Better optics
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the economy’s best-performing corporations were those plying their trade in IT and telecoms. Over the course of our research in the preparation of this publication, interviewee after interviewee shared that they had predicted a rise in demand for digital services in Mexico, but not as sudden as that influenced by COVID-19. Those with the existing infrastructure and the best solutions to offer clients wanting to jump into the digital market reaped the fruits of their labor during the pandemic. “Some of our competitors failed to migrate their business to a work-from-home environment,” said Juan Ignacio Sada, CEO of Teleperformance Nearshore Region, adding, “This created huge demand for such services that we capitalized on significantly.”
Many players also shared that companies often feel overwhelmed by the amount of solutions that exist in the market. “We worked closely with customers to define their digital strategies, because most of them faced many challenges in terms of serving customers, delivering products, and providing solutions and products,” said Juan Francisco Aguilar, General Manager of Dell Technologies. “Most were also struggling to modernize their data centers, which is another direction we took in order to help customers,” he elaborated. Dell helps companies take advantage of the data s being generated by their clients and foresees a market that will soon be data driven. “In 2021, it is hard to imagine just how many devices will be connected via 5G technology and how many devices are generating data with technology such as IoT,” adds Aguilar, concluding that “all this data is now interconnected, and everyone is generating content and data that can be used for many things, such as identifying market trends, following up on marketing campaigns, and most importantly changing the dynamics of many industries.”
In all, the market agrees the pandemic has accelerated the digitalization process for companies, and the main priority is to help them navigate this process and retain and attract customers. “The goal is to help customers connect and solve the gaps they have internally with all the channels they have to take advantage of the customer’s information,” shared Pilar García, General Manager of Salesforce Mexico.
However, the generation of data comes with great responsibility, as Latam has been identified as one of the most vulnerable regions in terms of cybersecurity. “We conducted a study on 245 companies in finance and retail in Latin America, and 90% said the classification of information is extremely important, while 70% did not have a process to classify information,” said Paris Valladares, Managing Director of Kriptos. Valladares emphasized the importance of replicating security practices used in offices, such as firewalls, in people’s homes.