The current economic crisis in the world and mainly in Europe has caused the immigration of big and mid-sized companies to emerging countries. The B.R.I.C. (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries offer lots of advantages besides stable economy status. But they also, only mentioning SAP, are the most complex implementations. Let’s talk about Brazil, only.
Then some concurrent aspects take place: the urgent need to move, language, basic economic model in contrast with very complex Fiscal scenarios, fisco-digital obligations from the very beginning of the company’s existence and lack of capable work-power. These points, associated to other difficulties on the way to Brazil, make these companies spend huge amounts of money. In the SAP implementations, these companies only know the great agencies in the world, and most expensive too, because it is hard for them to search for local agencies. And there is also a lack of trust!
To fill this gap and help under immigration foreign companies, some Trade&Foreign Business have created shared services consultancy offices with a wide range of services to give the migrating companies all the support needed. Such support starts with analysis and opinion on global policy, including fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policy, central banking, capital flows, sovereign wealth, market share analysis, product demand, customs and visa bureaucracy to hiring chairmen, accounting offices, money brokers, implementing the management systems and governance. It is a wise solution once a migrating company Director will be able to take more accurate decisions, won’t lose time and receive the referrals from all the companies attended before by every member of this shared services group. Reputation is important mainly when the reason for the move is crisis and, therefore, money is limited.
One example is International Project (www.internationalproject.biz). They are specialized in Italian companies but, their services and reputation reach other spots in Europe.
Concerning SAP, the agencies that assume these companies’ projects should include Change Management as mandatory because the new scenarios make no sense for someone who hasn’t lived them before. I, myself, have spent a great time with workshops and trainings to managers, CIOs and BPOs in the multinational companies I have worked for.
Many other lower level issues are part of such projects. I will try to go through them in a next blog.
