Capgemini celebrates a decade in Guatemala

Capgemini, the global digital transformation and information technologies consulting firm, opened its doors in Guatamala ten years ago this July. The state-of-the-art delivery center – Center Spotlight – has become one of the firm’s most important strategic locations servicing both North and Latin America and is expecting continued growth. 

Guatamala is becoming one of Central America’s outsourcing hotspots alongside Costa Rica. The country is a strategic hub in Latin America with modern infrastructure, time zone alignment with the North, Central and South America and has excellent communication channels making it accessible from anywhere in the world.

Capgemini chose Guatemala City due to the location’s benefits in terms of availability of talent, cost, and infrastructure. The firm originally set its sights on the gigantic US market as its main client-base through order-to-cash (O2C) servicing. That focus expanded in breadth of location as Capgemini began to look beyond North America as well as across industries and clients. 

Aided by Capgemini’s Global Delivery Network, the firm’s Guatemala base has grown rapidly throughout the past decade. Gustavo Tasner, Head of America’s Delivery Network, commented on the growth, saying, “By 2014, we had become a significant center in terms of size and complexity, but needed to take it to the next level.” 

“I’m happy to say that our center today is viewed as state-of-the-art within the Global Delivery Network,” he continues. “We have a very strong talent pool and very happy clients, both external and internal, who recognize the quality of service and value we bring to the table. In terms of competitiveness, automation, and transformation, we have shown that we’re truly exceptional!”

Center Spotlight today has grown from its first client (Coca-Cola) in 2008 to serve 19 international clients which speak a range of languages including Spanish, English, French and Portuguese. The center has over 1,300 staff spread throughout its Guatemala base including 809 credit-to-cash (C2C) professionals. 

The center offers a full suite of F&A services – C2C, record-to-analysis (R2A), procedure-to-pay (P2P) – as well as executive support, supply chain automation and personal assistant-as-a-service among others.

When considering what lies ahead, Tasner believes “the future for us all [at Capgemini Guatemala] isn’t just an opportunity – it’s exciting!” The firm is on a path of continuous growth and Tasner says that it’s going to hire “more – many more” people. Moreover, the service center will continue to focus on digital business transformation, saying that “many organizations are still in early stages of development, [but] the signs are that over the next few years the pace of change will accelerate.”

“Our future is to continue supporting the growth we foresee in the North American market. We need to become more aggressive in terms of how we price our services and put more skin in the game, to drive an impact on cash flow. The introduction of the digital Global Enterprise Model (GEM) framework will empower us to accelerate the adoption of digital and automation initiatives,” says Tasner.

“Last year, we grew by an impressive 40%, and we hope to repeat this performance this year. We have an exciting journey ahead and everyone at the center is up for the challenge. With the present business environment and our continuously evolving capabilities, the future looks extremely bright for us. Yes, we have a long way to go to become stronger and more relevant, but this is a great start,” he concluded. 

Paris-based Capgemini has multiple offices scattered around Latin America including in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and a total of nine locations in Brazil. The firm employees over 200,000 professionals globally including 9,000 people in Latin America. The firm admits that the Capgemini brand is relatively new to Latin America, however there has been a significant boom in demand in for Capgemini services across the region in the past few years.