LEADING SOLUTIONS
As a small, homogenous market dominated by two cities, technological and logistical advances are easy to implement in Portugal, making the country a unique and ideal incubator for many advances in the field.
What have been some of your key achievements in Portugal?
JOSÉ CORREIA In recent years, HP Portugal has had a positive performance. In 2018, we saw double-digit growth, repeating what we did in 2017. After the split of the company in 2015, we entered an intense innovation phase. Due to the separation, the company became much more focused on the core business, which allowed it to invest in more innovation. That has resulted in products that are well accepted by our customers, increasing our leadership position over the past two years. Considering that Portugal is passing through a positive economic cycle, the overall IT business, in particular the PC and printer business, are seeing considerable growth, and HP is taking advantage of that to the best of its abilities.
JOSÉ ESFOLA We got established here in 1965, and there have been many changes in terms of the way we operate and do business. We transitioned from the copy world to that of digital transformation. We are generally known as an innovative company and are ahead of other companies in the way we do business and interact with customers and partners. We have 120 employees at Xerox Portugal. We also have another entity here, a service center that serves more than 18 countries and has over 250 employees. The business we manage around services and hardware is worth close to EUR60 million. On top of our managed print services and graphic arts offers, we do digitization services and develop software and applications for banks and other institutions. We are heavily involved in the digital transformation.
What makes the Portuguese market unique?
JC In some ways, Portugal is unique, and being a small market gives us certain advantages. Moreover, everything happens faster here than in other mature markets. In the 1990s, Portugal proved itself as an early adopter of technology, and since Portugal's two biggest cities represent the majority of the population, we can put strong infrastructure in place that allows us to have one of the most advanced telecommunications networks in the world. All this has given us and other companies the chance to see Portugal as a profitable and manageable country in which to introduce new technology. We can easily manage certain aspects of the business here, simply because it is a smaller and homogeneous market. Our comparative performance is correlated with what you see globally. Remarkably, in 2018 HP was able to increase its market leadership for the overall PC business in Portugal, achieving the position of market leader for consumer business for the first time, something we had achieved long ago in the professional segment. Though we expect the PC consumer business to decrease by around 15% in 2018, our projected growth is more than 20% in this business segment. We are taking great advantage of our technology and position in the market, allowing us to lead in five of the six categories we operate in Portugal.
JE In Portugal, we are the market leader in our field—managed print services. Recent data from IDC shows that in color multifunction devices, we have around 40% of market share. We represent a solid operation in Portugal, moving from a direct business to an indirect model with less cost and a better service for our customers. We have exported a great deal of knowledge of this to other Xerox operations. In general, we have customers in every industry, and roughly 70% of our business is with SMEs. People think we only service major companies, but we work extensively with SMEs, which is why we have a huge market share. We do this through indirect channels. We may not have customers in every business area, but every company in the country uses something from Xerox.
LEADING SOLUTIONS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Focus: Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries
Making an Impact
Established in 1996, the Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries (CPLP) is a mechanism geared at linking and sharing the experience of Lusophone countries. Besides Portugal, this includes Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
read articleFocus
Don’t Mind the Disruption
Having won the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest, Lisbon hosted the 2018 event. The relevance? Well, the contest began back in 1956 as a showcase not only of song, but of then-nascent live television broadcast technology. Today, Portugal is on the cutting edge of new technological developments.
read articleInterview
João Pedro Soeiro de Matos Fernandes , Minister , Environment and Energy Transition
The Ministry for the Environment and Energy Transition is focusing on decarbonizing the economy, valuing the territory and its habitats, and striving for a more circular use of the country's resources.
read articleInterview
António Braz Costa , General Manager, Portuguese Technological Centre for the Textile & Clothing Industries (CITEVE)
CITEVE has transformed the industry by promoting value addition, adopting the latest technologies, and ensuring the highest standards of environmental sustainability.
read articleFocus: New airport
Right Time to Seize Missed Opportunities
Portugal has seen its air traffic figures increase by as much as 80% in the last five years. As a result, its transportation infrastructure, and Lisbon's airport in particular, cannot cope with the rising numbers. A new airport project that will turn a military base into a commercial airport is now under discussion to bring much-needed relief to air traffic.
read articleInterview
Germano de Sousa , President, Grupo Germano de Sousa
Grupo Germano de Sousa's success can best be summed up by its understanding that science and medicine only really progress when technological development is combined with a deeper respect for human values and professional ethics.
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Isabel Capeloa Gil , Rector, Universidade Católica
Having pioneered the introduction of multiple subject areas to Portugal's tertiary education scene, Universidade Católica is aspiring to establish the country's first private medical school and introduce cutting-edge digital transformation.
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Carlos Guillén Gestoso , President, Escola Universitária de Ciências Empresariais, Saúde, Tecnologias e Engenharia & President, Atlantica University
Atlantica University differentiates through its company-university model and an MBA program in partnership with the University of California, Berkley, among other initiatives, to produce practical theoreticians.
read articleFocus: Public teaching staff
An Age-old Problem
Over a decade of austerity measures combined with an ageing population have seen the average age of the Portuguese public teaching staff progressively climb to one of the highest in the OECD. With frozen salaries, an extended retirement age, and precarious working conditions, today the sector faces one of its biggest challenge yet.
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Pedro Queiroz , General Manager, Federation of the Portuguese Agri-Food Industry (FIPA)
Portugal's economic recovery has seen its F&B sector emerge with annual turnovers of EUR16 billion, thanks to FIPA's undeterred focus on stable policies, excellent nutrition standards, and sustainability.
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