Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: What are the strategies you use? How do you improve English-speaking skills?

César Gon: We have an official annual evaluation for each employee of the company. We have a lot of full-time English teachers inside the company, providing specific training for different people, and we have a lot of incentives for people to improve their English skills. We have done a lot during the hiring process to see if the candidate has good English skills. >>>

Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: So, I understand the time zone issue. If you’re doing that kind of interactive customer relationship on every engagement, what is the technology infrastructure that is required? Does the technology collaboration infrastructure that you have put in place support that kind of customer interaction? >>>

Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest4 author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: I understand. What I am asking is a slightly different question, you seem to have core competency in BI, and you have core competency in mobile application development. Now, one of the comments I have heard from a lot of CIOs is that the combination of those two, business intelligence and mobile applications on mobile devices, whether it is on iPhones, iPads, BlackBerries, or Android devices. This is key individual specific, personalized business intelligence that is specific to certain work flows and certain business drivers, this is an area that is not very prevalent yet It hasn’t been implemented very much at enterprises. Is it an observation that you are seeing in your businesses? Is that an observation that resonates with you?

César Gon: Yes, I think there is. It is not only BI with the mobile revolution, everything now should go from the desktop to the mobile. So, yes it just once case where it has happened. And of course, every time you go to a mobile device, the concept of user interaction is completely new and you need to pay a lot of attention to do this [right]. Even SAP users, the most conservative users in our sector are now required to engage with the SAP process to mobile device. So, it is really a trend. Another thing what we do different, is in the area of social media space. Social media is also a requirement today. If you go to the mobile space, you also need to go to the social media space, so it is very integrated in spite of its use to develop, to navigate the whole new thing. >>>

Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: In terms of different engagements, César, I think core competency in iPhone apps or iPad apps is relatively a new core competency, but what is different about your expertise in BI? We have lots of Indian companies and Eastern European companies that do this; there are a lot of outsourcing providers that do BI, right?

César Gon: Yes, that is a good point. For example, we never get reports to produce. Whenever I set [up] a new software [program], I have to deliver 300 new reports. We strike a deal wherein we engage our customer. If they want to improve the sales of their organization, they need to understand better what they are going on in this, analyzing their sales data, you proved a way in the sales team and used that data and link that with business drivers and business goals and then we have a real opportunity to add value. And not producing more report that nobody is going to use and that is the kind of engagement we do using business intelligence. So, every BI project for CI&T starts with exploring what it is, what is the business value we intend from this opportunity, and there is a different set of methodology we use called lean value engineering, and a lot of core consulting skills. This is long before you start doing reports using any platform. >>>

Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

About César Gon
Brazilian software entrepreneur César Gon has been a key player in several initiatives to promote excellence in software development. Under Gon’s leadership, CI&T’s roster of services has grown to also include business intelligence, SAP consulting, and digital marketing. The company has developed solutions for major global companies such as Coca-Cola, Google, Nestlé, and Honda.

About Ci&T
Based in São Paulo, Brazil, CI&T delivers consulting, application outsourcing and digital marketing services. It CI&T specializes in customized application development, business intelligence, SAP consulting, digital marketing and Web 2.0 applications. Its clients include a diverse array of large and global Fortune 500 customers in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Europe, Japan and China.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, César. Welcome to the Outsourcing series. To begin, would you tell us a bit about CI&T so that our readers have some context about the company and what it does? What kind of clients do you service, what kind of processes we are talking about? After that we will go into more detail. >>>

Outsourcing: Martin Migoya, CEO Of Globant (Part 7)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Rajesh Nair

Sramana Mitra: What is happening in Buenos Aires? In 2007, I did strategic planning for MercadLibre, a client of mine. l learned a lot about what was going on in Buenos Aires then, and I learned at that time that entrepreneurship was about to happen in a big way. Are you helping younger entrepreneurs in Argentina? >>>

Outsourcing: Martin Migoya, CEO Of Globant (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Rajesh Nair

Sramana Mitra: What kind of investors have you been able to attract ?

Martin Migoya: Well, we have investors from Silicon Valley with private equity funds, which do not invest in early stage companies. They invest in companies that have the potential to grow, that are tapping into very large market opportunities with strong and solid delivery strategies. Those are the kinds of investors. In the case of Riverwood [and] FTV, they have other investments in the region. They know the region, and they trust our management team and the founder team. We have a great management team to take the company to the next level. >>>

Outsourcing: Martin Migoya, CEO Of Globant (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Rajesh Nair

Sramana Mitra: Who are your competitors and how do you compete with India’s players? There are players in India who are also focusing on these kinds of niche applications. They have different cost  structures, and in terms of cost structure, India still has an advantage over Latin America. So, how do you deal with pricing? >>>