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Alfredo Gutierrez

MEXICO - Telecoms & IT

Alfredo Gutierrez

Country Manager, Workday

Bio

Alfredo Gutierrez serves as General Manager at Workday Mexico. Promoting Workday’s values and differentiators, Alfredo has focused his activities on facilitating the digitalisation process in organisations. He started his professional career in the consulting services world at Accenture, working as a consultant for the Financial Services industry. Subsequently, he held multiple commercial and client relationship roles within the Technology sector, in organisations such as HP and IBM. Most recently in organisations such as SAP and Cornerstone on Demand, Alfredo specialised in the promotion of cloud solutions aimed at the efficient management of the Human Talent lifecycle. He is a graduate of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering of the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey and holds a Master’s degree in Banking and Financial Markets from the Business School of the Universidad Anáhuac del Norte.

"Workday is a well-known company for its human capital management solutions. Basically, this solution manages people's life cycle from recruitment through to retirement."

Alfredo Gutierrez talks to TBY about the company’s international strategy, management software, and expectations for the coming year.

What is Mexico’s role in Workday’s international strategy?

Alfredo Gutierrez: Being 17 years old, Workday is a relatively young company. It was created to offer innovative ideas and solutions to the market and different business sectors globally. From the outset, we have experienced a constant growth rate. Today, the company total revenue it’s in USD5.14 billion and our growth objective for the future is to reach a USD10 billion revenue within the next three to four years. These are aggressive growth goals that will present challenges, mainly regarding work tendencies, the great resignation, and some others. We’re very focused on doing what we intended from day one, to offer lead solutions, different from those in the market, and that improve our client’s performance. Regions such as Mexico, Indonesia and key EMEA markets are important because much of the growth that can help us achieve our goal comes from these countries.

When did you enter Mexico?

Alfredo Gutierrez: Three years ago. Clearly, the pandemic wasn’t part of our business plan. Still, it taught us many things, mainly regarding interaction with our clients and how to help them to continue being successful in such a different scenario. Globally, Mexico is important for Workday because its new geography promises the same growth we have been experiencing in places like Europe and Asia. Growth in the countries that opened for business after the US has been quite rapid.

From your experience of the past two years, what are the main challenges for companies when it comes to management software?

Alfredo Gutierrez: There are plenty of challenges, especially in Mexico and Latin America. We sell solutions for financial management, human capital management, analytics & planning, and strategic sourcing. We work with the leaders in those organizations, who head up those departments, and a phrase we’ve been hearing a lot is “the great resignation.” Today, one of the main skills an executive in charge of those areas must have is the ability to “unlearn.” What used to work two years ago, might not work today. We are experiencing a new dynamic that presents new challenges. One of the things we need is for people not to resist change. Many people are focusing on redesigning a new workplace. What works for the collaborator, regarding place, space, collaboration, and communication networks is not the same as it was two years ago. We must understand that we cannot measure productivity the same way with people from different generations. It is all about understanding what is going on within your workforce and what you can provide them to keep productivity up. Above all, people are looking for a purpose, a goal. They want their jobs, where they spend a lot of time, to reward them not just with a salary.

How can you help collaborators in a company to feel they have purpose or well-being?

Alfredo Gutierrez: The first step is to listen. We want to provide our clients with listening tools. It is not just about knowing the skills and competencies of people, but rather what people need or want to improve their commitment and satisfaction level. A platform such as Workday takes the information from those listening tools and translates it into actionable data. The manager can know how people are doing, not just with the projects, but also with work stress, teamwork, and work satisfaction. That’s how technology can help leaders to be closer to their people. It’s a combination of tools within a managing platform that allows leaders to know in real-time how people are feeling and mainly which tools they can provide for a better and most efficient experience. In Workday, with our more than 9,500 clients globally, we learn a lot from what has been successful in other industries and regions and we apply it in our local market.

How many clients do you have in Mexico?

Alfredo Gutierrez: We have approximately 600 clients. Most of them are clients who bought our solutions from their matrix houses, in some cases beyond Mexico. I am talking about multinational companies, in several industries. We are present in every industry, some of them highly regulated such as healthcare or financial services, or others like manufacturing, retail & hospitality. Workday’s goal for Mexico is to help those companies that want to give their collaborators a better experience, and mainly to align human resources to the business strategy. Over the past two years, despite the pandemic we’ve had a positive outcome when it comes to new clients. Last year was key for us because we went live with most of our clients who trusted in us and our platform. And they are also implementing the system, not just for finance, but also for human resources, with a completely local population of Mexican workers. This is a way of reassuring the Mexican market that our solutions are completely localized and ready for them.

What is your highest-demanded product?

Alfredo Gutierrez: Workday is a well-known company for its human capital management solutions. Basically, this solution manages people’s life cycle from recruitment through to retirement. People think financial solutions is something new for us but actually, we launched the financial core just one year after the human capital platform. So we’ve effectively been working with both since the beginning. Mexico needs help to deal with work redesigning, facing these new challenges, and helping people become more productive, good news is that we are here to help and enable them.

What is your growth expectation in Mexico?

Alfredo Gutierrez: Arriving in Mexico under the systemic circumstances already discussed, we did require many adjustments and we have had an excellent response from the Mexican market enabling us to continue our expansion. Our goal right now is to further solidify the brand, which is already well known at a global scale. We want to give it further exposure and show the Mexican market that we are here and ready to assist. That’s our goal for the future. Our short-term goal is to consolidate our clients and help them to realize the benefits of working with our platform.

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