For SMEs, the Council is to delegate, work in the cloud and accelerate the e-commerce. For entrepreneurs, reinforce human capital.

"If there is no remedy, why cry? And if there is remedy, why cry?" Thus says an oriental proverb, which perhaps serves to overcome pandemic and resurface in better conditions.

A rapid review of context numbers. The ECLAC a few weeks ago estimated that Argentina will see its GDP fall 10.5% this year, the third in the region after Peru and Venezuela. And for the LATAM as a whole, the falls will be greater than in the 2009 crisis: the investment will fall 20%, exports 11.5%and consumption, a huge 9.5%.

Guarantee, a profitable and safe investment opportunity

Let's now put the magnifying glass in companies. What happened to them since March, how did they change and what can be the opportunities in 2021?

Results

Let's see the consolidated signatures first. Paula Chmielnicki is an engineer and directs the PCH consultant, focused on professionalizing SMEs. Since March, he says, there were marked stages: "SMEs passed through stages of paralysis, fear and scenarios review. But once accustomed to constant uncertainty, many entrepreneurs were friends with the idea of ​​changing and thinking about another business model, or making alliances." It gives two cases: first, a toy wholesaler who was closed the first weeks, and then adapted the work space, security protocols and personnel prevention, and could "resume activities and encouraged to open more digital stained glass windows." The other case was harder: a firm that sells equipment and services, but the latter were suspended because they were non -essential. Thus, he overturned his efforts in the other business unit through alliances with suppliers: "It served to keep the organization occupied and cope with the fall. It was difficult, but managed to improve and unwind work processes."

Regarding the most notable change he saw in the firms, Chmielnicki marks “the head of those who did not trust work outside the office. First they agreed to invest in notebooks and migrate information to the cloud; then, to guarantee the flow of information to their users. And then, the challenge was to supervise the distance work”. In the obligatory learning of entrepreneurs for seven months that seemed years, the head of PCH sees an unthinkable advance: “They use tools to organize tasks and thus meet clear objectives. Today the result matters, not the time of signing”, Graphic.

opportunities

Sandra Felsenstein is also an engineer. He founded and is in charge of Dinkka, a consultant oriented to medium and small firms. In addition to the obvious reference to the item, due to the forced cessation or brake of many activities, the expert emphasizes the previous degree of progress in innovative practices such as the great key that allowed them to adapt to the new reality. The example arises quickly: “Our customer has an important wholesale input business for beauty salons, with six employees. With the closure of the hairdressers, the sale was paralyzed. He asked us for help with the design of a digital scheme to reach the final consumers with tinctures and treatments, something that until then only did in the hairdressing rooms. piecework

Precisely, the new normality on the planet, vaccines through, will be for the owner of Dinkk They came to stay, as well as the increase in e-commerce, digital marketing and work in a remote part.

Entrepreneurs

Hugo Kantis directs PRODEM at the University of General Sarmiento, a Think Tank that investigates and attends dynamic ventures, that is, only new companies that generate a great impact on employment, added value and innovation. The coup of the Covid, says Kantis, has hit in this segment in the same way as in the established signatures. Or even worse: according to a regional survey that prodem made with the IDB in April, among almost 2,500 entrepreneurs of LATAM, the vast majority said to have oxygen only for a couple of months. "Some had differential abilities to respond, from the contribution of personal savings. Thus, the first thing was to resist, to reinvent themselves," he explains.

In addition, Kantis remarks, what has resentful in many cases is the same mood of the team "and that is the worst thing that can happen in an entrepreneurial group, because its central capital is human capital and its contact networks." Asked if the stimulus institutions were up to the need for their recipients, the director of PRODEM explains that “many organizations of the ecosystem entered a first stage of paralysis, and then respond with very generic activities, such as talks or training. Very few managed to provide an emotional containment space, link with mentors with experience to crisis or inform about the relief measures arranged by the government, and manage them.”

On the post-covid stage, Kantis foresees “different sources of opportunities. On the one hand, the acceleration of technological change, which will generate a very important creative destruction process. On the other hand, the need to rebuild the economy will generate demands in certain sectors. And also the change in consumption patterns will lead to new businesses while decreasing others, although in a context very affected by the impoverishment of society and the medium classes. In turn, global value chains could be reconfigured, changing the supply sources that are based in China to achieve greater resilience.

Alternative

"We are an information platform from the performing arts and also a collaborative management ticketera. We started with 12 tickets in 2001 and we finished 2019 with 1.4 million tickets sold."

"In recent years we had found a solid business model with exploitation of many peripheral issues for the sale of online and face -to -face tickets; it was achieved for 10 years of development in that particular niche and a deep knowledge of the problem of ticketing and the specific niche in particular. The pandemic found us at a time of full expansion more what really interested us, the alternative foundation."

"The closure of the theaters was a shock. Personally, the first two weeks were very hard; seeing 20 years destroyed in a week is not easy."

"But alternative has a very intense and emotional bond with its users. And to the people of Timbre 4 it occurred to the‘ virtual cap ’, with a price scale from $ 0 to $ 1,000 to sell tickets and that each one decided their contribution. We appropriate the idea, we develop others on the basis of audiovisual consumption and that implied for many artists strong success cases and collections that perhaps did not imagine before."

"In the future, a hypothesis is a hybrid scene, with face -to -face functions reduced by protocol, more streaming with remote audiences scattered throughout the country and the world. It sounds good, it sounds possible, but you have to reach that. And it also implies the problem of mass hypercompetence."

Co-Pain

"I started in 2015, without knowing anything about bakery, after buying the trade fund from another Frenchman, the Breton Franck Dauffouis, who taught me everything about the trade. I also kept his team of people complete. We have two French bakeries in CABA, in Centenario and Palermo Park, where we manufactured. In Centenary Park we were going to open a bar-café in March, when the quarantine was decreed.

"At the beginning the sales fell, we did not know how the situation was going to evolve. While at first we invoiced only half, we little by little we billed almost 100%. But the wholesale sale to Restoranes went down a lot, because they had to close. Now we are having more cafeteria -type customers."

"We try to reinvent ourselves through the sale of products to other stores. We also add new ideas, such as breakfast boxes, which are very requested. And in general, the online channel became very important, and it can be the future in the short and medium term."

The 4 no

  • Not isolated; It is key to socialize and interact with others.
  • Do not believe that the future will be a reissue of the past.
  • Do not assume that the exit is close. We will have to work to live with this situation during 2021.
  • Do not forget the centrality that the box and financial management have.

Hugo sang - Prodem