MEXICO - Economy

Menotti Franceschini

former Country Manager Mexico & Head of North Latam, Thomson Reuters

Bio

Menotti Franceschini has vast experience of more than 25 years working in the specialized technology industry and areas such as global trade management, marketing, and business. He has collaborated in companies such as Softway, where he was co-founder, and Thomson Reuters, where he was Country Manager for Mexico. He previously held positions including business and sales development director, head of GTM Brazil business, head of corporate value proposition, and north & south LATAM corporates leader. He graduated from the State University of Campinas.

"We use Mexico as a base to drive the digital transformation across the entire North Latin America region."

Thomson Reuters provides solutions for tax, legal, global trade, and compliance professionals and corporations while also helping clients to adapt to digital transformation and navigate the Mexican legal framework.

Why did the company choose Mexico as its location for such an assertive expansion strategy?

Thomson Reuters is a Canadian content-driven technology company headquartered in Toronto with strong business in the US. We operate in more than 70 countries and employ more than 25,000 people. Basically, we have five business units through which we support professionals in tax and accounting, from small firms to globally recognized accounting firms and professionals in corporations. We support legal professionals, lawyers, and legal counsels in companies and firms, as well as compliance and global trade professionals. We also inform the world through the Reuters News Agency. We provide platforms and solutions to help professionals stay informed on the latest laws and regulations and run their businesses. Our solutions are built on leading technology and rely on machine learning, AI, big data, and other innovations integrated with the specific knowledge that we have in these areas. Mexico is the second-largest economy in Latin America, and we already have a presence here in terms of customers and products. There are also some key points such as density, US proximity, and business information. Then, there is the quality of the Mexican talent. We are investing in Mexico for two reasons: to support local professionals in the region. We use Mexico as a base to drive the digital transformation across the entire North Latin America region, and we opened a Shared Services Center here to support our customers and businesses worldwide.

What challenges are your clients facing in these segments, and how do you help them?

In terms of challenges, we focus on supporting our clients to adopt new technologies as the pandemic has accelerated trends by many years. Customers are looking to us not only help them to adopt more technology but also to support the transformation of their businesses. Second, all the professions that we support (tax, global trade, legal, and so on) operate in complex and dynamic environments. Our customers trust us to know how to understand and adapt to these changes and ensure they comply with them. The cost of non-compliance is significant, and customers are looking to automate and increase the efficiency of processes, to both reduce risks as well as focus on strategic tasks that would enable their growth.

How much potential does Mexico have to become a global hub for logistics?

Mexico has great opportunities in the upcoming years. It has a great location for companies to be based here, including manufacturing operations and logistics as an alternative to balance the global supply chain. When companies come here, they need to figure out how to manage global trade as well as the local requirements in terms of taxes and legislation. This is exactly one of the points that we support. Some of them are global multinational companies that we are supporting in other parts of the world, and they are starting to enter Mexico as well. Through our expanded presence in Mexico, we are looking into how our technology and expertise can support companies here or looking to start operations in the country.

What are the main challenges in the market?

One hot topic here is technology adoption. If the government is pushing for more digitalization, we are helping companies to bring more technology to support this government request. When companies use technological solutions, they are better prepared to comply regularly and during any auditing process. There is also the global trade market component. There is a huge opportunity to automate the processes for import and export in the north of the country for example and other similar places in Mexico and push for more digital transformation. Our technology and information solutions can help businesses navigate this complexity successfully. In addition, we see another huge opportunity in Mexico: legaltech. Our technological solutions can help the legal sector digitalize large amounts of data, automate processes, work collaboratively across colleagues and with customers, access news and research information easily, and overall work more efficiently.