Connectivity, solutions and cybersecurity: the challenge facing companies in Latin America

Although Covid-19 was a difficult period for some entrepreneurs — many had to reduce their productive capacity and others even had to close — it opened the doors to new ventures and businesses that were reinvented in the face of the crisis to get ahead.

Teleworking, e-commerce, telemedicine, virtual education, corporate streaming, digital platforms and virtual offices transformed the productive sectors to the point at which 85 per cent of Latin American companies adopted this type of technology to continue their work, that is, in the region there was an interest in ensuring productivity in the modalities of remote work and they will continue to be applied in the continuation of the activities for which they were designed.

But what can become a riddle for many is actually a range of opportunities for customers, employees and operations, because as Juan Vicente Martín, director of B2B at Movistar Empresas for Telefónica Hispanoamérica, points out , these technologies are the best way to promote the realization of business. “Eight years ago people thought that in order to have contact with customers they had to have a website, now that doesn't happen anymore. Now 75% of internet searches are resolved on the customer's business card. If, for example, I search for the word 'empanadas' in the search engine, the interaction I will have is with the business card, which is the first thing that comes up when doing a search. I can also go to the website there, but nobody uses that, people look for the phone and close.”

According to the World Bank, less than half of Latin Americans have fixed broadband connectivity. The figure, which accounts for the digital divide facing the region, has not only prompted many governments to implement policies to democratize access to services, but to put themselves at the forefront of new technologies. For example, in countries like Mexico and Chile things are going at a different pace. The implementation of technologies is progressing faster than in the rest of the region and several operators have already begun to offer 5G connectivity and equipment to their users, since they have stopped seeing the issue as an issue of internet access, to observe it as a business axis that allows examples as simple as the business card can improve the interaction of an entrepreneur with their customers, whether it is a large company or an SME.

But the theme is not just about searches and business cards, it is also developed from employees and security. Data published in the Latin American Threat Panorama Report 2021 indicate that cyber incidents increased by 24%, with Brazil, Peru, Panama, Guatemala and Venezuela topping the list. The figure helps to support the idea that 76% of companies in the region are not prepared to take on such threats that not only involve obtaining transactional data, but customer data and the same know-how of companies. “If we have learned anything from the pandemic, it is that people have gone home and 70% of employees are not going to return to the offices. What equipment do corporations have? , what security do companies have from the employees' homes? That's really messy. What do we do? Again, we make a package in which a PC, plus connectivity, plus security, plus computer tools are put in the hands of an employee so that they can work as they should, breaking the complexity of security and delivering, if necessary, a cloud to preserve information, all in an absolutely simple and understandable way”, adds Juan Vicente Martín.

The report Digital Technologies for a New Future states that “since the first industrial revolution, the introduction of new technologies has contributed to improving the productivity of companies and the economy as a whole”.

Despite this, there is a myth about implementation versus the cost-benefit that involving new technologies in a company can bring, even though the balance, which continues to lean towards the digital solutions side, indicates greater profits. For example, in the case of Argentina, for 2019, the contribution of ICT was shown to be 1.66% of GDP, while in a country such as Colombia, according to data from the Colombian Federation of the Software Industry, ICT contributed 1.7% to GDP.

But while the figures say one thing, reaching all the realities of every country, and each of the small entrepreneurs is a huge challenge.

“In SMEs there is no area that knows technology, in SMEs our work is twofold, on the one hand we have to make the digital proposal available for them to incorporate it and second, we have to tell them and explain how they will do better business using it. So the big seller isn't really that of the biggest customers, but the seller of SME customers, who is the one who has to talk about technology with people who are dedicated to making shoes, empanadas and other kinds of things,” says Juan Vicente Martín

From this perspective, this position places Movistar Empresas not only as a provider selling Internet and Television plans, but as a business sector that daily carries out social work so that security, cloud and big data tools are incorporated into a package of solutions designed exclusively for each client in its language and breaking the paradigms that are built for technology as unwieldy or expensive. “What we do is build simple, affordable products for a small company with a speech that our commercial teams bring to customers. So they explain to them how the improvements in our technology, those pieces that we have created, really contribute to a business, because in the end we live in pesos, soles, dollars or whatever currency, but not in bits or bytes,” says Juan Vicente Martín.

According to the UN, technologies can help make the world more just, peaceful and equitable, accelerate the achievement of each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, influence the fight against extreme poverty, the promotion of sustainable agriculture, decent work and universal literacy. On the basis of this, some Governments have begun to implement actions to introduce them, knowing that they have become a central element of the development paradigm.

However, for technology providers, there are three fronts of relations with governments. On the one hand, they are customers who seek to improve attention to citizens through the implementation of technologies. Secondly, governments act as environmental regulators used by telecommunications companies to carry out their objectives. Finally, thirdly, just as they may discourage investment in the implementation of networks that carry the technology by increasing costs on the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, they can also incentivize them, when they override the economic benefits that the implementation of these technologies brings to the regions. This is what Juan Vicente Martin says when he points out that in Europe the largest capital contribution being made to economic recovery is aimed at digitalisation projects in SMEs. “The State is activating soft credit programs with direct incentives so that companies can play in this new world because in the end the good thing about the digital world is that it delocalizes the company. In other words, a shoe store in Bucaramanga that lives in the digital world is as far from a customer in Bucaramanga as it is from a customer in Bogotá or Medellin. What's more, we compete in a global world. The problem is not that you are just as far from Bogotá or Medellin, you are just as far from Quito and Miami. It's the same distance. So to the extent that the government encourages the digitization of an SME, it will contribute to its development radically and that changes life”, he says.

In this sense, there are two different characteristics that make it the time for the development of new technologies in Latin America. The formation of new companies that, according to Forbes magazine, meant an all-time record for 2021 that reached the figure of 7.3 trillion dollars and their new way of operating. That is why Juan Vicente Martín stresses that this boom in new entrepreneurs is what a future productivity boom can turn out to be. “The difference with regard to the creation of companies is that those of today are not going to be created as they did before. They will think about not having an office, they are going to think that they have to have their data secure and they will have to think about how to do it. They will think about how to keep their staff offshoring and work together in a cloud. They will think that they do not have to invest, but rather that they have to buy the services that are offered by use because they come from a time when they have had those investments. I think that the new SME that is coming, arrives with an impact and with an incorporation of technology that was previously unthinkable both in its production processes and in its relationship with employees and customers,” he says.

With this in mind, Juan Vicente Martín predicts a good future for companies in the region, because if on the one hand large companies are the driving force of countries, SMEs are the sources of employment for many people, and they are, as he well describes or describes, living entities, because they develop, change their size, change their profile, change their objective over time and are looking for alternatives to make possible those new businesses that are available on the net and which represent a differential point for the development of the market and economies.

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