Interview of Luis Monteiro

Luis Monteiro, Business Manager responsible for nearshore projects at Altran Portugal

What is your role within the Altran Group? What are your responsibilities?

I am the Business Manager responsible for nearshore projects at Altran Portugal. This role gives me the following responsibilities:

Definition and consolidation of the offer;
Prospection and qualification of opportunities for new projects/services;
Management of the pre-sales and sales process;
Supporting the delivery process;
Management of the consultants working within the nearshore team.

All these activities have, also, the constant support from the Management team of Altran as well as the team of managers, project management, quality and back office to ensure, together with the consultants, the success of nearshore projects/services.

In your opinion, what are the main challenges faced by the Nearshore offer?

Nowadays to work delocalised is entirely possible. However, despite the fantastic approach technology allows, it is always different being away; it is always different when we see the attitude, personality, motivation, culture, desires and way of working of our colleagues and clients.
This distance is, undoubtedly, the greatest challenge of the nearshore projects and services. One of the ways to overcome this challenge is to promote the initial acquisition and sharing of knowledge working at the clients’ site, so that the first relationship is not created at distance, but in person, and this has been done in all the nearshore projects so far.
The aim is also to consolidate the monitoring process of the transition and evolution of knowledge, so that the risks of outsourcing are as controlled as possible.

In what way is this offer strategic for Altran?

With the national market in restraint, the provision of nearshore ensures a considerable volume of projects and services that are delivered to Portugal. These projects and services, which are complex and challenging, are excellent to speed up the personal and professional growth of our team.
With the nearshore offer, Altran will be able to ensure the high quality in the realisation of its projects, good results, and will reach international clients and markets.

What advantages can this offer bring to the clients of Altran?

Comparatively with the rest of Europe, Portugal has extremely competitive conditions in financial terms. However, this condition alone is not enough. Also its proximity to some of the major European players and the ease of communication and accessibility contribute, as decisive factors, to the allocation of certain projects in our country.

All of this, combined with the technical and functional quality of our teams, the maturity of our processes and experience of our consultants enables the creation of a high quality service at a very competitive cost.