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Ci&T Recognized on International Association of Outsourcing Professionals’ Global Outsourcing 100

2010 Honor Marks Fourth Consecutive Appearance for Lean IT Evangelist on Top Outsourcing Provider List

KING OF PRUSSIA, PA–(Marketwire - February 16, 2010) - Ci&T, a consulting and technology outsourcing services company, has been named a Global Outsourcing 100® outsourced service provider by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals® (IAOP®). The 2010 honor marks the fourth straight year that Ci&T, which is committed to leveraging lean principles in application development for its global clients, has been recognized by the group as one of the premiere outsourcing providers in the world.
The Global Outsourcing 100 and its sublists are essential references for companies seeking new and expanded relationships with the best outsourcers and service providers in the industry. The lists include not only today’s leaders, but also tomorrow’s rising stars.
“As the economy recovers, partnering with the world’s best outsourcing providers and advisors will be more important than ever,” said IAOP Chairman Michael Corbett and chair of the judges’ panel. “The Global Outsourcing 100 helps companies easily identify those partners that will help them emerge as leaders.”
The IAOP is the global, standard-setting organization and advocate for the outsourcing profession. With more than 100,000 members and affiliates worldwide, the IAOP helps companies increase their outsourcing success rate, improve their outsourcing ROI and expand the opportunities for outsourcing across their businesses.
“To be recognized by such a prestigious organization as the IAOP for the fourth straight year as one of the world’s best outsourcing providers is an enormous honor,” said Leonardo Mattiazzi, vice president of international business, Ci&T. “This achievement serves to validate the tireless commitment of Ci&T’s project teams to providing unmatched application development and digital marketing services for our global clients day-in and day-out. Furthermore, it recognizes Brazil’s emergence as a growing player on the global outsourcing stage as the country continues to be seen as a top destination for IT services by more and more companies around the world.”
Ci&T is committed to providing application development services for global clients using the principles of Lean IT, which focus on delivering value in each project by eliminating waste in the value chain. The company’s development centers in Brazil provide creative marketing and technology expertise in near-local time zones, saving clients time and money and helping them gain a competitive advantage with a real-time partner.
About IAOP
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals® (IAOP®) is the global, standard-setting organization and advocate for the outsourcing profession. With more than 100,000 members and affiliates worldwide, IAOP helps companies increase their outsourcing success rate, improve their outsourcing ROI, and expand the opportunities for outsourcing across their businesses. To learn more, visit www.outsourcingprofessional.org.
About Ci&T:
Ci&T delivers consulting, application outsourcing and digital marketing services in a unique way. Its “best-of-all-worlds” model combines the efficiency of offshore development with the convenience of a Western Hemisphere partner. Development centers in Brazil put creative marketing and technology expertise in near-local time zones, saving clients time and money and helping them to gain competitive advantages with a proven, real-time development partner. Ci&T specializes in customized application development, business intelligence, SAP consulting, digital marketing and Web 2.0 applications. Its clients include a diverse array of large and global Fortune 500 customers in the United States, Brazil and Europe. For more information, please visit www.ciandt.com.

Source: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/CiT-Recognized-on-International-Association-Outsourcing-Professionals-Global-Outsourcing-1117414.htm

Take a listen to the latest installment in our podcast series exploring unique approaches to IT and application development. In this episode, Leonardo Mattiazzi and Jack Cesareo educate listeners on the benefits of Val IT, an approach that helps professionals determine “what’s crucial” from “what’s important” in each project undertaken. The Val IT framework can help companies derive more value from their development projects, resulting in better applications that lend real benefit to the business.

You can also download this podcast for free on iTunes.

Ci&T Provides Critical Insurance Policy Workflow Application for MetLife

New Tool Automates Underwriting Flow and Policies for Global Insurance and Financial Services Organization

KING OF PRUSSIA, PA–(Marketwire - March 1, 2010) - Ci&T (http://bit.ly/4eWfYK), a consulting and technology outsourcing services company, today announced that it has developed a vital new workflow application for leading insurance and financial services provider MetLife. The new application automates critical processes involved in the sales and processing of new insurance policies for MetLife’s individual, SMB and corporate clients, making it one of the company’s most important systems.
As one of the largest providers of insurance policies to individuals, SMBs and corporations in the world, MetLife must issue policies with the utmost efficiency and ensure that these policies are processed in a way that generates the maximum possible revenue for the company. Recognizing this need, MetLife first approached Ci&T to develop an application that would provide the efficiency and speed necessary to process individual policies — from the initial sale to the analysis of the proposal to the implementation of the policy. Once Ci&T had successfully developed the new application to address this need, the company then extended the application to address critical processes for SMB clients and, ultimately, the corporate customers MetLife services.
“When we invested in the implementation of a new application by Ci&T, MetLife sought an innovative tool that would allow the issuance of policies with significantly greater efficiency,” said Fatima Primati, chief information officer, MetLife Brazil. “Once successfully in use for our individual and SMB customers, we decided that our corporate clients would benefit from the tool as well. What began as an isolated support tool is now critical to the daily operation of our business.”
When deployed, the application developed by Ci&T demonstrated immediate benefits in standardizing the flow of information and fostering greater collaboration within MetLife. Previously, processes were performed manually and lacked the documentation capabilities critical to ensure compliance with industry regulations. With the Ci&T application, these functions were now completely automated, reducing the time for analysis of individual proposals and electronically documenting the history of each proposal. The project also resulted in improved relations between MetLife’s brokers and its customers, reducing dependence on manual processes for proposal analysis and enabling a greater focus on customer service.
Ci&T is committed to leveraging Lean IT principles in the development projects it performs for its valued clients, which focus on delivering value for customers by eliminating waste in the value chain.
“The methodology that Ci&T used in this particular project, based on the concepts of Agile and Lean IT, helped us to understand the vision of the project both as a whole at the outset and incrementally during its respective stages,” emphasized Primati. “In this approach, what is intended is made and, with this new application, Ci&T has delivered a solution designed to grow. At MetLife, we consider high-quality service to be a differentiator in selecting those professional organizations with which we partner. For four years MetLife has considered Ci&T just such a partner, and we will work with them on additional major initiatives in 2010.”
“Our Lean approach to application development enables us to deliver greater value to our clients’ businesses at an incredibly fast pace,” said Leonardo Mattiazzi, vice president, international business at Ci&T. “The principles employed in this approach are designed to do nothing but add value in each engagement. In this way our customers benefit by receiving the features most critical to their businesses in every project, delivered faster than they previously thought possible.”

Source: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/CiT-Provides-Critical-Insurance-Policy-Workflow-Application-for-MetLife-1124070.htm

With the recent headlines around Toyota’s massive recalls, much has been made of the company’s Lean approach to manufacturing, which, of course, it pioneered. Some in the IT world that have applied this approach to their own organizations may even be asking whether it’s appropriate to be talking about Lean as a superior philosophy.
More than anything, the Toyota example just goes to illustrate that great companies are not immune to crisis, and even the best managers can make big mistakes. What really sets apart superior companies is their ability to look deeply and seriously into their problems’ sources and come out of a crisis even stronger. That’s what happened when Taiichi Ohno first devised the ideas that later came to be known as “lean principles,” when Toyota experienced a crisis in the 1950s. And I believe that history will repeat itself in this case.
Apparently I’m not alone. The reaction of car owners defending the company and the quality of its cars is astonishing. Make no mistake: the five deaths reported thus far as a result of the Toyota manufacturing problems cannot and should not be diminished. But the company is clearly taking the issue very seriously, as recently evidenced by the refusal of Akio Toyoda of a well-deserved prize offered by the Japanese government for the Prius’ fuel efficiency. This is no theater, as one could expect in a Western culture.
So, yes, Toyota, the great master of lean thinking, has serious issues to contend with, just when the market is starting to show signs of a slow recovery. Is it suffering from hubris born out of its extreme success? Is it compromising discipline in the pursuit of more (to be bigger than GM)? If that is the case, I’d say that at least Toyota is not denying risk and peril (which would be the next stage of decline) – they’re taking this very seriously. I don’t think that any company is above all crisis – either caused by external factors or internal ones. But I do trust that the culture that Toyota has built – based on the Lean principles it pioneered – will help lift it out of the turmoil it currently faces.
Were Toyota not a Lean company, I would be considerably less confident in its ability to ride out this storm. But with its consistent record over several decades of producing high-quality cars and providing excellent service, the company has too many supporters to simply fail. With a management culture that encourages looking at issues up close, determining root causes and fixing them at the outset, the company has the skills and resources that it takes to continue to be a leader in the industry.
There will always be the questions of how the original developers (the true masters) of the Lean approach who are no longer with Toyota (Ohno passed away in 1990) would respond to this crisis, and whether the corporate culture built over all these years is actually strong enough to surmount such a dangerous and difficult test. It’s worth following this ongoing story, and it’s important that no matter how you feel about Toyota, we examine what ultimately happens as a result of this crisis and learn from it. Masters – even those that make significant mistakes – are always teaching.

Leonardo Mattiazzi, VP International Business for Ci&T

Source: http://advice.cio.com/leonardo_mattiazzi/when_the_master_falters_what_do_the_disciples_do

Ci&T is pleased to announce that it will be participating in The CIO Forum at the Harvard Club in New York City. Scheduled to be held on May 18, 2010, the CIO Forum is specifically designed for the most senior IT leaders in the U.S., helping shape upcoming IT strategies by offering a blend of highly interactive first-class conference sessions, senior-level face-to-face meetings with innovative solution providers, and extensive networking opportunities with respected peers.
Read more: http://www.cioforum.com

Take a listen to our second podcast with Leonardo Mattiazzi and Jack Cesareo of Ci&T. They discuss linking lean principals to practical examples in IT. Specifically, they talk about best practices for managing a lean environment and how best practices for lean manufacturing can be linked to lean IT.

http://www.ciandt.com/podcast/Lean_IT_Podcast.xml

You can also download this podcast for free on iTunes.

Ci&T announced that it has contributed significantly to Brazil’s emergence as a top IT outsourcing destination by concluding its most successful year ever. By successfully undertaking new client projects for companies such as McDonald’s, Andrade Gutierrez and Honda, and participating in several key global outsourcing events, Ci&T now stands poised for even further growth in 2010, as Brazil continues to lead the Latin American IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) explosion on the world stage.

2009 was a watershed year for Brazil’s economic emergence in several crucial ways, from successfully winning its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics to the overall expansion of its private sector, with a projected 3 percent growth of its Gross Domestic Product in Q4 2009 after 3.5 percent growth in Q3 2009. One specific sector where the country has seen demonstrable success is in the realm of IT-BPO, as the country is being heralded for its bedrock of technology and business expertise and cultural compatibility with global companies, in addition to simple cost benefits.

“Brazil has never been better positioned to stake out its place in the global IT landscape, and the country’s economic progress in 2009 can only point the way toward greater things in 2010,” said Antonio Gil, president, the Brazilian Association of Information Technology and Communication Companies (Brasscom). “We have been working closely with the Brazilian government in the support of its Productive Development Policy, where information and communication technologies remain among the highest priorities for 2010. Through our efforts we believe that we can effectively position Brazil as one of the key global IT centers in the world, aligning the public and private sectors, professionals and unions, and generating formal and qualified jobs for all the company’s experienced IT workers.”

Ci&T, with its global headquarters located in Campinas, Brazil, and U.S. headquarters in King of Prussia, Penn., has contributed greatly to the country’s emergence in the IT-BPO sector, with a commitment to providing its clients with the highest quality application development that incorporates a lean approach to IT. The company in 2009 completed successful project work with companies such as McDonald’s, Honda and Andrade-Gutierrez, helping them to eliminate waste in their IT value chains and ultimately reap tangible ROI benefits. With an expanding pipeline of new projects already in the queue for 2010, Ci&T is positioned to continue its contribution to Brazil’s economic rise in the coming year and beyond.

In addition to these new client projects, Ci&T in 2009 announced the establishment of Ci&T Pacific, in a joint venture with Japanese software development firm Rococo. The venture, which includes a software development center in Ningbo, China, enables Ci&T to serve its clients in the Asia-Pacific region with the same unique combination of services and expertise it offers clients in the rest of the world.

Related link: http://sap.sys-con.com/node/1219741

Ci&T recently announced that McDonalds Brazil has leveraged its unique offerings to optimize IT processes across 568 restaurants around the country. Using a lean approach to IT, Ci&T was able to create improvements in control and efficiency that McDonalds expects will enable it to divert approximately 15 to 20 percent of its maintenance costs to new product development and innovation.

McDonalds Brazil faced a distinct challenge in optimizing its controllable food system. In order to provide support and reduce raw material waste in the system, the company required an overhaul of its IT and business processes to improve the overall quality of support in the field. Ultimately, McDonalds Brazil enlisted Ci&T to implement new IT and business processes that would reduce waste and enable McDonalds to achieve better control of the materials in its system, providing the support necessary to ensure optimization of processes at all times. In this, McDonalds hoped to achieve new levels of efficiency that would reduce costly waste of materials and improve the overall effectiveness of the system.

“We needed the recovery of our assets, so we adopted a strategy to document them by providing proper maintenance procedures and follow more consistently in order to replicate them,” said an executive at McDonalds Brazil. “By doing so, we were able to reduce expenditures on maintenance and turn that amount of capital investment into an avenue for generating innovation. This underscores our need to add more value to the business.”

To improve process efficiency for McDonalds, Ci&T used a unique approach to IT, leveraging the proven principles of the lean methodology, which focus on delivering value and eliminating waste. Once the new processes were implemented and the new systems were up and running, McDonalds was able to better control its raw material assets across 568 restaurants in Brazil. The fast food giant anticipates that the overall improved efficiency of its controllable food system will factor into a 1 percent annual cost savings, or the bottom-line equivalent to more than a 3 percent increase in annual sales.

“Our business is made up of cents. The greater our ability to maintain IT systems and equipment operation, the more opportunity exists for us to provide better products for our customers,” said the McDonalds executive. “With the system running to its fullest potential, it adds greater value to our business, enabling better control of the operation of restaurants, with the benefits exemplified in the quality of the final product.”

“Companies need to ensure they are receiving the best value from of all their operations at all times,” said Leonardo Mattiazzi, vice president of international business at Ci&T. “Organizations that are able to realize increased benefits at a fraction of the investment cost are able to work more efficiently within the current economy, and will be better positioned for success when a rebound occurs.”

Related link: http://pr-canada.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=143934&Itemid=61

Over the years, Yahoo! has tapped many companies to help keep its Web portals user-friendly, responsive, and content compliant within the countries it serves. However, many of them are strictly vendors, working with direction from Yahoo!, but with no real stake in the engagement other than fees.

A few have morphed into outsourcing partners. One is Brazilian-based Ci&T, a consulting and technology outsourcing services company and CMMI Level 5 independent software developer (ISV). Ci&T provides consulting and technology services, including customized applications, SAP, business intelligence, business process management, IT governance, digital marketing, and Web 2.0 applications.

“We are starting to see models where suppliers are leveraging other companies with local expertise and market knowledge,” according to Anand Ramesh, research director for the Everest Group.

Yahoo! initially engaged Ci&T to address Yahoo!’s presences in the South and Central American markets and its North American Spanish-speaking portals. Engineering director CJ Singh, who manages these initiatives in Yahoo’s American regions, says it didn’t take long for Ci&T to transition from vendor to outsourcing partner.

“In the beginning, Ci&T was an overflow software developer to augment our efforts,” he says. “But over time, we needed a consistent relationship with an ISV that displays state-of-the-art engineering practices found in a CMMI Level 5.” Those competencies, coupled with provider understanding of the Yahoo! brand in the many different Hispanic nations in which it has a presence, instilled confidence in Yahoo! to begin outsourcing complete projects to Ci&T, according to Singh.

Through this partnership, Yahoo! works with Ci&T’s team to leverage the newest and best technologies for Web development. This allows Yahoo! to meet the needs of its portals, which over 350 million people worldwide use daily.

“We know that innovation is very important, particularly for Yahoo!,” says Leonardo Mattiazzi, vice president of international business for Ci&T. “It’s about bringing new products to the market in the most usable fashion. It’s also a part of their culture we’ve grown accustomed to quickly.”

Yahoo! has extended its presence in Latin America and delivers sponsored sites as soon as three days from the definition of layout to market. Prior to this, such sophisticated Web development could take as long as two weeks.

“They have access to great talent in the Latin America region and that has produced the results we anticipated,” says Singh. “They engage good young engineers and it shows in the quality of the work they do for us.”

Successful hotsites

The initial challenge, according to Mattiazzi, was simply coping with the amount of work and on-time, quality delivery. “During the vetting process in 2007, Yahoo! told us they needed a company with similar values: a lean and agile structure and young, talented, and flexible minds that displayed an appetite for innovation.”

Peter Allen, managing director for Global Practices with TPI, suggests, “Outsourcing’s benefit for labor arbitrage is just about gone. Productivity and outcome-based value, not just effort-based services or cash savings alone determine success.”

The initial hotsite engagements were a tremendous success throughout Latin America and especially in the U.S. Hispanic market. One of them, a beauty contest, allowed visitors to upload, vote, and comment on contestant pictures. It registered more then two million page views and over 9,000 contestants uploaded pictures during the two-month campaign.

Another involved Yahoo! partner The Brazilian Sports Authority after reformulation of its national soccer league. That site registered 10 million page views from three million unique visitors in a single month.

Ultimately, Ci&T continued to reduce defect-free hotsite launch times from two months to three weeks, and sometimes less.

Such successes inspired a broadening of the engagement. Today Ci&T provides engineering, product, and search marketing services to Yahoo! and interacts with more of its divisions, such as development frameworks and content management. The Ci&T executive says he can feel “palpable excitement” when he’s around the teams as they work on their projects.

Buyer dividends now include quicker ramp-up times and greater efficiency within a broader sphere of Yahoo! properties. In addition, Ci&T is also slowly branching into some of Yahoo!’s Far Eastern enterprises.

Both Singh and Mattiazzi agree that the Yahoo! value proposition doesn’t stop with just the services it retains from its provider. “They are a techie icon,” Mattiazzi says. “We are learning more about this technology together. They’ve always been in the cutting edge of the Web. In a sense, we are peers. It’s a true collaboration.”

“Ci&T shows great responsiveness through its developer innovation skills,” according to Singh. “Our internal processes and methodologies can’t help but improve because of this association. It’s a large reason why Ci&T moved from simply a vendor to trusted outsourcing provider.”

Related link: http://www.outsourcing-journal.com/nov2009-yahoo.html

Recently, Leonardo Mattiazzi, vice president, international business for Ci&T, and Lean IT evangelist has taken to blogging. Mattiazzi aims to share his knowledge around the business benefits and best practices derived from Lean IT. He has been contributing frequently to the CIO forum on CIO.com.

Take a look at what our expert has to say!