In this our September 2020 Community Chat, and with two members of the Caribbean tech community, business intelligence expert and CEO, Raquel Seville, and Publisher and international trade executive, Loren Moss, we discuss: how can Caribbean economies/businesses become more resilient in the face of disruption; and how can Caribbean countries better leverage the growing movement to telework?

 

This episode is also available in Apple iTunes, Google Play Music and on Stitcher!

We have all heard the saying, ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’, and to a considerable degree, the COVID-19 pandemic has been forcing many of us to confront a broad range of issues, which in the past, we may not have considered urgent, and so would have been prepared to kick down the road. One of the issues that has come to the fore, is the extent to which organisations worldwide have been truly leveraging technology. In the face of school closures, lockdowns and work from home requirements, organisations could no longer expect their employees to work from their premises. Essentially, they needed to adjust and be creative, in order ferret out the opportunities and the benefits that could be realised.

In our September 2020 Community Chat, a few of the opportunities that have emerged, and are continuing to emerge, thanks to this crisis, are highlighted and discussed.

 

How can Caribbean economies/businesses become more resilient in the face of disruption?

The issue of resiliency, by businesses and even by countries, in the face of disruption is something that has been widely discussed – especially in the light of COVID-19. Although it is easy to tell organisations, or even countries, ‘you need to be more resilient’, it is easier said than done. There can be a broad range of countervailing factors and considerations, some of which might be inherent to the organisation and the discomfort of change, whilst others might be based on the desires and expectations of their customers. it is thus through that lens, and following from her own experience in establishing a business without a brick-and-mortar office – well before working digitally became the buzzword of the day – that our guest, Raquel Seville, suggested this topic for discussion.

Raquel Seville

Raquel Seville is the Chief Executive Officer for the Caribbean region for BI Brainz, a business intelligence (BI) and analytics consulting and solutions company. She has a passion for pulling insights from data, and has worked for large multinational telecoms serving customers in the Caribbean and Latin America. Raquel has over a decade of experience working with and leading big data and analytics teams, and has designed and implemented data warehouses, management reports, predictive analytics and executive dashboards. She authored a recently published book, SAP OpenUI5 for Mobile BI and Analytics.

Raquel is an international speaker and has spoken at conferences in the United States, Spain, Australia, and her home country, Jamaica. She is a SAP Mentor, and is a keen advocate of BI user adoption, and having not only the right tools but the right talent and processes to ensure maximum return on BI investment.

 

How can Caribbean countries better leverage the growing movement to telework?

Loren Moss

Generally, Caribbean countries have been at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting technology investment, but successful at developing their tourism industries. Now, with the rise of telework, remote work and digital nomads, countries can deploy new strategies to attract newly mobile high income international workers. However, according to our guest, Loren Moss, Caribbean Investment Promotions Agencies (IPAs) do not appear to be very proactive in leveraging those opportunities, but a few are taking note. However, it also means that IPAs may need to measure success differently—not by the companies they attract, but the workers they attract – and consequently their promotional strategies would also need to be adjusted.

Loren Moss is the Publisher of several business, finance and IT publications, including Unido Digital, Unido Digital Media, Cognitive Business News, Finance Colombia and Finance Americas, to name a few. Fluent in Spanish, with on the ground business and living experience in the Caribbean and Latin America, Loren is especially competent in understanding economics, technology and social trends taking place both nearshore and overseas.

Loren has worked as an international trade executive over the past two decades in several industry verticals including finance, insurance, IT outsourcing and telecom for firms and customers in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. A native Buckeye from Columbus, Ohio, Loren now lives outside of Medellín, Colombia.

 

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Select links

Below are links to some of the organisations and resources that either were mentioned during the episode, or otherwise, might be useful:

 

 

Image credits: florantevaldez (Pixabay); R Seville; L Moss

Music credit: Ray Holman