One global standard, many local realities

00:08 — Introducing the conversation

Rubens Daniel: Welcome to The IT Leaders’ Brief. In this series, we’re joined by experienced technology leaders for informal conversations covering the issues that matter to our industry.

To kick off our first episode, I’d like to introduce our guest, Thiago Prado. Thiago, could you tell us a little about the company you work for and introduce yourself?

00:39 — Technology’s role at Bunge

Thiago Prado: Thank you for the invitation, Rubens. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Bunge has more than 200 years of history and operates in more than 50 countries across every continent. Our main mission is to connect producers with end customers, moving and transforming agricultural commodities, mainly soy, wheat and corn.

We do this at scale, in a connected and truly global way. Technology at Bunge reflects that approach to the business.

I’m responsible for infrastructure operations worldwide, within the area we call Business Technology.

Technology, especially infrastructure, is no longer a traditional support function. It has become an integral part of how the business operates, providing scalability and resilience so that business teams can carry out their work without interruption. Our mission is to deliver and maintain that reliably.

The analogy I like to use is a city’s infrastructure. As long as there’s water in the tap and the lights are on, everything is fine. When either is missing, the impact on people’s lives is huge. The same applies to a business.

Technology infrastructure plays a similar role in companies and increasingly in cities, where so much of daily operations is now digital.

02:47 — Aligning global infrastructure with business needs

Rubens Daniel: It’s interesting that we share the same origins: Getronics also comes from the Netherlands.

You’ve touched on an important challenge: explaining what technology teams do and what they’re responsible for. People often think of everything as “just IT”, but you’ve explained how closely infrastructure connects to Bunge’s business.

You mentioned global infrastructure. How do you approach aligning technology with the business while pursuing global standardisation?

03:30 — What standardisation should achieve

Thiago Prado: Standardisation aims to improve efficiency, achieve better financial results from the assets a company acquires and make it easier to transfer knowledge between teams.

An important part of working as a global team is ensuring everyone understands what’s happening across the organisation. Standards help us do that without greatly increasing operational complexity.

However, standardisation is sometimes misunderstood. A standard doesn’t necessarily mean having one way of doing everything. It means finding the right balance between global and local needs, so that local operations and regulations aren’t constrained by a global standard that doesn’t fit.

Ultimately, the great advantage is alignment: everyone involved is working towards the same goal and moving in the same direction.

04:46 — Finding the balance between global and local

Rubens Daniel: That gives you the best of both worlds. What can be standardised benefits from scale and collaboration, while recognising that each country has regulations and requirements you need to accommodate.

But sometimes a particular business or local requirement falls outside the standard. How do you handle that? Do you lean towards global standardisation or local flexibility?

05:31 — Managing exceptions without losing consistency

Thiago Prado: Global standardisation should come before local execution. But global leadership also has a responsibility to listen actively and understand regional differences that don’t fit the standard.

We need to work with the people who know the local environment best, understand the alternatives and consider how those requirements can become part of the standard.

Standardisation doesn’t mean eliminating every exception. Through discussion and active listening, we can adapt operations to local regulations without compromising non-negotiable principles, such as information security or people’s safety.

Some things are non-negotiable. Beyond those boundaries, there is room for flexibility.

06:26 — Working with country-specific regulations

Rubens Daniel: Building on that balance, let me give an example from financial services.

It’s a market with complex regulations and well-defined rules, usually set at a national level. Although financial services operate internationally, each country has its own requirements.

That creates a challenge: maintaining a global standard while complying locally, without accumulating too many exceptions.

From an infrastructure perspective, how do you manage those differences?

07:16 — Deciding where flexibility belongs

Thiago Prado: An important benefit of standardisation is financial efficiency, often through negotiating volume.

For example, I can define a global equipment standard because the major equipment manufacturers operate globally. The exception may come when installing or configuring that equipment to comply with local financial services regulations.

That might involve cybersecurity requirements or restrictions on a particular function that isn’t permitted in that market.

The boundary between standardisation and flexibility can move. There are different layers, from equipment to service delivery, where a standard can apply. Flexibility may be needed at a higher or lower layer, depending on the market, region, country or way the service is delivered.

Infrastructure includes many different components, so it’s difficult to generalise. But in most cases, standards are possible. It’s often in delivery and configuration that we accommodate regional or local requirements.

08:47 — Maintaining global governance as AI emerges

Rubens Daniel: Without standards, it becomes difficult to achieve scale and unified management.

That’s what we see at Getronics across regions. There are similarities within Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Americas, as well as differences.

When those differences can be accommodated without turning the entire process into an exception, you retain common governance, a consistent view and shared indicators. That also creates business value, which customers are looking for.

We’re seeing increasingly global standards because they bring economies of scale. At the same time, technology makes it possible to adapt them to individual markets.

Then, just as you’re making progress, AI arrives and changes the picture again.

Do you see AI as another tool to support standardisation, or does it introduce more complexity because it’s something new to manage?

10:18 — Managing AI adoption, risk and cost

Thiago Prado: AI follows the same adoption curve as other technologies we’ve encountered: disappointment, adjustment and eventually stabilisation.

It brings significant promise, but also significant risks. The main one is runaway costs. Another important risk is the loss of information in different ways.

We look at AI from two perspectives. It can enable the adoption of global standards, because many tasks can be solved or automated with AI. At the same time, we are both users of the technology and responsible for governing its use.

The challenge is controlled adoption: keeping its use under control, pursuing financial efficiency and making decisions based on financial return.

Investing or adopting technology simply for its own sake leads to disappointment and resistance. Past experiences like that can make executives reluctant to adopt new technologies.

We’re therefore being careful, looking for the right balance and working to capture the value AI promises.

11:46 — Connecting AI investment to business outcomes

Rubens Daniel: That’s the key point. Whether an investment is short or long term, you need to justify it through its connection to the business.

That aligns with McKinsey research we’ve seen involving more than 100 companies across several countries. It suggests AI becomes a problem when it isn’t connected to the business and is used only for tasks such as taking meeting notes or managing emails.

The other issue is not having a clear, well-defined objective.

When those two problems exist, AI becomes a cost, and it becomes difficult to justify the next phase of investment.

By contrast, the successful projects—two out of ten in the research discussed—are clear about what they want to achieve, the expected return and the connection to the business.

That’s the approach we share at Getronics: using metrics and pilot programmes to measure and assess the return.

How do you connect investment decisions to business needs?

13:04 — Bringing different teams into the decision

Thiago Prado: We look for a multidisciplinary discussion.

That starts with the team or business function requesting AI and includes the other teams that need a voice in its implementation. Together, we assess the results the business wants and the value the initiative could bring.

It’s an open conversation, guided by the principle that there isn’t one single truth.

We listen, understand, refine and keep moving, even when requests are coming from every direction.

13:44 — Preparing for agentic AI

Rubens Daniel: That’s an important balance for every company.

Looking ahead, we’re already discussing agentic AI: creating agents, orchestrating their work and giving them a degree of freedom within defined boundaries.

What question would you leave your peers with? What should they be thinking about, preparing for or addressing now that could become a turning point for their business?

14:22 — Keeping an open mind

Thiago Prado: The question I put to my colleagues—and to myself—is how to keep an open mind when balancing local and global needs, regulation and freedom.

How do we bring those variables together in a way that creates real business value and results?

I don’t believe there is one single truth or one solution for everything. Each company needs more or less flexibility depending on its maturity.

Understanding where the company is today is the starting point for finding the right balance within that much bigger equation.

15:17 — Closing

Rubens Daniel: Thiago, thank you again. It’s been a pleasure having you with us.

We hope you’ll join us for the next episodes, where we’ll continue discussing timely topics with leaders from across our region. Thank you.

Thiago Prado: Thank you for the invitation.