Brazil: Strong Businesses in Difficult Times 

The new apart­ment build­ing shines in Brasíli­a’s evening light. Brasal Incor­po­rações, a Brazil­ian con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, com­plet­ed the Reser­va Urbana edi­fice and its 24 lux­u­ry con­do­mini­ums in 2020. The high-end units come in dif­fer­ent sizes, all fea­ture panoram­ic windows—and all are sold and occu­pied. “The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic stim­u­lat­ed our busi­ness,” says Sebastião Longuin­ho de Jesus, who over­sees new con­struc­tion projects for Brasal. Investors see the mer­its of con­crete in Brazil as well, also and espe­cial­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. “Work­ing with experts from Porsche Con­sult­ing, we gave our new-con­struc­tion divi­sion a more pro­fes­sion­al struc­ture, filled our orders, and used what we learned to advance our com­pa­ny further.”

Brasal is an exam­ple of the rapid recov­ery in cer­tain sec­tors of Brazil’s econ­o­my. Like many other coun­tries with high pop­u­la­tions, the world’s fifth-largest nation faced eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal crises in con­nec­tion with the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. While most of the coun­try’s employ­ers lost con­sid­er­able rev­enue on account of hav­ing to sus­pend pro­duc­tion or close their plants for safe­ty rea­sons, sec­tors such as online sales and con­struc­tion enjoyed good results. Accord­ing to Ger­many Trade and Invest, an infor­ma­tion ser­vice for the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, six months after the pan­dem­ic broke out 80 per­cent of all con­struc­tion site oper­a­tions in Brazil were back to nor­mal lev­els, where­as only 20 per­cent had been active in the spring of 2020.

The team at Porsche Con­sult­ing also had to respond imme­di­ate­ly to the new sit­u­a­tion. Con­sul­tants tra­di­tion­al­ly work at their respec­tive sites and rarely from their offices. They need prox­im­i­ty to their clients. “We like to be where our cus­tomers are and pre­fer to speak with them in per­son, but unfor­tu­nate­ly that was hard­ly ever pos­si­ble,” says Rüdi­ger Leutz, the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Porsche Con­sult­ing in Brazil upon describ­ing the dilem­ma he and his forty-mem­ber team faced for an extend­ed peri­od dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Many com­pa­nies had to stop pro­duc­tion and many employees—including those of Porsche Consulting—had to work from home. While the lock­down boost­ed the busi­ness of online food deliv­ery ser­vices like iFood and Rappi, it brought dra­mat­ic loss­es for most parts of the econ­o­my as large parts of the pop­u­la­tion were com­pelled to remain with­in the four walls of their homes.

But this coun­try in the south­ern hemi­sphere has expe­ri­ence in deal­ing with crises. Leutz, who was born in the south­ern part of Ger­many, prais­es the Brazil­ian approach to life. In Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and the entire nation for that mat­ter, “Peo­ple are not known for stick­ing their heads in the sand, but instead for pulling togeth­er.” He could there­fore apply new strate­gies in respond­ing to the pan­dem­ic. In place of the pre­vi­ous focus on reduc­ing clients’ costs and increas­ing their effi­cien­cy, a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy rose to promi­nence in 2020. It took an ad hoc form in answer­ing the ques­tion: “How do we and our clients joint­ly chart a course through the storm?” Cash flows were scru­ti­nized and the employ­ees were close­ly involved. A pre­mi­um was placed on clear and direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Leutz and his team achieved this with the help of a hybrid con­sul­tan­cy model. For safe­ty rea­sons they ini­tial­ly held all work­shops and meet­ings online. In late 2020, they began hold­ing some client con­sul­ta­tions and work­shops reg­u­lar­ly on site with the appro­pri­ate health pro­to­cols. “That’s part of the Porsche spir­it,” notes Leutz. “It’s also a reflec­tion of our sports­man­like approach. We’re no ivory-tower con­sul­tants but instead pre­fer to work close­ly togeth­er with our clients. We want to under­stand their employ­ees and build trust. That’s one of the things our clients appre­ci­ate about us.” The strat­e­gy suc­ceed­ed, and Porsche Con­sult­ing’s teams worked with their cus­tomers even more effec­tive­ly and rapid­ly than before the pandemic.

The Porsche con­sul­tants in Brazil prompt­ly put their newly gained expe­ri­ence into prac­tice in devel­op­ing a new busi­ness model tai­lored specif­i­cal­ly to the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket. All projects have to yield mon­e­tary value and the costs for con­sult­ing on strat­e­gy are linked to a suc­cess fee. Or in other words, to mea­sur­able results. That helps the con­sul­tants in their talks with new clients, who can now com­mis­sion Porsche Con­sult­ing with a lower finan­cial out­lay. Aside from com­pen­sa­tion for expens­es, they will only be billed for suc­cess­ful results. Leutz is “absolute­ly con­vinced” that these results will come. “Oth­er­wise we would­n’t ven­ture to make that kind of offer.”

Change of scene to anoth­er of Porsche Con­sult­ing’s clients in Brazil. Mar­los San­tana de Almei­da, indus­tri­al engi­neer­ing man­ag­er for Bram­et­al in Lin­hares, has good rea­son to view the future in opti­mistic terms. In the tough year of 2020, his com­pa­ny post­ed the best results since its incep­tion in 1975, pro­duc­ing 200,000 tons of steel struc­tures for appli­ca­tions such as trans­mis­sion lines. He, too, put two suc­cess­ful projects with the Porsche con­sul­tants into prac­tice. One was a sales and oper­a­tions plan­ning (S&OP) pro­gram to syn­chro­nize the com­pa­ny’s sales, pur­chas­ing, and pro­duc­tion plan­ning activ­i­ties. It yield­ed an increase in plan­ning pre­ci­sion of 21 per­cent, in raw mate­r­i­al stocks of 25 per­cent, and in pro­duc­tion of 9.3 per­cent. “We are now work­ing in a much more struc­tured and tar­get-ori­ent­ed way,” says San­tana de Almei­da. “The project not only exceed­ed our expec­ta­tions. Porsche Con­sult­ing also changed our mode of work with the cul­ture and dis­ci­pline it brought.”

Both Brasal and Bram­et­al suc­ceed­ed in grow­ing even dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Luiz Gar­cia, a part­ner at Porsche Con­sult­ing who super­vised work with the com­pa­nies, relied unswerv­ing­ly on the inim­itable Porsche spir­it. “We always col­lab­o­rate close­ly with the indi­vid­u­als on site and under­stand how they work. That’s the best way for us to show them new ways and con­vince them of the ben­e­fits.” Despite the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and peri­ods of strict health pro­to­cols, that proved the for­mu­la for suc­cess with these two com­pa­nies too.