Spencer Gracias: A Global Platform Offering Excellent SAP Solutions

From an infrastructural point of view, today’s SAP industry scenario has seen a massive rise. End clients increasingly seek comprehensive solutions that provide the service they demand in a transparent, flexible and secure manner.

In an interview with Business Iconic with Mr. Spencer Gracias, North America/APAC CEO at Stefanini has built a world-class cloud hosting business that provides best-in-class solutions and services to customers worldwide. Although there are much larger players in the industry, from a competitive standpoint, Stefanini has found time and again, that businesses are more interested in excellence in service than incumbency.

1. Brief us about Stefanini journey of rich experience – origin, inception, early issues, success stories, and major milestones, to name a few.

Stefanini Group is a $1 billion global technology company that provides organizations of all shapes and sizes with a broad portfolio of digital transformation services and solutions. Founded in San Paulo, Brazil by Marco Stefanini in 1987, Stefanini was previously known as an IT provider, but has since grown into a full service technology company. Since its origin, Stefanini has acquired 30 companies all with unique specialities and has rebranded itself as Stefanini Group, a large brand umbrella under which the acquired companies are organized by industry vertical.

In 2001, Stefanini founded its North American headquarters in Detroit, Michigan. In 2010, the U.S. made its first acquisition of TechTeam Global, Inc. This new subsidiary brought together Stefanini’s traditional strength in areas like application outsourcing and software development with TechTeam’s expertise in service desk and BPO. This acquisition was followed by acquisitions of Code X, Inc. in 2011 and RCG Global Services, Inc. in 2013.

The company has been recognized with several awards in the area of innovation—a value proposition it prioritizes at its four innovation centers across the globe, offering a human-centric approach to how technology can turn business objectives into business realities. With a presence in 41 countries, Stefanini was named the fifth most internationalized company, according to the Dom Cabral Foundation ranking of 2017.

2. Brief us about the CEO/Founder of Stefanini.

Spencer Gracias brings 25+ years of experience to Stefanini, serving as the company’s North America/APAC CEO since 2017. He has been a member of the board of technology at Stefanini since early 2015, working directly with Marco Stefanini, the company’s founder and global CEO. Spencer has played a critical role in developing and improving service offerings, conducting IT market analyses within Latin America, and advising.

Prior to joining Stefanini, Spencer was the Strategic Outsourcing Executive for IBM Mexico, leading the business development initiatives with more than 1,400 resources and supporting more than 40 clients. This brought IBM significant value to help clients in their IT transformations. Spencer has worked with Whirlpool, CPFL Energia, Globo TV, General Motors, ABN Amro Bank and Santander Bank. He has two MBA degrees and two post-MBA degrees in marketing and strategic resource management.

3. Kindly talk about the exclusive products or services offered by Stefanini. How does it distinguish you from your competitors?

Stefanini serves large enterprises and small-to-mid size businesses with its niche and support SAP services. A unique support offering of Stefanini’s is its L 1.5 service, which is a halfway point between L1 support (help desk) and L2 support. This allows less complex tasks to be left to the help desk personnel and more effective management of time and resources with challenging software and advanced talent, further bringing down the TCO for the SAP systems.

Distinguishing itself from its competitors, Stefanini is able to:

• Integrate Artificial Intelligence technology with SAP
• Execute agile transformation (project methodology) with SAP
• Migrate SAP software to the cloud (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc.)
• Offer synergy services that combine the expertise of the help desk (L1), with the best in class knowledge of its umbrella of companies with L2 and L3 support services
• Enable & support vertical integration of SAP solutions from shop floor systems all the way customer facing portals
• Help transform SAP system to Automated digital enterprises with “do it yourself” & “fix it by itself”

As a privately held, flat organization, Stefanini clients are able to easily access top level management and receive active attention. The company is big enough to have the right talent and expertise and get the job done well, and small enough to care.

4. What is the vision and mission of Stefanini?

Vision: We are constantly searching for new and innovative solutions, expanding our global ecosystem to provide Digital Transformation. We invest in ventures that share our spirit of innovation, allowing us to provide exclusive digital avenues for our clients. We are a network of knowledge, always developing new digital solutions and following our mission to co-create for a better world.

Mission: We work to make the dreams of our customers, employees, and shareholders a reality through the finest technology and innovative digital solutions.

5. What is the present scenario of the SAP industry? How are you contributing to making it better?

The present industry for SAP is a very traditional IT support environment, despite the complexity of SAP enterprise systems. Stefanini is contributing to the industry by helping make SAP simpler and easier to use, empowering the user in today’s millennial age where the need for accessibility and limited attention span has slimmed down to mere seconds.

Enterprise systems don’t work like a google search. Stefanini wants SAP to become a more cognitive, self-healing platform where users can do it by themselves. Based on its self-developed methodology, Stefanini is taking a transaction-heavy SAP system and helping to make it cognitive. SAP is complex by nature and hence users have to be empowered as organizations aspire to mature into a Automated Digital Enterprise. Stefanini’s two-tiered approach with a best in class Automation framework will further augment “do it yourself” & “fix it by itself” approach necessary for New Age ERP platforms evolution.

6. What are the marketing strategies adopted by Stefanini?

Stefanini’s marketing department is comprised of a suite of experts with unique and integrated specialties from content development to SEO and beyond. The company’s marketing strategies include maintaining a comprehensive website with informative and educational support, including service offerings, case studies, industry trends, corporate blog and e-books. Stefanini regularly hosts webinars with experts across its eight industry specialties. The team manages social media platforms, digital advertisements, crafts campaigns and utilizes salesforce technology to serve existing clients and to attract new potential clients.

7. How do you portray the future of Stefanini in the next decade?

On the trajectory for significant growth, Stefanini Group has already acquired 30 companies in more than 30 years. In 2019 alone, the company reported 10% organic growth over 2018. Stefanini Group has an extensive, aggressive growth plan established with goals to grow in both revenue and through mergers and acquisitions.

8. With respect to your distinctive products and services, how have you helped bring positive developments in the industry?

Stefanini Group has always been at the forefront of innovation. Working with AI since 2013, it has fundamentally changed the way people interact with systems. It created Sophie, an omnichannel virtual assistant and AI solution for collaborative digital transformation, that achieves the same results as other AI technologies with 20 times less data required to train as other tech tools. With a background in cognitive computing and AI, self-adaptation and both interactive and contextual automation, Sophie has the ability to achieve self-learning and human-like interaction. She has the knowledge to support five industries, knows 60+ languages and decreases 38% of time spent on calls, and is currently serving 112 clients. In addition to Sophie, Stefanini Group contributes to the technology industry with its robust offerings aligned with market trends such as automation, cloud, Internet of Things (IoT) and user experience (UX).

Stefanini Group’s biggest achievement over the past year has been its ability to be agile and pivot its strategy and efforts to serve as a resource to clients, businesses and the community in light of COVID-19. The company has launched numerous new solutions, services and resources to assist companies in their response to the virus. One platform, Sophie C-19, was developed in just one week and launched as a free AI assistant for companies to integrate into their websites and intranets to answer employee questions about the Coronavirus pandemic. Another Stefanini Group product is the W@H Suite that is composed of a package of technology platforms to assist companies transitioning to a remote working environment.

9. What advice would you give to the upcoming entrepreneurs and professionals?

If I could give a word of advice to professionals I would say, make a point to discover the characteristics, skills and strengths that make you unique. Try new things that scare you at first. Once you identify the unique assets you bring to the table, you can look for ways to improve yourself and be supported by others to build a better business, society and world.

10. How is the advancement in technology changing the space?

While technology is ever evolving and more and more businesses are going through the process of digital transformation, it’s critical that the technology is not too complex that the end-user cannot utilize it effectively. SAP technology is very complex, but Stefanini is taking strides to empower users and make it a more cognitive platform.

In the light of the Coronavirus pandemic, businesses are becoming more receptive to digital solutions than ever before as a way to navigate this new virtual world. Digital activity is absolutely essential to survive in this new climate and Stefanini is guiding and educating its clients on how to adapt appropriately with technology as the world continues to evolve.