It might not but have the equal profile as South Asia or Eastern Europe, however Latin America is turning into an an increasing number of popular vacation spot for companies seeking to set up shared provider facilities, either serving domestic markets or as a part of local or maybe worldwide shared services techniques. Furthermore, along with this rent a coder boom inside the captive sector Latin America has grow to be the focal point of developing interest at the part of principal outsourcing companies whose entry into the market has had knock-on consequences across the board. Throw into this already-volatile blend the cutting-edge monetary instability and it’s smooth to peer why the place’s interest is making waves throughout and beyond the shared services and outsourcing area in 2009.
We convened a panel representing practitioners, providers and advisors to take a look at the cutting-edge degree of maturity of the Latin American market and to look at how – and if – the financial malaise affecting a great deal of the rest of the worldwide economic system is impacting upon operations in the vicinity.
Attending have been:
Laura Bao Castro
CR FSSC Controller
Intel Corporation
Esteban Carril
Director, Latin America Finance Operations
EMC Corporation
Mauro Mezzano
Partner
Vantaz Group Consulting
Ricardo Neves
PwC Global Sourcing Leader for South America
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Q: I suppose the first query we need to study is: is it right to talk of “Latin American shared services” in any respect? Latin America is a very large region geographically and in terms of populace; it’s got a smaller linguistic variety than, for example, Europe, however there are still very big differences among, say, Brazil and Costa Rica. To what extent is it truly possible for businesses – captive or BPO – to take a simply local approach in Latin America? Is it impossible to avoid having large assets in individual nations?
Ricardo Neves: This is a region exclusive from other regions in the world. If you communicate approximately intra-region services, you’re speaking about two foremost languages that are, in some approaches, close to each other; you have got additionally a closeness of average subculture; and commonly what you spot with multinational or regional operations right here is that the larger international locations like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile correspond to a sizable size of the operations. Usually in case you observe maximum of the worldwide or multinational organizations within the region, they’ve 50% or maybe seventy five% of their operations achieved in two or 3 international locations at most – and then 10, 12 different nations where they do have operations however which make up simplest 25% or less of their business.
This offers a venture when putting in place a regional center, because there’s a scale for the bigger countries which is not present in the smaller ones – and what I’ve seen here is a mixture between definitely centrally run shared services and a lesser local presence in smaller countries to make sure the proper scale is performed and the right help is completed at the local degree. There are groups based in Brazil that I’ve visible who’ve regional shared services – like the brewer AmBev, now linked with InBev and AnhauserBusch, which has a completely large nearby shared offerings primarily based in Sao Paulo serving now not simply operations within the area, but additionally the firm’s operations in Canada for the Labatt operations. Unilever has also installation an HR shared offerings – and has simply sold its finance shared services to Capgemini inside the location.
In sum, from those massive operations that I’ve visible, as I said I’ve seen a mix of a few centralised offerings and a few small nations with nearby offerings combined.
Esteban Carril: We’re serving Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil. My team is split into 3 purposeful areas, in two nations. One team is working in Sao Paulo, Brazil; the alternative purposeful groups are working right here in Argentina. We run debts payable, bills receivable, credit score and collections, billing, coins programs, payroll, commissions and bonuses. It’s actually not divided linguistically: we observed we already had a few right abilties in Brazil to broaden the credit and collections department there, so we decided to depart the present institution imparting services there in Brazil, to offer services for the rest of the Latin American nations. We desired to have 3 purposeful businesses, but we wanted to try and maintain the same professional human beings running and we did not want to ought to pass them from one us of a to any other.
Laura Bao Castro: We’re a part of a international method. We have currently two pretty large monetary shared services facilities in Intel. One is placed in Malaysia and the other one is positioned here in Costa Rica; the markets which are supported from Costa Rica are Canada, america, Costa Rica, and Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina and Brazil.
Q: Laura and Esteban, you both come from big international businesses with tremendous global presence. Do you watched it is nevertheless the largest groups who’re setting up shared services in Latin America or are the smaller, or maybe mid-marketplace, companies also getting concerned?
Laura Bao Castro: I assume the mid-market is developing. I became capable of visit [a Latin AMerican shared services event in] Chile remaining 12 months, and additionally participated in [a] convention in Mexico City, and I became very amazed by using the range of Latin American multinationals which have already moved into this adventure, or are in the system of doing so – in particular in Mexico where I suppose quite a few groups are searching into it, even having shared services inside Mexico itself. The concept is right there; they understand they could lessen charges and bring greater pleasant with shared offerings, and even within Mexico itself organizations are growing shared service centers.