HSBC in Brazil has over 29,000 employees and about 1,700 branches in 550 different cities. It is among the 10 largest banks in Brazil. Their headquarters is located in Curitiba. The Brazilian portion of HSBC is the bank’s largest group in Latin America. In total HSBC has over 300,000 employees, located all over the world. HSBC is the fourth largest corporation in term of assets ( $1.861 Trillion as of 12-31-2007). HSBC is an acronym for the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation. HSBC is headquartered in Hong Kong. The bank was founded in 1865 to finance the trading activities conducted between China and Europe.
The Visit
Our visit was hosted by Jacques Depocas. Jacques is the head of the Curitiba Brazil office. Jacques brought a very interesting perspective to the presentation. Over the course of his life he has lived in seven different countries, including USA, France, Mexico and Brazil. His life experience has allowed him to see things through a different set of eyes. His presentation focused on the strengths of Brazil, and why it was well positioned to grow as an outsourcing provider.
Outsourcing
The office in Curitiba is one of four data centers for HSBC. Two are located in India and the other one is located in China. During the visit Jacques spent quite a bit of time explaining to the group the differences between the way the Brazilian office operates and the ones that are located in Asia operate. The Brazilian office is much smaller with 265 employees in comparison to the 5,000 located in India.
The skill sets of the Brazilian professionals are known for being resourceful, curious, flexible and adaptable to the changing conditions. The Curitiba office also had a better distribution of software engineers. Having the more experienced engineers places the Brazilian office in a better position for the more complex projects. India in contrast has a large amount of engineers working on projects that would be considered entry level or low experience required.
Jacques pointed out some of the strengths of Brazil. It is located in a time zone which is very similar to the USA as well as Europe. It makes it much easier to communicate between the offices. Brazil is also an overnight flight from Europe or the USA. There are also many similarities between the cultures in Europe and USA. The telecommunications infrastructure in Brazil is very good. High speed internet is easily accessible and dependable. Brazil has strong Intellectual Property laws which are crucial when you are developing or working with proprietary products.
Findings
A couple of things were very interesting to learn during our visit
- English is a necessity when the Brazil center hires new employees
- English is the only language spoken in the office.
- The office was designed by Jacques, to make sure it created a comfortable environment.
- The impression that our group took from his presentation was that his organization was highly organized and well positioned to grow as a provider of quality IT services.