ven mentioned a request from Serbia for de-mining expertise. So he linked the local management with the relevant specialist in the group. “We have experience on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Mozambique. There is a huge pool of expertise and the challenge is to locate that expertise.”
Similarly, G4S is assisting the local management with input from the region’s cash director and security manager on a new project that is being finalised early in 2011. “We have the right set-up in the infrastructure and my people have the experience because, in terms of a cash centre, they have built over 20 cash centres in the past, so they know what they are doing.”
He described Europe as a mature market and said the global economic crisis was an opportunity for the group to focus internally on cost-cutting, being highly cost efficient, and to bring in new technology and total solutions. “We don’t want to just deliver guards; we don’t want to deliver only systems. We want to deliver a combination of the better product against a lower cost.”
G4S is working closely with its local partner, the KDM Group, and already has a joint venture in parking, through Parksec, at Mater Dei Hospital. Mr van de Ven says that this fits totally within his philosophy of “think global, act local”. The two sides intend to increase their engagement and he anticipated some announcements in this area in the months ahead.