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.

Sramana: I understand your business more or less, so just to close the loop, you said about 30% of your business comes from mobile apps, another 30% from business intelligence?

César: I think business intelligence is about 15% today.

Sramana: So that is 45%. What is the other 55% of your business?

César: We have another area of expertise that is based on the architectural transformation that includes not only the consulting part but how to manage your applications, how to manage legacy applications in a different way. That it is probably 35% of our businesses, managing and transforming legacy and new applications in this kind of SOA (service-oriented architecture).

Sramana: You said you had 1,200 people, right?

César: Yes!

Sramana: So, how does that split up? How many people are in Brazil, how many in Japan, how many in Argentina?

César: The two main delivery centers are in Brazil, where we have about 900 people, and then we have two new development centers outside of Brazil – one in China where it is about 50 people, and another is in Argentina.

Sramana: How many people you have in Argentina?

César: There are about 30 people.

Sramana: Okay. And this is in Buenos Aires, yes?

César: Yes. And then we the other people are more concentrated on the U.S. and Japan.

Sramana: Where in the U.S. are you located?

César: In the U.S. we have our main office in Philadelphia, then we have offices in New Jersey and Atlanta.

Sramana: So are the U.S. offices also the delivery centers?

César: No we have delivery centers only in Brazil, China, and Argentina. It is consultancy and business awareness in the U.S.

Sramana: The reason I am asking about the delivery model is know to what extent, in your customer base and in your customer’s interactions, in your business developments to be very precise, to what extent does the fact that you are in the same time zone with the United State customer base impact your negotiations? Is that a competitive advantage that you are seeing play in the deals against, let’s say, Indian, Eastern European or the Japanese providers?

César: Totally! That is why we are supporting U.S. from Latin America and we are supporting Japan form China. Because the kind of engagement, the kind of methodology just requires a lot interaction and it is not a specification base engagement. It is based on common understanding, a lot of prototyping, a lot of experiment and its agility requires a time zone similarity for sure. So, it is our delivery model, considering that we leave a very good window of interactions with each customer.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T
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