TransparentBusiness in LA REPÚBLICA

A major newspaper in Colombia published an article written by Silvina Moschini, a co-founder, Chairwoman and President of TransparentBusiness.

(the English translation is below)

The Bright Side of a Challenging Year

"The best way to predict the future is to create it," argued Abraham Lincoln. And believe in him. Because, although we reached the end of the year globally affected by the pandemic, the forced changes revealed valuable opportunities. In this transition to a new year, I would like to propose this exercise with some of the lessons that 2020 left us.

By Silvina Moschini

Technology is the way, but capital is human. Before the pandemic, the Internet was in our daily lives; now it has become a basic good that connects us with the world. According to a report by Digital 2020, by the middle of the year 60% of the world's population used the Internet, and more than 8 out of 10 mobile users declared that it was essential to survive the pandemic, because it allowed them to support their children's education ( 76%), keep in touch with friends and family (74%) and even improve their well-being (43%). To maintain these indexes -which are also essential to get out of the crisis-, it is necessary to work on digital government policies, as did Colombia, which ranks third in the world in the Ocde Digital Government Index as reported by Víctor Muñoz, Counselor Presidential for Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation. In any case, no matter how connected we are, capital is still human. Although the technological revolution gave Artificial Intelligence a seat at the board of directors, 60% of those consulted in the Deloitte 2020 Global Human Capital Trends Report declare that Artificial Intelligence is used more as support than to replace people. In fact, the study maintains, the managers of the future will coordinate super teams that combine human capital with Artificial Intelligence: while technology will be responsible for data, traceability and transparency, people will be measured by their skills soft: their connectivity, of course, but also their social and emotional skills, their adaptability, and their resilience.

Remote is better

Between the revolutions of 2020, remote work consolidated itself as one of the great protagonists of the transition to the new normal. From the smallest to the largest companies they had to adapt their models to distributed teams, and the conversion had good results in performance. A recent survey by Enterprise Technology Research, which measures, among other things, last year's productivity, predicts that telecommuting will double in 2021: of the 1,000 CIOs interviewed worldwide, 48.6% reported that productivity it had increased since the quarantine began. Remote work reduces production costs, allows remote access to talent, improves productivity with flexible hours, enhances concentration, ends the work-family axis, protects the environment by reducing travel and, practically, allows store information in the cloud so that all members of a team are aligned and can monitor the execution of processes with transparency and efficiency.

E-commerce is the ultimate way to shop

If it was on the rise before the declaration of the pandemic, the trend deepened during lockdowns. For obvious reasons, e-commerce became almost an exclusive channel for the purchase of food and supplies, but also for social and entertainment experiences, and registered an annual increase of 6% to 10% in most of the categories . As reported by Roberto Ramírez Laverde, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Mastercard Latin America, through a survey carried out jointly with Americas Market Intelligence, before covid-19 the penetration rate of electronic commerce was 45% among Latin Americans and it reached almost 83% in recent months, not only for the purchase of essential products but of all kinds. The L'Oréal group reports that the online sale of beauty and cosmetic products far exceeded the estimates they had for 2020: from the initial 20% estimated for electronic market operations, they closed the year with 30%, informed Pablo Sánchez Liste, director Communication, Public Affairs, Sustainability and Marketing at L'Oréal México.

The future is with woman

According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the covid-19 pandemic negatively impacted 87% of the world's companies led by women. And this was the case for various reasons, ranging from gender inequality in access to technology to the majority of women in the areas most affected by the recession. And yet, it is the female segment that contains the keys to recovery, because it is women who are most committed to entrepreneurship, prompted by the independence and creativity that fosters liquid work, which is the structuring of work through starting from three main ideas: digitization, flexibility and mobility. This trend is, above all, marked in developing countries, where entrepreneurship is an alternative to the lack of formal work. Motivated by the leadership that best managed the pandemic, such as the governments of New Zealand,

Germany, Finland, Taiwan and Denmark - all run by women -, they impose a trusting and altruistic model that is spearheading the world, not only because it shows the way to a more inclusive and just society but also because it has excellent yields.

We changed so much during 2020 that by the end of the year this time almost nothing will change. In addition, the real kickoff will be the coronavirus vaccine.

That is why I want to unite my wishes to the same wish we all have: that 2021 brings us health. Because if we can celebrate something about this year that is going away, it is that, for once, history finds us all on the same side and, with that, the opportunity to start over together.