By Filipe Pacheco

Banco do Brasil, São Paulo

WHEN A BRAZILIAN CREDIT CARD HOLDER charges a purchase, the transaction is probably processed by Tivit. One of the most important companies in the country’s financial services sector, Tivit is growing as rapidly as the Brazilian economy. The company already employs 29,000 people throughout the country.

Managing massive operations is in Tivit’s DNA. The company is a result of the merger of two other firms: Telefutura, a BPO company focused on mission-critical operations, and Optiglobe, a data center provider. The name Tivit came into existence only in 2005, but Telefutura started up back in 1998.

Today, the company divides its activities mainly in three different areas: IT infrastructure (that includes environment management, technical support, and field services); application systems (systems integration, software and testing factory, application management, IT consulting and electronic data interchange); and BPO (receivables management, customer care, sales management, electronic transaction processing). Those services added up to generate net income last year of about R$281 million, the company says.

André Guimarães Frederico, Tivit’s director of strategic planning and mergers and acquisitions, explains that the core business of the company is related to what he calls “full outsourcing” — or the full management of critical operations, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

As an example, he explains that the company is responsible for processing more than half of the transactions generated by Cielo, a credit card operating company. When someone charges something, the transaction activity between the bank, the credit card company (Visa or Mastercard), the store, and Cielo all falls under Tivit’s responsibility.

Those operations don’t ever stop, even on holidays. “Christmas or Mother’s Day are moments when we have the most work,” says Frederico.

As a result of its expertise in financial activities, Tivit counts most Brazilian banks among its clients. To serve those clients, the company counts on one data center, three software factories, and 11 BPO offices spread through the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina, and Bahia. “Most of our clients are Brazilian companies, 99%, and the 1% remaining is made up by Brazilian companies that have grown internationally,” he says.

Tivit’s client list also includes companies from the chemical and manufacturing industries, insurance and healthcare companies, like Marítima Seguros and Unimed (both among the leaders in their segment), and ethanol producing companies, considered one of the most promising fields in the country for the years to come.

One project under implementation right now inside Tivit is transforming the traditional paper bills that come with a barcode into electronic models – the company already processes around 2 billion of these traditional transactions a year. “It would result in economy of paper and logistic costs to the companies in a important way,” Frederico says.

Last December Tivit made a move that goes in a contrary direction from many promising IT firms in recent times. The company, which had its shares traded on the Brazilian Stock Exchange since 2009, closed its capital in a negotiation that involved R$721 million. The new majority partner of the company since then, with 97% of its capital, is the American private equity investment fund Apax, which globally manages around US$35 billion and also has control of Promethean World, a company from the interactive education field; Smart Technologies, a Canadian provider of collaborative interaction products; TDC A/S and Weather Investments, both telecom companies; and the global satellite operators Inmarsat and Intelsat, among other ventures.

“The innovative culture of the company remains the same,” Frederico says. “We are still focused on bringing solutions to our clients independently of who owns most part of the company. Nothing changed in the daily work,” he says.

Tivit is investing in regions of the country that are not exactly popular tech hubs – like the recent R$35 million investment it made in an outsourcing services and system applications unit in Santos, a coastal city in the State of São Paulo. “We are looking forward to places in which we can ally with local universities and tech centers to qualify the workforce,” Frederico says.

Considering the tight labor market in the country, that sounds like a good plan.