In 2017, Natixis set up its information technology center of excellence in the city of Porto, where it centralizes the IT services that were previously provided in France by external suppliers. Natixis' information systems and technologies unit in Portugal, which currently has more than 300 employees and aims to create more than 600 direct jobs by the end of 2019, is today a technological center of excellence that provides innovative solutions to support all of Natixis' business operations around the world.
The challenge
Nathalhie Risacher, Senior Country Manager of Natixis in Portugal, says that "Portugal is today a country that has high technological skills combined with an attractive investment environment, enabling access to highly qualified and specialised services and resources, with efficiency gains, which led us to bring our Centre of Excellence in Information Systems and Technologies (IS/IT) to the city of Porto.
In order to be able to guarantee all the support services for our Center of Excellence in Information Systems and Technologies, with high quality, we decided to turn to a highly accredited Portuguese partner in outsourcing services."
The solution implemented
MEO Empresas 's BPO service ensures the end-to-end management and operation of the functions that support the activity of the Natixis Information Systems and Technologies Center in Portugal:
Human Resources Management: managing the registration and processing of salaries and expenses for Natixis employees in Portugal.
Financial and treasury management: global financial management of accounting operations (with management and mapping of 5 international charts of accounts) and taxation in Portugal and France, financial and management reporting (BI), consolidation of accounts, global treasury management, payments and receipts.
Purchasing Management: support in drafting RFPs, consulting the market and managing purchases of products and services, and procurement.
Tranverse and Compliance: design and optimisation of processes and procedures to support the activity of the operation and support in the continuous improvement of processes.
The results achieved
According to Rui Veloso, Head of Finance at Natixis in Portugal, "the support areas are strategic to the success of the entire Natixis operation, which is in a phase of growth and expansion of its activity. By having a specialised partner with the know-how to ensure, in an articulated and integrated manner, the entire management and operation of the support activities for our IT Center of Excellence, we don't have to allocate internal resources and can be totally focused on our core business.
Outsourcing support functions to a highly experienced and trusted partner also allows us to guarantee best practices in the management of these operations.
In this way, we can streamline processes, optimise resources and ensure integrated management of all support components, based on advanced information management systems that guarantee that all processes are handled correctly. We guarantee simplification, transparency and optimisation of operational processes, as well as strict compliance with targets and deadlines, with more efficient cost management.
In addition, we can always ensure that technical and human resources are scaled in line with the evolving needs of our business and the level of competence required. We have an experienced team that guarantees the application and compliance with the legal requirements not only of our country, namely in terms of accounting and tax management, financial management and human resources, but also in the fundamental alignment with the different French specificities, legal and regulatory requirements, and which ensures permanent monitoring of service levels, with the periodic production of reliable and rigorous management indicators.
At the end of the first year of activity, we can make a very positive overall assessment of the service provided, with the designs and respective implementation of the processes, with full compliance with the agreed service levels in all areas of intervention.
In terms of human resources management, between March 2017 and 2018, more than 800 salaries were processed and around 450 expenses reimbursed to employees.
In terms of accounting and financial management, more than 14,000 accounting records were recorded and more than 4,000 treasury movements were processed, as well as around 100 internal tax reports and procedural management reports with regulators and other Portuguese and French entities, as well as the recording, maintenance and mapping of five charts of accounts in different Portuguese and French applications.
In terms of logistics, over the course of the year the MEO Empresas team managed more than 950 purchasing processes and around 200 national and international suppliers, using a platform that enables end-to-end management of the purchasing process and supplier management, which resulted in an estimated saving of 25% through the negotiation processes carried out.
Also in terms of process management and optimisation, around 20 processes related to finance, purchasing and human resources were defined and designed, with clear results in terms of streamlining, simplification and operational optimisation.
Today, we are proud to have a technology center of excellence based in the city of Porto, which provides advanced IT support to Natixis' operations around the world and will continue to grow its operation internationally. To focus on the high performance of our technology unit, we rely on a specialised partner, MEO Empresas, to ensure that all support functions are always fully ensured and aligned with Natixis' strategy in Portugal," concludes Rui Veloso.
Main benefits
- Optimisation and integration of all management components.
- Flexible resource management.
- Efficiency and reduction of operating costs.
- Quality of service.