Companies are beginning to review how they manage their external suppliers. Francisco Costa, founder of Certronic and Laborem, warns that many organizations still manage critical information with spreadsheets, emails and manual controls, a practice that can lead to delays, work contingencies and loss of productivity.
Outsourcing is no longer a marginal practice within Argentine companies. It is part of the daily operation of industries, construction companies, energy companies, logistics operators, agribusinesses, laboratories, shopping centers, service companies, mining companies and organizations with multiple headquarters or production plants.
Maintenance, cleaning, security, transportation, works, technical services, assembly, repairs, hygiene and safety tasks, specialized support or critical activities in the plant are usually carried out by contractors and subcontractors. This model allows us to gain flexibility, scale operations and access specific capabilities without permanently expanding the internal structure.
But it also opens up a problem that many companies still underestimate: how to know, in real time, which contractor company is working, with what resources, under what documentation, in what state of authorization and with what level of operational or labor risk.
For Francisco Costa, founder of Certronic and Laborem, the starting point is clear: «The first mistake of many companies is to believe that they know their outsourced structure. In practice, when the information begins to be organized, active contractors appear that were not correctly mapped, resources assigned to more than one operation, expired documentation or accesses that depend on manual controls that are impossible to sustain.»
The discussion becomes especially relevant in Argentina. The Superintendence of Occupational Risks periodically reports indicators on accident rates, notified cases, disabling consequences and fatal accidents within the occupational risk system. This universe makes the traceability of people, documentation, coverage and conditions of entry to operational spaces central.
In turn, the Labor Modernization Law 27,802, published in the Official Gazette on March 6, 2026, replaced different articles of the Labor Contract Law and once again put on the agenda the need to review the processes linked to contracting, subcontracting and document management.
In this new scenario, document control ceased to be a merely administrative task and became a strategic variable for companies. This is because the reform itself establishes, in the new article 30 of the Employment Contract Law, that the principal will be exempt from joint and several liability if he proves that he has carried out the documentary controls expressly defined by the standard with respect to his contractors and external resources affected by the operation.
The exclusion of liability no longer arises solely from judicial interpretations or jurisprudential criteria, but is expressly provided for in the legal text and is directly conditional on effective compliance with the controls required by the reform.
«When document control depends on a person, a spreadsheet or a chain of emails, the company does not have management: it has a reaction. And reacting late in terms of contractors can mean stopping an operation, preventing the entry of an entire team or assuming a risk that could have been avoided,» says Costa.
The problem frequently appears in companies that grew rapidly, added new suppliers or expanded operations in different locations. At first, tracking may seem manageable: a few folders, attached documents, noted due dates, email communications, and manual reviews. However, when the contractor payroll increases, this scheme begins to show limits.
A company can know precisely how many employees it has, what function each one performs and what internal documentation it has. But it does not always have the same level of visibility over its outsourced staff. There appears a blind zone: contractors with incomplete documentation, resources without current authorization, companies with differentiated risks and accesses that are resolved on time.
For Laborem, the first indicator of maturity is simple: knowing the actual payroll of contracting companies and the amount of resources assigned to each operation. It is not just about having a list of suppliers, but about identifying which people work, where they do it, under what activity, with what requirements and with what required documentation.
«A company can have its internal structure under control and, at the same time, have a huge blind zone over its outsourced structure. This blind zone is where undetected expirations, poorly managed permissions, rejected accesses or suppliers that do not meet the required standards appear,» explains Costa.
The second point is linked to the relationship between the main company and its contractors. In many cases, document tracking is experienced as a friction: permanent reminders, documentation demands, back and forth by email and incomplete uploads. However, when the process is digitized, the link can be sorted.
A specialized platform allows contracting companies to have clarity about what they must present, when they must do it, what documentation is observed and how each requirement impacts the authorization of their resources. This reduces improvisation and improves predictability for both parties.
«There is a misconception that digital control tightens the relationship with the contractor. In reality, it orders it. The supplier stops depending on informal reminders, missed emails or last-minute calls. It has a specific roadmap to comply better,» says Costa.
And he adds: «In practice, documentary control often ends up also professionalizing the suppliers themselves. The need to comply with each of the documents defined in the documentary matrix generates order, predictability and better management standards. Many contracting companies end up strengthening their internal processes precisely based on these control systems.»
The third factor is the daily verification of the documentary status. In sectors that are intensive in physical operations, an expired certificate, non-updated coverage or incomplete documentation can directly impact the work day. If an outsourced resource cannot enter a plant, construction site or operational center, the loss is not only administrative: it can affect schedules, shifts, productivity, service levels and commitments to clients.
Unlike a manual control, a digital solution allows you to visualize in real time which resources are enabled, which ones present observations, which documents must be updated and which companies concentrate the highest volume of non-compliance. This change modifies the role of the responsible areas: they stop chasing roles and start managing risks.
Even in those cases where the company decides to apply an operational exception or provisionally allow the entry of a resource with some documentary observation, the platform can leave complete traceability of that decision, recording who authorized the exception, on what basis and for what period. This not only allows for subsequent monitoring, but also for building much more orderly and auditable internal exception policies.
The fourth point is the ability to project. Many companies detect the problem after it has already occurred: the resource arrives at the door, tries to enter, and a disqualification appears. But modern management requires anticipation. The objective is not only to know who is authorized today, but who will be authorized tomorrow, next week or when starting a work, a technical stop or a scheduled operation.
«Companies do not need to find out on Monday at 7 in the morning that a resource cannot enter. They need to know it before, correct it before and prevent this non-compliance from affecting the operation. The big difference between manual management and digital management is the ability to anticipate,» Costa highlights.
Access to the plant is one of the points where this problem becomes more visible. In industries, logistics, energy, mining, construction or large stores, the entry of external personnel cannot depend on an improvised review. If a person arrives without the corresponding documentation, the contracting company faces a delay and the contractor also loses time, travel and productivity.
With digitalized processes, both the main company and the contractor can check in advance if a resource will be enabled to enter on a certain date. This reduces unnecessary trips, access denials and operational decisions made on incomplete information.
The fifth axis is differentiated risk management. Not all contractors represent the same level of exposure. Some perform low-criticality tasks; Others participate in sensitive activities, intervene in production processes, perform work at height, operate machinery, enter industrial plants or perform tasks related to safety and hygiene.
Treating all contractors the same can be inefficient and risky. A digital matrix allows segmentation by activity, level of criticality, type of documentation, compliance history and authorization status. In this way, areas such as legal, human resources, purchasing, operations, safety and hygiene and administration can work on the same source of information.
This phenomenon is also part of a broader transformation. ECLAC maintains that digitalization is key to maintaining business competitiveness because it allows you to optimize processes, reduce costs, diversify markets and adopt new business models.
However, in many organizations a contradiction still persists: companies with advanced commercial, financial or production management systems continue to manage critical documentation from third parties through spreadsheets, shared folders or email chains.
For Costa, this is where the true cultural change appears. «The question is no longer whether a company has documents uploaded somewhere. The question is whether it can make decisions with that information. Whether it can know which supplier is at risk, which resource should not enter, what expiration can affect an operation and which area should intervene before the problem occurs.»
Digitizing contractor control is not just about saving time. It is to protect operational continuity, reduce contingencies, improve the relationship with suppliers and give management reliable information to decide. In a context where every delay costs and every risk can escalate, traceability is no longer optional.
As Costa explains, that was precisely one of the reasons why Certronic was developed. «For years we saw that companies had enormous operational structures depending on manual controls, spreadsheets and dispersed monitoring. The platform was born to transform document management into a continuous, traceable and much more intelligent process, where the company can really understand what risk it has and what situations require intervention before they impact the operation,» he points out.
Costa adds that Certronic currently incorporated artificial intelligence tools to further enhance these processes. «Today, the AI integrated into the platform not only sorts documentation. It can also automatically classify documents, detect inconsistencies, identify expirations and anticipate compliance deviations before they generate an operational or legal problem,» he says.
Inefficient document management may seem like a minor problem until it directly impacts the operation. A resource that does not enter, a contractor that does not comply or an expired certificate can generate costs much higher than the investment necessary to organize the process.
Therefore, for companies that work with outsourced structures, the discussion is no longer just about digitizing documents. The real challenge is to build comprehensive contractor management: knowing who works, where they work, if they are authorized and what risk each external resource represents before the problem reaches the front door.
«The labor reform probably did not only change norms. It also began to change the way in which companies understand risk, traceability and third-party management. And in a context where operations are increasingly complex, digital and decentralized, that difference may end up being much more important than it seems,» concludes Francisco Costa.
Discover more from LatamNoticias
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
