Jorge Pereyra (53) está vinculado a Netgate desde 2001 y asumió la dirección cuando falleció sorpresivamente Álvaro Lamé, exdirector de la empresa y referente del sector de las tecnologías de la información. Hasta entonces Pereyra participaba de las reuniones de directorio y estaba al frente de Expand, una empresa vinculada. Tras «asimilar el golpe» que significó la muerte de Lamé, se dedicó a continuar «con su legado».
Es ingeniero en Sistemas, recibido en la Universidad de la República, e hizo una maestría en Administración en la Universidad ORT. Más allá de la formación académica destaca la «enseñanza de la calle», la que adquirió trabajando. Actualmente, además de ser el CEO de Netgate y Expand, asesora a empresas de diversos rubros en ingeniería de sistemas.
Was it always clear to you where your vocation was going?
From a very early age I had a very strong orientation towards technology, but, above that, I had an orientation towards business, towards business development. In particular, what seduces me most about companies is the development strategy. How to enable them to meet the challenge of continuous change. Particularly in technology companies, where time is a tyrant.
You took over the management of Negate when Lamé passed away. Had there been any previous transitional period?
I worked with Álvaro in the management of Netgate. I did it more on the side, in board meetings. I was always very aware of the company and when Álvaro passed away, which was not expected, I had to take the reins. That was in January 2017. It was a bitter pill to swallow because beyond the 14 or 15 years of relationship as a partner, he was a guy that the market recognized a lot because he had a proactivity and a brutal entrepreneurship. When he left, although it was a very hard blow, we were able to assimilate it and continue with his legacy.
What is this legacy?
Innovation. The company has it practically in its veins, in its DNA. You always go to the roots and see where innovation is, and what you realize is that it is part of the people's processes, it is the ability to put together work teams. Innovation can be many things, but down to earth it is finding intelligent and efficient solutions to problems that people pose to you.
One of the company's current lines of action is artificial intelligence. How would you define this technology?
It is a very broad concept. It is the use of technologies to eventually, at one extreme, be able to replace the reasoning capacity of a human being. The thing is that today we are living in a very early stage of artificial intelligence. At the moment there are two major streaks of what is happening. On the one hand, there is the development of IOT (internet of things, IOT for its acronym in English) solutions. IOT is a concept in which all devices are connected in some way through the internet; not only connected but also downloading information. With the IOT can generate a qualitative change in people's lives.
On the other hand, you have artificial intelligence that takes a lot of relevant information about something and generates certain analyses on that information. When you combine the two things, you find that it is going to generate, in a short time, a qualitative change in people's lives.
What kind of changes?
En todo lo que se puede imaginar. En Expand, por ejemplo, una de las cosas que hacemos es que se pueda grabar las conversaciones con los clientes. A las empresas les interesa saber cómo atendemos a los clientes y evaluar si los agentes cumplieron con determinados estándares de calidad dentro de la atención. Por ejemplo, si abrieron la llamada con un «buenos días», «buenas tardes», «buenas noches»; si la cerraron con «gracias por haber preferido nuestros servicios»; o si en el medio mencionaron los productos que tienen para vender. Entonces lo que hacemos en forma automática, utilizando la inteligencia artificial, es censar si en esa grabación aparecen todos esos patrones de calidad. Lo hacemos en tiempo real y de forma automática. Lo que antes implicaba tener un conjunto de personas escuchando grabaciones, la nueva prestación automatiza ese proceso a gran velocidad. Procesamos 1.000 minutos de audio –16 horas–, en menos de cinco minutos. Eso quiere decir que hay un aumento de la eficiencia.
This is a case of artificial intelligence applied to a quality care process, but it can be applied to a thousand things. In health is an area where it is being used a lot. I am convinced that IOT is going to revolutionize the world in a very short time.
Where is the technology business going today?
The speed with which technologies evolve makes you have to evolve faster to generate products and services. There is no doubt that IOT is one of the branches of this business.
Connectivity is something that will continue to be there, but with increasingly smaller margins. And what companies have to do is diversify, which means creating solutions to problems that exist today.
Source: The Observer
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