The testimonial that Johnson & Johnson (J&J) presented at the recent Brasscom Global IT Forum is what most Brazilian IT companies would give an arm for. The company’s extended IT team in Brazil has played a crucial role in the delivery of digital projects with ‘outstanding’ results, according to the company’s IT manager for global services Nigel Storey.
The IT executive pointed out that J&J expanded its vendor pool rather than replacing its global IT vendors with the Brazil-based firms. The Brazilian partner CI&T has brought to the table expertise in web and mobile development, mobile applications, augmented reality and social networking projects.
“This year we had a couple of major product launches and CI&T provided us with support in the pharmaceutical sector. They delivered multiple websites in a timely fashion which met the needs of our different audiences: healthcare professionals, the patients themselves as well as requirements by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from a communications standpoint,“ said Storey.
Tackling challenges
When picking an IT supplier, one of the key concerns of buyers is around the flexibility and agility of external partners when there is a problem.
Storey commented on the ability of J&J’s Brazilian IT vendor to come up with solutions for intricate issues, such as a recent situation involving a major product line.
“Our marketing teams provided us with 70 pages of changes on a Tuesday, at about 4pm. They wanted these changes to be completed by the next morning at 9am, because there was a review by the FDA that had been scheduled,” Storey said.
“There was obviously a planning situation that happened as a result – that was very much an impossible mission. I did not expect the teams to be able to complete this task, then the team not only completed it but also addressed all the issues that our marketing team had raised,” he added.
According to the IT chief, what stood out was the ‘realistic’ manner in which the Brazilian team dealt with that situation – the outsourced team realized that there was a great likelihood that they would not be able to complete the job at such sort notice.
“They addressed this by asking us if there were specific things in that 70-page document that they needed to immediately focus on in order to meet the 9am deadline, so the others could be delivered during the course of the day,” said Storey.
“That didn’t matter though, because what happened was that they were able to deliver everything on time by working through the night and were still available all day to answer our queries, “ he added.
Storey believes that the business culture of the outsourcing partner, as well as the culture, are the two factors that the user-vendor relationship’s success can be attributed to.
“There are some cultural characteristics of the Brazilian team that are quite phenomenal, especially when it comes to innovation and accountability – they are very creative in finding ways and solutions to ensure that they own tasks and take everything to fruition.”
A word of advice to CIOs
The J&J IT manager struggled to think of challenges faced when offshoring to Brazil – he claims that if there were any difficulties, they were few and far between in comparison to the number of successes – and urged colleagues to consider Brazil as an option for IT services.
“I would say that if an IT user is already offshoring to other locations, they need to make sure that they look at Brazil and what the country has to offer,” Storey said.
“What we find is that the teams we are working with are highly educated, their English skills are top-notch, the benefit of the time zone is amazing. We are able to cut down the lifecycles of the projects because we have a lot of real-time interaction, which is tremendously beneficial,” he added.
“I’ve heard people [in Brazil] talking about the issue of language [for IT professionals] and that not enough Brazilians speak English well. I personally did not observe that, because of the teams that I work with – I find their skills to be comparable to the best English speakers in the world.”
Future plans
Storey said that he spent time meeting other Brazilian companies during the Brasscom event in São Paulo to “find out what they bring to the table.”
“For us, this is not a zero-sum game: because we hire one vendor it doesn’t mean that we will release another. It is all about the synergy that all the IT companies that we work with bring into the mix,” the executive pointed out.
“As we bring in new vendors there is a competitions among them to perform and each brings their perspective and attributes, which allows us to have our whole organisation performing at a better level.“
However, in relation to plans for next year, Storey said that it is “inevitable” that J&J will grow the partnership with CI&T.
“Digital is growing so tremendously in terms of marketing support and with our growth at J&J, it is fair to say that our [in-house] team in São José dos Campos as well as our extended team at CI&T in Campinas will increase. “
