GM Simplifies Organizational Structure In South America

General Motors has announced a revamp of its organizational structure in South America. The change is billed as “a great opportunity to optimize the portfolio and expand exports in the region.” Specifically, the company decided to run all of its business operations in the South American region through GM South America – the entity that was resurrected earlier this year.

As a consequence, the GM Mercosur and GM South America West divisions cease to exist, effective immediately, and a unified and efficient organization is brought to the forefront. GM claims that this measure seeks to accelerate decision-making, eliminate bureaucracy and further integrate the operation in South America.

Carlos Zarlenga

“With the market and our portfolio increasingly globalized, we are integrating further, gaining in strategy, agility and process simplification,” said Carlos Zarlenga, who continues as President of GM South America, in a statement translated by GM Authority. “We can think bigger and make decisions faster. With this integration, we are creating an excellent operation by leveraging results, optimizing resources and expanding exports,” Zarlenga concluded.

Besides the new organization, GM also announced the following changes in its South American leadership:

• Ernesto Ortiz, currently serving as President of GM South America West, has been appointed Vice President of Sales, Aftersales, Marketing, OnStar and Customer Experience GM South America. Ernesto directly assumes sales-level responsibility for all markets in the region.
• Roberto Martin, former CFO of GM Mercosur, has been appointed CFO GM South America.
• Rafael Santos, current Sales Director Mercosur, takes over as Director of Sales and Sales Operations GM South America.
• Hermann Mahnke, formerly GM Mercosur Marketing Director, takes over as GM South America Marketing Director.
• Christian Cetera, formerly Director of Human Resources of GM Mercosur, takes over as Director of Human Resources GM South America.

It’s worth noting that this is the fourth organizational restructuring that GM has performed in South America over the past three years. The first took place in early 2017, when The General announced the creation of three entities for the South American continent: GM Mercosur, GM Andina, and GM Central. In October of that same year, the company merged GM Andina with GM Central into a new structure called GM South America West, while GM Mercosur maintained as is.

The third change in the structure of GM in South America took place last March, when GM South America was re-established as a business unit, returning to a structure implemented around 2011 GM. Since this third change, the company’s business was managed by an individual management team for Mercosur and a separate one for South America West. Meanwhile, the change described here unifies all leadership across the GM South America entity, which manages GM activities in the following regions:

• Brazil
• Argentina
• Colombia
• Chile
• Ecuador
• Peru
• Uruguay
• Paraguay
• Bolivia
• Venezuela

GM hopes that this new change will allow it to improve the coordination of strategies in terms of product, marketing, commercial operations, and more. The goal is to continue boosting business profitability while strengthening Chevrolet’s leadership in the region.

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