By Vanessa Higuera, International Channel Support Manager, IPC
I recently traveled to Santiago for an event organized with our channel partner, e-Business Distribution, to meet our end customers in Chile. In my first hour in Santiago everyone I met made the same comment: this city has significantly changed in the last 10 years.
Santiago is a beautiful city that is enjoying a modern-day renaissance: public space and transport improvements, urban expansion and overall modernization of the city. With the construction of the Costanera Center – the tallest skyscraper in Latin America – we rapidly see Chile considerably investing in a new ‘business life’ for its capital city. Our customers are also keen to go through this transformation in a smooth and efficient manner.
Short to Medium Term Needs of our Customers
During my visit, most of my conversations with clients revolved around the fact that Chilean banks and other local financial institutions focusing on customer experience. Most importantly, they believe that digital transformation of financial services is vital to meet customer expectations.
We all agree that FinTech companies play a major role in digital transformation, but what is important to highlight here is that this transformation is not only integrally linked to product development, but also in the improvement of processes and services.
Chilean customers understand the importance of being up-to-date in this rapidly growing and very dynamic industry. Firms want to become ‘radars’ for detecting and tracking new trends and technologies. As a consequence, Latin American countries understand that even though they are behind on legislation and regulation, they can begin adopting best practices from Europe or the US that will allow them to anticipate change and be prepared for the challenges ahead by leveraging technology.
For example, firms now understand the added value of data analytics to personalize user experience. This ‘smart data’ is becoming more and more important in the actual context, to the point that it has become almost a compulsory investment for firms in multiple sectors – banking being the sector to invest the most on it.
There has also been a lot of discussion around business continuity and the pros and cons of keeping data centers on premise or in the cloud. One has to wonder whether Chile is prepared with the right technology and methodologies to move towards these new models. Customers think it is of utmost importance to continue making investments in industry education to fully understand technology as a competitive advantage for the Latin American markets.
Service Excellence
Service is fundamental to achieving customer satisfaction, and our channel partners in Chile play a key role in adding value to our clients. Not only are they experts in the local market with over 20 years of experience, but they are also part of the transformation the country is undergoing. Our channel partners represent IPC locally and are capable of offering end-to-end solutions, by collaborating to bring more technology to the Chilean market.
We have been able to rapidly advance in a world that now requires to be connected in order to function in an effective manner. Together with our channel partners, IPC looks forward to connecting the Chilean financial institutions to the global financial markets ecosystem, providing secure compliant communications and continue focusing on innovation and service excellence in our indirect markets.