By Filipe Pacheco

RESOURCE IT SOLUTIONS HAS BEEN an important player in the Brazilian IT services and outsourcing market for two decades, but 2012 could be a turning point for this company founded in São Paulo in 1991. And to help it fight for a broader slice of the local and Latin technology market pie, the provider has hired a big name in the Brazilian IT industry.

“Governance” is the word that will rule the company this year, as it aims to become more efficient and  expand its service capabilities – and for what could eventually be an initial public offering on the Brazil Stock Exchange.

“That is a natural path for the company,” says Gilmar Batistela, founder and president of Resource. An IPO is not the main goal of the restructuring that is going on within the company, he says, but it could happen within two or three years, depending on market conditions.

According to numbers furnished by the company, the expected earnings for 2011 are around R$270 million (US$145 million), which would represent growth of 35% in comparison to last year. Expectations for 2012: earnings of about R$350 million (US$188 million). The company has about 300 clients all over the country, including Bradesco, Amex, Citibank, Volkswagen, Honda, Procter & Gamble, and Caterpillar. Its main areas of service are financial systems, electronic payments, SAP, business intelligence, mobility, and IBM technologies.

Reorganizing for Better Operations

To lead the charge toward better governance practices, Batistela recruited Rogério Oliveira, whose responsibility includes heading up the recently created board of administration. Oliveira was an employee of IBM in Brazil for 39 years, where his tenure included country manager and president for Latin America.

At a certain point in the evolution of an IT company, Oliveira says, there are practices of management and governance that no longer fit and, many times, decision makers tend to keep those practices simply because they are used to them. “But that way, they tend to lose efficiency,” he says. “The [administration] board will help to look after operations as a whole and to improve the operational processes, besides collaborating on defining plans of growth.”

The company wants to increase its offerings in cloud computing services, SOA, BPM (WebSphere), and business analytics. And it wants to strengthen its partnership with IBM.

Batistela and Oliveira are both emphatic when talking about expansion plans: the focus is to grow and improve services in Latin America. In 2011, Resource inaugurated two operations abroad: one in Chile and one in Argentina. In Chile, most clients are from the financial industry, while in Argentina they are focused on SAP practices and partnerships.

The company is considering expanding to new turf, and that would be Colombia. “It is a very promising market,” says Batistela. “We have to follow our clients, and that is their tendency: to grow within Latin America.” Some of those clients would be big Brazilian banks that have been spreading their operations throughout South America.

Any acquisitions done from now on will have to add value to the services already provided by Resource, and not simply be intended to gain market share, Oliveira says.

Resource IT Solutions has had a presence in the United States since 2001, with an office in Miami, where it sells and supports mostly performance maintenance software. Boosting its operations in the US is not a priority for now.

Considering the fact that the American market is highly competitive, the company has no intention “to fight for providing services the same way India does,” Oliveira says. “We cannot compete when it comes to prices.”

But, on the other hand, he claims the company is in a better position than Indian competitors when it comes to “competence.” “In the United States, for example, we provide much better services in payment processing for Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. That is a good advantage for us already.”

< In this short video clip, Roger Oliveira offers a brief history of CIOs and IT outsourcing. >