Carlos Thompson, un destacado ejecutivo de publicidad en Puerto Rico, tiene una nueva herramienta de inteligencia artificial para encontrar rápidamente los datos económicos esenciales que necesita para las operaciones diarias de su empresa y la planificación estratégica a largo plazo.
Está entusiasmado porque puede obtener todos los datos duros necesarios para preparar una presentación con su equipo o una propuesta a potenciales inversores en cuestión de segundos.
“Siempre estamos corriendo contra el tiempo porque todo es para mañana, así que cualquier cosa que pueda ayudarnos a acelerar el acceso a la información es vital para nuestro negocio hoy. Todo está cambiando tan rápido que necesitamos movernos tan rápido como lo hace el tiempo”, dice Thompson.
El bot es la última característica de una plataforma digital de análisis y datos económicos adaptados a cada situación local que está ayudando a docenas de empresas a prosperar en el complejo contexto económico de la isla caribeña.
En conjunto, la plataforma de datos y el asistente de inteligencia artificial lanzado recientemente pretenden ser un punto de inflexión para las empresas al mejorar y acelerar los procesos internos, dice Gustavo Vélez, fundador de Intelligent Economics (IE), la pequeña firma puertorriqueña de análisis de datos económicos que desarrolló el portal basado en la nube y el bot.
Ambas herramientas son un testimonio de la transformación digital de la consultora de Vélez, una de las más populares de Puerto Rico. Fundada en 2006 y formada por una docena de economistas, solía proporcionar datos y análisis económicos por teléfono y enviar informes y hojas de cálculo por correo. Muchos competidores siguen optando por el camino tradicional.
“Hemos conseguido diferenciarnos de los demás [gracias a la digitalización]… atrayendo a más gente hacia nosotros, y aportando valor adicional”, afirma Vélez.
El economista es un rostro familiar para muchos puertorriqueños, quienes lo ven como el gurú económico de la isla. Tiene su propio canal de video, conduce un programa de radio y escribe una columna semanal en un periódico puertorriqueño.
Tras el huracán María, que destruyó la red eléctrica de la isla y causó daños por 90.000 millones de dólares en septiembre de 2017, Vélez decidió volverse completamente digital y comenzó un cambio continuo que culminó recientemente con el bot de inteligencia artificial. El huracán fue una llamada de atención para llevar el negocio un paso más allá y volverse digital, afirma.
El fundador de IE pidió a Microsoft ser un socio estratégico en la transformación digital de su empresa. Durante casi una década, Microsoft ha acompañado a la firma de datos económicos en ese proceso, brindándole un conjunto diferente de tecnologías en cada etapa, incluida la IA, para hacer posible la transformación.
So far, the platform and the AI bot have attracted a lot of interest. Vélez says he has nearly 100 clients, including some of the largest companies operating in Puerto Rico, from big retailers and food distributors to banks and advertising firms. He recently opened shop in neighboring Dominican Republic, whose economy is closely interconnected to Puerto Rico’s.
Embracing technology to be competitive
Intelligent Economics’ platform runs on Azure App Service, a service for hosting web applications running on Microsoft’s cloud computing services. It also uses Power BI, a set of software services, apps and connectors that turn data into visuals and interactive insights.
The portal was first introduced in 2018 and has been adding new features and improvements continuously since then. A beta version of the AI bot was launched in November for clients to speed up their customized data searches and improve their overall experience.
The bot runs on Azure OpenAI Service with a GPT4 model. It uses Azure AI Foundry and Azure AI Search, a set of tools to build, ground and deploy machine learning models on Azure. Clients’ information and personal data remain anonymous, according to IE, but interactions with the bot are used to fine-tune the bot’s responses, tone and functionality.
The platform and the AI bot are fed with more than 1,000 economic indicators of from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, verified and regularly polished by IE’s economists — from per capita income and inflation data to retail sales and personal consumption aggregates. There is also data for the rest of the US and Latin American countries.
“The most important thing is that it is fed with our database … not from random data found on the internet,” said Chantal Benet, vice president and chief economist at Intelligent Economics.
Additionally, clients can opt to upload their own internal operating data, such as sales data and price tags, which is not shared with others. They can combine local public data with their own to develop business projections.
Monthly and yearly indicators are tracked by Vélez’s group of economists from sometimes scattered and hard to find government websites and public and private sources of economic data. And much of the data is broken down by municipality, providing an exceptionally in-depth view of the state of the local economy.
Clients say they have all the economic data they need to identify regional and local trends in a single place, available around the clock, easy to access and displayed in an enticing manner through customized dashboards and colorful charts.
This real-time access allows them to enhance the efficiency and productivity of daily work and corporate planning, ultimately making them more competitive in a challenging environment.
Vélez has also developed his own economic surveys — he offers an exclusive monthly consumer confidence index — and provides specific daily analysis explaining indicators and economic trends. As the portal is mostly focused on local data, that exclusive analysis gives it an edge over other global platforms of economic content.
Navigating local economics
Thompson, who runs De la Cruz, one of the largest advertising and marketing firms in Puerto Rico with offices in Miami and Colombia, has been a client of Vélez since 2006. He used to receive the data by phone in marathon sessions. Sometimes he could not reach Vélez immediately when he needed him the most.
Now, he says, the platform is saving him a lot of time and headaches. For instance, the portal was instrumental for Thompson to obtain, quickly and easily, the necessary hard data to justify a planned acquisition in the Dominican Republic to his stakeholders and to secure the needed financing.
Sometimes IE’s platform even helps Thompson’s own clients. Recently, it was key to identifying potential new markets and opportunities for a multinational bank that had overhauled its leading team in Puerto Rico and was being advised by De la Cruz.
“Having everything in a single portal speeds up our entire work and analysis process,” Thompson said. “That’s super important for us.”
Tapping into trustworthy information quickly is particularly important in Puerto Rico. The island, a US territory of 3.2 million people, has been immersed in a complex economic downturn since the mid-2000s, according to the World Bank, which coupled with natural disasters and government crises has fueled an unprecedented wave of migration.
“The economic situation in Puerto Rico is atypical enough to always require a short-term outlook to determine your next steps,” says Benet.
Vélez started his career in the island’s government in the early 1990s, working as an economist at the municipality of San Juan. After more than a decade in public service, he founded his own consultancy firm investing his life savings.
Desde el principio, el economista y su equipo buscaron formas de diferenciarse del resto (en su caso, de sus cuatro competidores de entonces). Ahora prevé que la digitalización pueda triplicar sus ventas en la próxima década y permitirle llegar a 400 clientes sin necesidad de aumentar la plantilla actual.
Benet dice que la empresa está enfocada en implementar y expandir aún más su viaje digital: «Siempre supimos que la tecnología era el futuro».
Imagen superior: Gustavo Vélez y Chantal Benet, presidente y vicepresidenta de Intelligent Economics, en la sede de la consultora en San Juan, Puerto Rico. Foto de Brandon Cruz. Microsoft Blog. J. M. Traducido al español
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