Enfocus to expand Latin American presence with new business development manager

It is to initially concentrate its efforts in Brazil, and then expand its services to surrounding regions. To support this expanded geographic focus, Enfocus has appointed Heysler Hey as its business development manager for Latin America. 

Hey will be tasked with identifying and reporting local business requirements, strengthening the Enfocus organization and expanding its market position in the region.

He joined Esko, of which Enfocus is a business unit, in 2001. For six years he specialized in installations and training. More recently, his responsibilities have included various roles from pre-sales and area sales manager, to regional sales manager for software business.

In this last position, he worked with a team of pre-sales engineers to manage relationships with dealers as well as regional sales managers, defining and implementing sales strategies. During the last four years, software sales in the region increased 250 percent. He has also worked on a number of projects based in Brazil.

Fabian Prudhomme, vice-president of Enfocus, said: ‘We see a lot of exciting opportunities opening up in the Latin American region, where economic growth is currently more robust than in Europe or North America.

‘Much like other high growth areas, Latin America over the past few years is experiencing the effects of a number of trends; our solutions can help our local customers to address the resulting challenges.’

Prudhomme cites moves by brand owners to delegate more responsibility to in-country suppliers, while local populations aspire to standards of living that come closer to their North American and European counterparts.

This results in higher expectations for the brands, including pressure on margins. All of this requires a new approach to operations for brand owners and their entire Latin American supply chains.

Prudhomme also highlighted increasing labor costs in Latin America, which are encouraging businesses to deploy more automation and more effectively utilize employees’ time.

‘Brand owners are increasingly looking to localize their offerings, both in terms of more relevant targeting and product development that is tuned to the region. They would prefer to work with local operations in many cases, as opposed to importing goods produced by global partners. In addition, the domestic market is increasing demand for branded goods that require high quality and faster turnaround print.

‘When we started to focus on other high growth markets last year, we thought the primary interest would be in PitStop for pre-flighting. However, 80-90 percent of customers wanted to see how Switch could help them automate their processes,’ said Prudhomme. ‘The reduction in human touch points and errors helped elevate quality, reduce waste and decrease turnaround times.

‘Ultimately, this improved production capacity and profitability. It also reduced time to market, allowing local companies to increase production speed and take on more jobs, thereby further increasing revenue and cashflow. We expect to see the same dynamics in Latin America.’

Improved sustainability is another benefit Prudhomme expects Latin American operations to take advantage of. He points out that brand owners increasingly using local production will eliminate travel and shipping costs, and reduce their carbon footprint: 'It is an evolution we will see over the years to come,' he said.