Above: Cassandra Patrovani, Managing Director, HRIZONS Caribbean. Photo by Mark Lyndersay.

Originally published in Newsday’s BusinessDay on October 09, 2025

Give Cassandra Patrovani her jacket right from the start. She is boldfaced.

Meeting Jim Newman of HRIZONS, a 20-year-old HR services provider at a HRMATT conference in 2023, she berated him for working in the Caribbean for years without any value transfer of knowledge or skills.

Give Newman some pips too, because he thought about Patrovani’s passionate and perhaps somewhat intemperate hard talk and came back to her to ask what could be done.

The two had worked on the implementation of SAP human resource solutions at NGC, so the frank talk didn’t come out of nowhere, but unlike most such conversations, this one ended up with action.

And the reality of a room full of young people at Albion Plaza, calmly and industriously doing billable work for a range of HRIZONS clients, some local, most foreign, all challenging and being handled with unusual calm in the quiet, intense room.

From tough talk in October 2023 to functional workplace in 2025, Patrovani isn’t known for dallying and neither, it seems, is Newman.

At the core of Patrovani’s pitch were the programmes already in place in TT. The Special Economic Zone, the On-the-Job Training (OJT) programme and the talent emerging from UWI and UTT.

By March 2024, HRIZONS was swayed by local potential and discussions began in earnest with the Ministry of Labour and InvesTT.

The international landscape for technology labour also helped. India as a back-office option was starting to get expensive. Colombia, the next choice, faced language barrier issues.

Having piloted the project along to this stage, Patrovani found herself in the cockpit to make it happen.

One hundred students were screened for the first cohort, then narrowed down to 32, then 24 before the final seven, six graduates of UWI and one from UTT who were secured through the OJT programme.

On January 06, 2025, HRIZONS Caribbean began operations with what Patrovani colourfully describes as the magnificent seven, three graduates working on back-end technology and four on the front-end functional client interfacing side.

At the start of May, another UWI graduate joined the team and is preparing to take over from the retiring head of IT.

This September, 12 employees are on the job, none older than 25 working on business development.

“But,” Patrovani pointed out, “we don’t get into discriminatory discussions like age here.”

The new operation is only new in the sense that it occupies a formal office. HRIZONS is largely a virtual office presence, but the new physical office space takes advantage of the dynamics of presence while allowing significant flexibility in office hours and time in office.

There are core days, between Tuesday and Thursday, but an operation that works across time zones requires a team that can operate with considerable flexibility.

“You build your life around the work as is needed,” Patrovani explains.
“We work across time zones. So if you’re working with Japan, they get up earlier, you may have to get up at three in the morning, you deliver your work, you get that done.”

“The rest of the daytime is yours. What we are doing is helping our young professionals understand how work internationally in our technology environment happens. It took a little while, and I saw that difference between our early hires who came in January and our second batch of four.”

“We are looking at possibly expanding into a bigger space. The physical part of this gives us the opportunity to collaborate. The larger [conference room] is occupied now because we’re working on something for Yamaha. So we’ve got the technical team supporting on the functional side. They are talking with Japan now. We’ve got two functionals preparing for another SAP certification exam in the smaller conference room, and they’re here helping each other.”

“The CSSC Customer Services and Support Center, is designed to support our external clients across the world, and our internal clients. So when we’re doing integrations, when we’re doing development work, when we’re doing coding our integration team here will work with our internal line of business heads and business teams to develop integrations, to develop software, to work on the back end with clients. So we support as and where needed.”

The incoming staff have also been challenged to meet the required SAP certifications.

“It’s a technology consulting model, so the faster you’re able to get into producing and supporting billable work, the more valuable you become. In the SAP environment, you need to get to a point of certification fast because the only way you can work on SAP platforms is with certifications.”

“This is not a cheap investment. It took the first five to six months to start them in that certification cycle. All seven are now doing billable work and working with organizations across the globe.”

SAP is challenging software to work with. I’d once worked with a state enterprise that struggled for years with its iron-clad process restrictions, but it’s one of a small group of business management tools that meets international requirements for cross-border business, particularly with the US and EU.

“A big discussion happening across the SAP landscape now is about adoption, and the data we are seeing [indicates that] adoption tends to be lowest in the Caribbean. Sometimes regional companies would want [or need] these big name platforms, but the behaviors and the mindset are lacking.”

“Dive into it and use it, the change management side of it, that’s where the real work is needed. It could be any platform, could be SAP, it could be Oracle, it could be Workday, it could be any of those. It’s all about the behavior and the mindset.”

“Significant time is spent working with our clients to create a readiness to receive this technology and to open their minds to a new way of working. Because the other thing I find in our region compared to others that are a bit more mature in working with big technology is that we want the technology, but we want the technology to work the way we are used to working.”

“When it comes to actually effectively and efficiently adopting and using technology to transform your business and your culture, we have a long way to go and don’t get me started on talent development and how we are doing it.”

“Many of our HR people, and I say this very respectfully, cannot go into the boardroom and speak the language of technology or speak the language of finance. They cannot connect language, finance and technology to the HR needs of the business. The function of HR is to make sure you have the right people at the right time and the right place. It’s time to raise the conversation and discussions at all levels of your organization about transformation, about cultural change, about mindset.”

“An HR conversation in Trinidad is still about my files, my storage, things that in a mature international organization are no longer relevant. Data is your oil. It is critical to the way that you run businesses. It’s needed to make decisions, and you need your data on time and in real time. We struggle in the Caribbean, because we do not have that in 2025.”

Jim Newman: “A pivotal step in our growth”

Jim Newman on the launch of HRIZONS Caribbean and the new Customer Success Service Centre in Trinidad.

“This marks a pivotal step in our company’s growth strategy and our commitment to the Caribbean region. This investment is more than just an expansion—it’s a deliberate move to support both our current and future customers with greater proximity and responsiveness.”

“We are proud to be building a talented team in Trinidad, bringing together experienced professionals and recent graduates alike. By offering opportunities to work on advanced enterprise software platforms from global leaders such as SAP and Microsoft, we are not only developing HR technology solutions for our clients but also nurturing the next generation of technology professionals in the region.”

“Our focus on hiring local talent is already creating meaningful career pathways within HRIZONS, right here in Trinidad. This approach strengthens our ability to innovate, enhances our service delivery, and ensures that our solutions remain both competitive and sustainable for the long term.”

“Partnering with the OJT Program has been especially rewarding, as it allows us to invest in emerging talent and contribute to the broader economic development of the community. As we look ahead, we are excited about the continued growth of HRIZONS Caribbean and the positive impact we can have—both for our clients and for the region as a whole.”