Kirk Laughlin
Brazil is qualified, competitive and ready to conquer the international sourcing market – this was the message from the president of Brasscom, Antonio Gil, for executives from different countries gathered in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, earlier this month for the Brasscom Global IT Forum. “Brazil is ready: it has skilled labor, political and economic stability, proximity of time zone, besides differences such as experience and capacity to innovate,” said Gil.
In the presence of executives from major global organizations, journalists, market analysts and government officials, Gil and guest lecturers highlighted the intangible attributes found here. “Brazilians have passion, creativity and brilliance – if you can apply this to your products, this will be a win-win relationship,” said the head of worldwide outsourcing strategies of Johnson & Johnson, Julia Santos. For the director of Dell Brazil, Jairo Avritchir, a small dose of insubordination also favors local professionals: “If you’re just an order taker, you cannot innovate.”
A different culture is complemented by economic and political maturity achieved by the country in recent years, “beyond the solid IT infrastructure and more than 10,700 PhD formed in science and technology every year”, recalls the director of Marketing and Exports at Brasscom, Ricardo Asse. Brazil has the eighth largest IT-BPO domestic market in the world – an industry that brings in about US$ 60 billion. Of these, approximately US$ 3 billion represents exports. And that amount may increase, Brasscom executives believe, because Brazil brings together different features to offer outsourcing. Besides its cultural aspects, there are also the qualifications of persons and low staff turnover, organizational culture, government support and time-zone proximity.
The Brasscom Global IT Forum was part of a project to promote exports and investments in IT, which Brasscom run jointly with Apex-Brazil, the Ministries of Development, Industry and Commerce and Science and Technology, and has the support of the National Bank of Economic Development (BNDES). Accenture, Algar, BRQ, CI & T, CPM Braxis, IBM, Politec, Stefanini and Softtek attended the event as sponsors.
Brazil has been ready for a very long time and it is an amazing country. It has a very large and good pool of talent and a huge internal IT services market, the largest among the BRICs. Brazil has a very strange roadblock to be a strong exporter of IT services- the internal market is so huge and competitive that IT services companies focus inward instead of focusing on the global market. The other roadblock is the Brazilian saying that "Brazil is different" from the rest of the world. In a way this is true – a different language, and very complicated regulations. Brazil would be able to compete at a different level from other countries because it has a large scientific community and some of its internal industries are very sophisticated (such as the financial services community). If Brazil would start exporting IP, domain-driven services, and sophisticated high-end, high-value services it would find a very big and willing market. What Brazil cannot and should not do is to export commodity IT services because (in my opinion) it may not be price competitive, even on a total cost of engamenet basis. Go Brazil!