Expanding training to the value chain
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Founding Story
Aparecida
I am the Human Resources Director at Tribanco, the financial arm of the Martins Group. I hold degrees in Languages, People Management and an MBA. I joined Martins in 1989; moved to Tribanco in 2000, and then quickly progressed to become a project assistant, project manager, HR supervisor and finally HR Director. I am a board member of Instituto Alair Martins, a non-profit social affiliate. Our corporate mission is to grow small retail shops into solid businesses! Our corporate culture is highly entrepreneurial. Our founder, Alair Martins, started as a small retailer himself.
Typically, the HR department is responsible for training and developing its staff. I had a vision that Tribanco’s HR should also train and develop our clients – the small mom-and-pop retail shops. By investing in their development, we enable these small retailers to succeed, ultimately helping the Martins Group achieve its mission. From an early stage, I championed this idea internally, which ultimately led to the development of a retailer training program. It took persistence and dedication to do so, and required refocusing resources for longer-term results. As an intrapreneur, I brought impactful changes to our business from the inside.
, MG, Uberlândia
Finance, Insurance, Real Estate
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Scaling (the next step will be growing impact on a regional or even global scale)
We flipped the wholesaler business on its head. Typically, wholesalers do not provide training to retailers. We established a competitive advantage versus other wholesalers by differentiating our value proposition to retailers and developing long-term relationships. Retailers are better able to serve their customers, the majority of which are lower income individuals living at the base of the economic pyramid, which helps them increase earnings and grow.
We have delivered training to over 302,000 retailers from more than 92,000 stores throughout Brazil, often located in poorer rural or urban areas. More than 14,000 retailers received store renovation loans and another 800 technology upgrade loans. Tribanco now serves 37,083 MSMEs with credit and financial services - enhancing profitability, long-term survival, and growth for these retailers. Finally, more than 2.5 million credit cards are being actively used by individual customers at 9,000 retail outlets. This provides the working poor with a way to smooth irregular cashflows over the short term and promote greater financial inclusion in the long term. Since Tricard is often an individual’s first credit card ever, consumers can build credit histories and access greater financial services in the future.
We will continue training retailers, aiming to reach at least 20% of our base of clients by 2015. We plan to provide credit and financial services to 60,000 of stores, and increase use of Tricard to 4 million active users at 13,000 outlets by 2015. We will roll out new financial products to retailers and their customers. In 2009 we launched an insurance product and have issued 62,000 insurance policies to low-income customers. In 2012 we launched a hybrid card that customers can use in multiple neighbourhood stores, rather than the private label card that can only be used in one specific store.
Tribanco has enabled Martins Group to dif¬ferentiate itself from large retailers and maintain its market position as one of the largest distributors in Latin America. Martins and Tribanco now have a competitive advantage by offering a holistic package for retailers including loans, training, and shop-specific private label credit cards for individual customers
Tribanco has a team of five people dedicated to training and development and we count on several external consultants depending on the specific expertise we need. UMV uses the same strategy, mixing internal and external teams. Nowadays, we are self-funded and support all the internal investments. We are connected to some educational institutions, NGOs and knowledge groups in order to exchange, share and acquire new ideas, such as: Fundação Dom Cabral, Instituto Ethos, IFC, Febraban, Instituto Akatu, among others.
Tribanco has received $35 million of investment from IFC over the last 8 years. At the time of the first loan, we received $200,000 as a technical assistance matching grant from IFC, to develop financial training modules. In addition, we jointly worked on content for the “Conscious Use of Credit” modules developed by the Brazilian NGO Akatu pelo Consumo Consciente. Once the program was launched in 2007, 100% of Tribanco´s employees took the 9 modules through our web site [email protected] In addition, more than 330 clients have freely accessed these courses.
The partnership between Martins Group and Tribanco is essential. Martins Group understands the retail business and which retailers have the potential to grow. This knowledge feeds into Tribanco to help identify which retailers to work with and what the trainings should focus on. Another key partner is IFC, who provided funding and helped increased training capabilities and improve UMV’s curriculum.
Alair Martins (founder of Martins) and his son Juscelino Martins (Tribanco’s Chairman) are deeply committed to developing MSME retailers. They understand the importance of establishing a strong relationship with our retail clients to help them succeed. If they do not succeed then neither do we – and thus UMV (2013 budget is estimated in R$2.2Million), was created to achieve this goal.