Business meeting business: Brazilian oil company Petrobras develops a unique approach to connect suppliers with local businesses.

Petrobras, Brazil's leading oil company, has a strategic goal of being one of the five most integrated power companies in the world and the preferred choice of its target audience by 2020. It also seeks to distinguish itself in its social responsibility efforts. This makes the job of the communication department no easy task. The company is undergoing an expansion process in oil exploration and production, investigating alternative fuels, and modernizing its refineries in order to improve the quality of its products, with an environmental focus.

One such modernization project is planned for the Henrique Lage Refinery (REVAP) in Sao Jose dos Campos. Petrobras is investing US$2 billion over four years to bring the refinery to international standards of quality and environmental management.

An investment of this magnitude can certainly stimulate the local economy, and the people of Sao Jose dos Campos have questioned how many jobs the project will generate. One of the community's greatest concerns has been that it has been difficult for local small and mediumsize companies to secure large contracts to administer construction projects for Petrobras, which would benefit the community. The city's economic development secretary brought these concerns to the refinery's communication managers and asked for their help in integrating the company's suppliers with local businesses. Based on this demand, Petrobras developed the Petrobras Business Meeting Business program, an event that would allow local businesspeople to network with suppliers from the metals technology, electrical engineering and construction industries, as well as those in health care, real estate and transportation. The project also aimed to demonstrate to the people of Sao Jose dos Campos how Petrobras applies its social responsibility principles to a large-scale project, from generating jobs to building a healthy relationship with the community through local economic development initiatives.

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The first step was to gauge the interest of the Petrobras suppliers in contracting with the local companies; few of the large companies that Petrobras works with did business in the region. Petrobras' engineering division helped coordinate with its contractors to determine whether they were interested in partnering with local companies.

An informational conference was scheduled a week before the actual networking event to clarify Petrobras' modernization strategy to all the participating companies and suppliers, and to outline the company's strategic position, as well as what kind of products and services the Petrobras contractors needed.

The next step was to schedule meetings between the local companies and the Petrobras suppliers on the day of the event. The Petrobras communication team developed a web site where, with a user name and password, suppliers could schedule 15-minute appointments with companies whose services, as indicated on the site, appeared to be a good fit.

To promote its social responsibility activities, Petrobras created an informational booth outside the main meeting hall. The booth also exhibited the database of trained workers from Petrobras' professional qualification program, an initiative to help local workers become qualified for the jobs available through the refinery's modernization project. The objective was to register new businesses for the project and, in this manner, to increase the chances for local residents to be hired by other companies, beyond those connected with the Petrobras project.

The communication management team from the refinery developed two measurements to be applied at the event. One was a questionnaire to assess the visitors' perception of the possibility of closing a deal with contacts made at the meeting. The other was to assess the perception of the contractors from the region in supplying products and services for the works and their projection for future business. Most contractors felt positive that there would be a possibility of closing a deal with contacts from the meeting in the future, although 50 percent said this would be done with less than half of the attending companies, 38 percent said that this could be accomplished with half of the companies and 13 percent said with more than half of the companies.

The representatives from local businesses gave the organization of the informational session a 91 percent approval rating (32 percent said it was "great," and 59 percent said "good"), and 90 percent for the meeting organization (44 percent, "great"; 46 percent, "good"). Ninety percent of the participants at the meeting believed that there was a possibility of closing a deal with the contractors in the future.

The main complaint was that the event lasted just one day.

The contractors that manage the refinery gave the event a 100 percent satisfaction rating for the conference organization (63 percent said it was "great," and 37 percent said "good"). The evaluations for the networking event were also 100 percent positive.

For Petrobras, the Business Meeting Business event was a step forward in managing relationships with suppliers and integrating the community into a new project. The event created interest from other company units, which intend to adopt the model in other regions.

The company's relationship with the community is the basis for maintaining its business. For long-term profitability, a company must focus on proactively managing relationships with its suppliers and the community in which it works. New businesses stimulate more new businesses and feed entrepreneurship. The big companies, proposing their strategic planning for new plants and other expansion projects, must also analyze their impact on the regional economy, and directly aid in the growth of the surrounding companies that are affected by the chain of investment.

Eraldo Carneiro is the head of the Petrobras corporate communication, planning and management department in Rio de Janeiro. Aistan Ribeiro Greta is in charge of public relations and Paul Edman is the manager of the com munication department at Henrique Lage Refinery in Sao Paulo.