Breaking Paradigms With Interconnectedness

Q: Since Buk's expansion into the Mexican market, how has the company solidified its brand positioning and market confidence?

A: Buk has always looked at Mexico as a favorable market as it is seven times the size of Chile and three times larger than Colombia and Peru. It is also a market characterized by a lack of HR technology, making our market entry opportune. Before entering, Buk dedicated a year and a team of 20 people to thoroughly investigate the Mexican market, including its legislation and other social factors to strategically retrofit our product offer to the country’s reality and needs. 

We closed 2022 with over 14,000 users in more than 100 companies. Moreover, we had a churn rate of 1%, meaning that 99.99% of companies that sign on with Buk stay with Buk. In other words, the Mexican market received us relatively well and based on this success, we set ambitious goals to gain an additional 140,000 users, the equivalent of growing tenfold throughout the year. This growth will require additional talent to scale effectively. 

Q: What are the differential elements and added-value that Buk offers compared to its competitors in the Mexican HR management software market?

A: First, we provide an integrated, all-in-one solution. Other products in the market cover only a single service or a limited portion of HR needs, which forces companies to defer to an average of five specialized solutions to cover all their needs. Therein lies our main differentiator: Buk is capable of meeting all HR needs. 

Second, we are a very human, client centric company, which encourages us to explore the day-to-day needs of current HR leaders. A primary concern that we have observed among many of our clients is our integration period, which companies wanted to accelerate. Consequently, we systematically sought to curb our implementation periods, reducing them to an average of two to three months irrespective of company size. All of Buk moves around the satisfaction of the client. 

Third, Buk’s company leaders concentrated on hiring the best talent available so the company can meet existing and developing challenges. These three points have helped the company achieve the success it observed in the past year.  

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges that the Mexican HR industry faces, such as the HR digital gap, and how is Buk working to address them?

A: Mexico has an entrenched traditionalist mentality. While the COVID-19 pandemic helped accelerate Mexico’s adoption of HR technologies, there is still an echo of the traditional, status-quo mechanisms that reigned uninterrupted for decades. The challenge for current HR directors is to help all organizational leaders be on the same page concerning talent priorities, by extension, the technologies and funding needed to realize this vision. 

Another challenge is closing the digital divide between generations. Buk also wants to create a system to automate manual processes so HR teams can dedicate themselves to building relationships with their teams and to address key challenges like retention. Moreover, Buk generates original content on subjects that HR professionals may find relevant to their daily operations so they can deploy better-informed, strategy-driven talent initiatives. HR tech is a business investment that tells employees, I am empowering you for your professional development and I am committed to supporting your journey. 

Q: What are Buk's immediate priorities and areas of opportunity in Mexico and how does the company plan to break paradigms in these areas?

A: Our main priority is to help undo the entrenchment of the status quo in HR. The importance of this practice is outlined by the collapse of companies like Blockbuster, Nokia and Myspace, which adhered to the status quo. 

We also aim to empower CHROs to sit at the directors’ table. HR departments were seen to have the least importance and were correspondingly given limited budgets. HR is now recognized as the strategic department that it is but oftentimes it lacks the language to communicate its needs and strategies to other company leaders. 

Q: Given the economic outlook and uncertainty, how has Buk revised its growth objectives for 2023, which previously targeted triple-digit growth?

A: We have observed major layoffs in the technology sector, with giants like Meta, Google, Amazon and Slack laying off thousands of workers. Despite this market anxiety, Buk is unlikely to be affected thanks to good planning. Moreover, this confidence is shared by our most recent venture capital investors, raising an additional US$35 million at a time when the cost of capital has an interest rate of 11.25%. 

Meanwhile, less fortunate companies will feel pressured to make their processes more efficient. Nevertheless, the impact is unlikely to be too salient given that Mexico’s macroeconomic forecasts seem favorable. 

Q: How have HR priorities, such as hiring, upskilling, downsizing and retention changed in response to the economic volatility? How is Buk addressing these priorities?

A: COVID-19 demonstrated to companies the value of digitalization and, by extension, the added value that can be derived from the adoption of new technologies. The benefits that can be leveraged from new technologies include added visibility, which is crucial to identifying hidden costs, inefficiencies and areas of opportunity that help leaders make straightforward and actionable decisions with the highest returns. In HR, Buk meets this desired visibility through real-time analysis reports, profile reports and surveys to make company decisions led by their associate’s direct values and needs. 

Q: How are HR directors handling the learning curve generated by the HR digital gap and are they aware of their technology needs and necessary capacities?

A: Mexican CHROs are well aware of the digital gap and have also taken concrete and actionable steps to close it. Moreover, they do not fear they will be supplanted by technology but look to technology as a major source of efficiency. There is still a great deal of room for improvement but Mexican leaders are well on their way. 

Furthermore, more advanced clients are looking to integrate other systems to Buk’s platform. Our clients increasingly desire to integrate our solution into a third-party PR solution, as companies look to extract more multidimensional data from their technologies.

Buk, founded in 2016, is a HR management software platform that centralizes all necessary functions, from payroll to talent development.