According to Felix Bettiah, National Director of Business IT, a multinational cloud solutions company operating in Panama, Peru and Ecuador, Panama has the highway that will facilitate the growth of digitalization and the next step is to focus on education. Paradigms in organizations that still operate according to the traditional model. The manager who spoke to Espacio Gente reiterated that, even at the financial level, the digitization of processes is a necessary commitment: “In 15 minutes, for example, I installed a platform in the cloud and I have the opportunity to start working.” There is potential, and if it is insufficient, then I have scalability”. On the other hand, he talks about the environmental impact of outdated processes, the importance of remote work, cybersecurity and the value of artificial intelligence.
What is digital innovation?
This is how we integrate technology, process and people to transform organizations. We regularly think that everything related to digital transformation is related to technology, but in fact it is not. Everything to do with people and how technology will help me change the things I need to do to make organizations more productive and collaborative.
The pandemic has posed a great challenge in moving quickly to technology. How do you assess the evolutions of companies in terms of working and using digital applications?
The pandemic has caused a rapid shift in technology adoption; Which was a huge headache, as organizations needed to start using tools they weren’t using overnight. The pandemic changed the way things worked and businesses that didn’t adapt and integrate technology very quickly couldn’t operate at the required speed. We took our portfolio and tailored it to the solutions businesses needed.
Remote work remains a popular topic of discussion; Some support its efficiency and other companies remain rigid about managing remote teams; What do we see in the enterprise IT experience? How does this translate into profitability?
It’s a paradigm that it’s more productive if I have a work team in the office. People shouldn’t work to a certain schedule; No one should say “I’m going to work from eight to five”; You really should start working towards common goals and challenges as a team. With the pandemic, remote work is here to stay and if there’s an organization that doesn’t see it that way, it’s on its way to extinction (laughs). When it was the pandemic we recently closed the roads due to protests and the important thing is that your organization has enough technology so that it doesn’t stop working or your employees stop working and also to at home Be more productive. Employees in the office. Today, I don’t know of any company that hasn’t made a teleworking policy or a hybrid model and the important thing in all of this is the technology that helps you do it, to be more productive, to digitize the organization. Because, to digitize the processes in manual and the business does not stop due to the unexpected or whatever happens in the market and prevents people from being physically present.
While technology is the enabler, how do you drive change in traditional businesses?
“Beyond the fact of automated processes, it’s about the dynamism that technology allows me. To make organizations more productive, we automate simple processes; with it, we simplify collaboration, from manual to digital moving, by incorporating speed into processes; and if I already have people who spend less time on manual things, we will have more productivity”.
The main thing is to change the paradigm in people. Many pedagogical works show that it is preferable to use the new model rather than the traditional model. It’s also much better financially, because before when you had to do a project, like building a data center, you had to invest a lot in the infrastructure; Today, in 15 minutes, I can build a platform in the cloud and I have the ability to start working, and if that fails, I have scalability; Likewise, it’s the paid plan that depends on the usage I’m actually paying for; This is a “pay as you go” model.
Artificial intelligence and security are complex issues. UNESCO recently concluded an agreement for the ethical use of artificial intelligence. What are the security risks?
Previously, we had people who worked within the organization and we put the necessary equipment so that the enemy did not enter; Buy technological equipment and create a huge bottleneck. Today, people inside the organization go out and hold valuable information, so it’s up to us to protect every point of potential vulnerability. The challenge is to establish security at the point of potential vulnerability, and the technology exists to mitigate those risks. For artificial intelligence, a lot of this is coupled with solutions to fill these gaps as well as the problems with the models of analysis and analysis of information and data in organizations, for example, to understand which customers can cancel a service in a bank, insurance companies… analytics of predictive models, where we correlate information in big data concept, and this correlation will allow me to identify certain variables and patterns that can lead to a specific event and with a report, I see what happened three months ago or a month ago to improve . With artificial intelligence and analytics and everything related to it already, I can know that if I have a customer with a certain behavior that they will take action, whether it’s buying something again or eliminate the service I use. I present them.
In addition to optimizing processes, how can technology make organizations more profitable?
Easy; I told you before I started the interview: Yesterday I was at a roadblock at 3:00 p.m. and I was looking forward to a month off and the ease of picking up a cell phone and wondering with an app where we can get a work permit. I can activate a process to say which date I want to skip. Beyond automating processes, it’s about the dynamism that technology allows me. To make organizations more productive, we automate simple processes; With it, we simplify collaboration, from manual to digital, by accelerating processes; And if I already have people who spend less time on manual things, we will have more productivity.
How does all this relate to sustainability and low environmental impact?
We are green IT with a zero carbon footprint and we promote clean processes where the use of paper, ink and electricity is eliminated. For example, with digital signature automation systems, saving paper, ink, time, electricity, with processes that contribute to improving the environment, this represents a contribution to live in this mission .
Today, many companies operate with the intention of making Panama a technological “hub”. Before recording, he told me about the interest of the country. Let’s dig deeper.
Panama is first and foremost a telecommunications hub. Panama has a fiber ring that goes from the Pacific to the Atlantic with redundancy, and I rightly mention that because I worked in telecommunications for many years and I have access to these connectivity cables from the Pacific and from the Atlantic north, into the United States and the South, covering the whole of South America; So this platform gives us the highway or the road that all digital issues are going to take; We already have a great platform that allows us to do that. Plus, there’s a lot of technology; I’ve been in this field for over 20 years and I can tell you that it’s a country that’s embracing a lot of technology and although we still have a lot of paradigms, there’s a lot of technology in the market and a lot of companies l adopt. are. Panama lends itself to this change for all components handled in the market.
