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New lifestyle requires digital transformation

publicado: 27/03/2020 12h30, última modificação: 03/04/2020 12h34
When the motivation is to preserve life, the recommendations for combating the new coronavirus are followed to the letter by most of the Brazilian population.
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Marcia Dementshuk 

"The market exploded last week. Suddenly, the confinement started, the students stopped going to school, there is a calendar to be followed and the institutions ran to the online solution", said Gilberto Farias, founder of a company of solutions for Distance Education. Last week 11 terabytes per second passed through Brazil (source: IX.br); the previous average was around 7.5 Tb/s. When the motivation is to preserve life, the recommendations for combating the new coronavirus are followed to the letter by most of the Brazilian population. The new lifestyle took everyone by surprise. Those who were prepared to meet the new demand that opened reap the rewards of the opportunities. 

Cloud, connectivity, service - the digital transformation shakes those who keep engaging in projects that would bring technological innovation to the company. The resistance to change is obvious. Carlos Eduardo Novinho, CEO of Avati Acceleradora, says that "in five years working with several startups and traditional companies that have done business modeling with us, I see that they are all resistant to curing the main pains of customers in their segment. The companies recognize it, but they run away because they believe it's hard to heal them". 

In fact, implementing an innovation process does not happen overnight. The imminence of lethal contagion was much faster and only those who ran at that speed were the delivering motorcyclists. It is different when the company's culture is born in a digital environment. 

Giovanni Farias had been connected in virtual services since before the commercial Internet appeared (this was in 1995). A student at UFPB in Campina Grande, today UFCG, during Electronic Engineering, he browsed the BBS, Bulletin Board Systems, online environments formed by people anywhere in the world and accessible from anywhere in the world by computer. He connected through a modem adapted to the computer connected to the "wired" telephone and a very high connection cost - the pulse still pulses. 

When the first provider opened in Campina Grande, Giovanni Farias began to structure his distance learning company through the computer network - which was not yet so global. "I was working in other activities, because I still had no demand for the Internet. Even so, I always bet on digital," said Giovanni. 

In 2007, G. Farias was incubated in the Technology Park of Paraíba, with employees working from various places in the country, when Giovanni realized that the physical structure was no longer necessary. "I myself traveled a lot and worked from where I was. We had an experience working "home office" and saw that it worked much better". At that time, when he was going to close a deal, he omitted to tell us what the company's operation was like: "This structure was not well seen by business people". 

Demand for online service increases 354% 

 

Today Giovanni Farias' company offers a set of solutions for institutions that want to enter the Distance Learning system. Based on the company's data traffic, demand increased 345% in less than a week. Not only the new ones, but also the old customers have expanded the services. After the threat by the new coronavirus, one of my old customers who had 3,000 students at a distance is now with 10,000 - all the enrollees are following classes over the Internet. 

According to the entrepreneur, one of the ruptures towards the culture of performing online tasks in the corporate sector came with the crisis in 2008. "Many of those who had resistance to distance education, videoconferencing, remote work, gave in because they had to cut expenses and this technology results in savings. Giovanni observes that in this moment in which we live, the digital transformation - for better or for worse - must be done. 

Cloud data is a solution for enterprises 

Carlos Eduardo Novinho, from Avati Accelerator, warns: "You can't stop. You must innovate. You can't run away from your client's main pain." In times of remote work, innovation takes place in the clouds [of data]! One of the most basic solutions for the company is to make the company's processes, documents, projects, services and content accessible via the Internet, all that is necessary for the development of the work. And the cloud, the "cloud" as it is known, is one of the best alternatives. 

"There are other means, such as the company having an equipment inside its unit and performing this service, but the data centers (data center), which have space for the storage of large amounts of data, are the most indicated. Even for small and medium enterprises that have less breath to invest in technology", explains Flavia Tabosa, Marketing Manager at Hostdime, who provides this service. 

According to Flavia Tabosa, the service is offered by large global companies, but hiring a service established in Brazil guarantees a lower cost: "First, the company abroad charges in dollars and the variation upwards is a problem. But what goes unnoticed is that hiring this service outside Brazil is an import and a 45% tax is levied, which makes the process unfeasible for the entrepreneur". 

Digital transformation in practice: business case 

 

As in most of Brazil, the Faculdade Pernambucana de Saúde - FPS, the academic community of students, teachers and technical-administrators - are 100% home office. 

Marcone Barros, IT Manager at FPS, says that three factors were decisive for this quick adaptation: "The first is that our classes are small, have only 12 students, the second was the fact that the teachers already know the webconference platform since last year and the third is the immediate IT support that we provide to support users in case of doubt. Thus, we focus only on developing a task force to build video tutorials to capillarize access to the platform". 

In addition, the Library and Digital Resources Laboratory staff are interacting with teachers and students to support this new study routine. For the technical-administratives and Board, the access to systems and information are working normally, the only difference is that they are now working at home. 

The transformation in the technological area began in 2014, when we invested more than R$ 6 million; but it was greater in 2019. "We conducted a digital maturity survey and developed an action plan that includes ensuring innovation capacity and identifying weaknesses. The solutions began to be implemented. Immigration to the cloud service was gradual. Currently 94% are in the cloud and the target is to increase to 98% by August 2020. 



"The world is responsive and rapid and constant change has required organizations to embrace the path of digital transformation. But the new dynamics of the market are not only focused on ICTs, it is important to always focus on society, on the end consumer; it is through them that organizational models need to be rethought and reinvented". 

Marcone Barros, CIO of the Pernambuco College of Health - FPS