{"id":273904,"date":"2020-05-27T19:00:46","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T22:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=273904"},"modified":"2020-05-27T20:07:53","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T23:07:53","slug":"covid-19-brings-businesses-to-digital-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/covid-19-brings-businesses-to-digital-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19 brings businesses to digital world"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing companies to race towards digital business. But simply putting out a technological product or using an online sales tool isn\u2019t enough to become part of this novel universe. One of Brazil\u2019s foremost specialists in innovation, Silvio Meira, discussed what it means to be a digitally transformed business, during a webinar hosted this Wednesday (27) by the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce<\/strong><\/a>. The webinar got 640 viewers in Brazil and other countries.<\/p>\n

A software engineer by trade, Meira is the chief scientist with The Digital Strategy Company<\/a> and an emeritus professor at the innovation-centric Cesar School<\/a>. According to him, Covid-19 triggered a digital apocalypse, condensing entire decades into a few weeks. \u201cThe thing is all of these futures began to happen for everyone at the same time, and for businesses, obviously, whether they like it or not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Arab Chamber: a webinar on the digital revolution<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He said e-commerce orders in Brazil soared 98% year-on-year in April, with online sales climbing as much as 300% in industries such as food and beverages. E-commerce was expected to be up 15% at most in 2020 in Brazil. \u201cThis is testimony to this apocalypse, of this download of 25 years\u2019 worth of digital into a handful of weeks,\u201d said Silvio Meira.<\/p>\n

The engineer traced back the history of technology, from the exchange of electronic documents from the 1970s to the 1990s to the early online businesses of the 1990 and 2000, and the advent of the commercial internet in 1995. According to him, from the mid-2020s onward the world will witness a universe of digital ecosystems organized and enabled by digital business platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith what\u2019s going on, companies have two basic alternatives: the first one is to radically and urgently redesign, into digital mode, their operating systems, the mechanisms, the foundations that enable their performance and business models. The other one is to continue to lobby for a reopening of the economy in analog mode, and to keep working in analog mode,\u201d said Meira.<\/p>\n

He believes the transition to digital should take into consideration each company\u2019s business model, and that there\u2019s no turning back now. According to Meira, digital innovation must factor in market, supplier and shopper behavior, and it must involve the implementation of digital platforms and strategic transformation. \u201cA shift in form and structure, in the syntax, the semantics of businesses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Hannun: a fascinating new world<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to the engineer, this transformation implies greater speed, doing more with less, boosting efficiency, improving shopper experience, and other operational aspects. \u201cWe must innovate in order to transform our business model into digital mode, and we must do that in the middle of the windstorm that\u2019s happening right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Meira said that going from analog to digital means going from rigid to collaborative. \u201cBusinesses are usually structured out not to collaborate. They are meant to be pyramids or silos, and within this big silo that is a business, there are more silos which don\u2019t have many interfaces. That is the antithesis of a network-based process, where you collaborate to attain goals and targets that you share with the ecosystem,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Businesses embracing this new model are featuring more and more efficient, capable staff that are less dependent, at times with no middle management, according to Meira. \u201cThe professional of the future is the genspecialist, who knows almost everything about almost nothing, and yet they have the eyes and ears to get across to other specialists who also know almost everything about almost nothing, so they\u2019re able to understand one another and make concerted efforts to do distributed, decentralized work,\u201d says the professor.<\/p>\n

Arab Chamber president Rubens Hannun said that with an optimistic outlook, this new digital world is fascinating. \u201cHow many challenges we have ahead of us! They playing field is really level, and going forward all that\u2019s left is to build,\u201d he said. Hannun said the topic for the webinar was picked because it impacts the entire global community. \u201cSome were already in the process, others are getting started, and I see some that need to start,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Santos of Solinftec: a time to overcome challenges<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Solinftec CEO Rodrigo Iafelice dos Santos, who joined the webinar, asked Meira whether it is feasible to fast-track digital transformation in the countryside, since the internet isn\u2019t even available in many places. Solinftec provides agribusiness tech solutions around the world. \u201cWe are looking at this as a time to overcome challenges,\u201d said Santos. According to Meira, countryside depends on public policies for an infrastructure that enables digital access. The lack thereof leaves room available for small-scale tech entrepreneurs, or small local providers.<\/p>\n

The webinar also featured Arab Chamber secretary-general Tamer Mansour, Ad\u00e9lia Mendon\u00e7a Cosmetics CEO Jacqueline Mendon\u00e7a, Egyptian startup company Robusta CEO Hussein Mohieldin, and Metro Brazil CEO Alaa Kara Ali.<\/p>\n

Click on the links for more on the webinar and for the\u00a0<\/em>full webinar on\u00a0YouTube<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Digital transformation drives change in consumption<\/a><\/p>\n

Influencers, chatbots are allies in sales to Arab countries<\/a><\/p>\n

Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum<\/strong><\/p>\n

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An Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce webinar saw Silvio Meira, one of Brazil\u2019s foremost innovation specialists, go over what it takes to digitally transform a business. Creating technological tools alone is not enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1455,"featured_media":273886,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[15479,15476,15478,15464,15475,15480],"class_list":{"0":"post-273904","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-cesar-school-en","9":"tag-cesar-school","10":"tag-digital-innovation","11":"tag-digital-transformation","12":"tag-inovacao-digital","13":"tag-silvio-meira-en"},"wps_subtitle":"An Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce webinar saw Silvio Meira, one of Brazil\u2019s foremost innovation specialists, go over what it takes to digitally transform a business. Creating technological tools alone is not enough. ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1455"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}