BrazilVasco Consult celebrates homecoming with new Portugal office
Within five years of launching, Vasco Consult has expanded internationally with the launch of a new office in Portugal.
When Ruben Uppelschoten – a former executive at VodafoneZiggo in the Netherlands – established Vasco Consult in the summer of 2017, Portugal was already on his mind. “Alongside the Netherlands, it really is my favourite country,” he says, recalling several memories from the various stays he’s had in the Southern European country.
So when Uppelschoten started brainstorming about the firm’s brand, he quickly came up with Vasco Consult – a reference to the iconic Ponte de Vasco da Gama bridge in Lisbon (the second longest bridge in Europe).
Fast forward four-plus years including stellar growth in the Netherlands (40% year-on-year our revenue growth to a team of 30 consultants), and Uppelschoten is figuratively walking that bridge as Vasco Consult gears up for its next phase of growth. “For us, we see the opening of our office in Portugal as a kind of coming home.”
Although the pandemic-hit year of 2020 did pose “several challenges” admitted Uppelschoten, Vasco Consult rapidly adapted to consulting’s ‘new normal’ to end 2021 on a high. “2021 was our best year ever.” In the coming year, the firm wants to grow its team in the Netherlands to over 50, and establish a 15-strong foothold in Portugal.
“We’ll keep on growing in a controlled and healthy manner,” said Uppelschoten, quick to add that “growth in quality will always remain the top priority. Not just for our customers, but also for our employees.”
Based Faro and Lisbon, the team in Portugal will initially focus on digital capabilities and serve as the firm’s Data Competence Centre. “The plan is to launch the concept with our current customers – a lot of them are busy with becoming data driven and are in need of additional expertise and capabilities for their IT transformations and data migrations.”
Uppelschoten: “In the second half of this year we’ll also add transformation management and business improvement capabilities to our Portuguese team.”
Meanwhile, the Portuguese practice will also play a large role in the extension of Vasco Consult’s offerings into the managed services space. Increasingly, the consulting firm stays on board with customer post-consulting in roles that focus on continuous improvement and running day-to-day operations.
Kicking off this journey will be a new ‘Data as a Service’ proposition, which will enable customer to ‘outsource’ their business intelligence activities to Vasco Consult and its nearshore team. “Our offering will help customers to get – and more importantly – always stay in control of data quality and reporting.”
“I’m convinced that by combining the process and project skills in combination with the data skills we will further improve our service to our customers,” concluded Uppelschoten.
