WeDo Technologies brings together these days in Lisbon more than 400 experts from telecommunications and other industries, from 50 countries, for the 10th meeting of users that the Portuguese technological organizes annually.
This year the big news is the extension of the Enterprise Business Assurance solutions to other industries where WeDo Technologies has no history. With regard to the way the company is setting up the strategy, Rui Paiva spoke to TeK a short interview but where there was time to realize the way that the CEO of technology wants to do in the coming years and evaluate what failed strategy of Portuguese companies to achieve scale and reach a status similar to that of WeDo.
TeK: WeDo forward with expansion into other vertical areas in October. How’s it going, and to attract new partners
Rui Paiva: With regard to our initial plan we are behind one year, for internal reasons and also to prepare the technology. Only started the process of truly expand the areas from October last year and what we are doing, and we will finish in June, it is the procedural part of all: see what are the methodologies, certificates, processes and formations to prepare everything for that in sectors outside telecommunications, we can use an indirect channel. Not only is the software that has to be adapted to new areas and to be a third party to implement, as we have to make sure the partner.
So let’s start to be effective from June and would say by the end of the year like we had key partners have all prepared so that effectively the great results start to happen during the year. We have several references, some of which are presented today, but this was mainly to prove to ourselves that technology allows everything. Now it is necessary to accomplish what we are good at:. Are good at making software and to realize the telecommunications market, no sense doing the other things we do not do well, so we developed the software and the best part
TeK: And what is your idea in terms of number of partners? Said the big five. Your idea is not to have thousands of partners to have a Microsoft or SAP?
Rui Paiva:
Not because our type of business is not directed to SMEs. The typical business WeDo has an initial investment of half a million euros. So we are addressing in the big world five, considering after in local markets there are also companies of this profile, as happens in Portugal with Novabase, for example, that is relevant. And there are “Novabases” other countries that eventually makes sense to partner. Novabase is not our partner in this process but may eventually become.
Our idea is to make agreements with global partners carrying the know how and then possibly with one or two of the larger sites.
TeK: Do not run the risk of losing identity? The history of WeDo is very sustained in the know how of Telecom and this extension to other areas, where it has no history, can lose this asset.
Rui Paiva: Not because we keep our core area. Everything else is sustained in the same product. The technological base is exactly the same. The difference is that in telecommunications we already have pre-made presets and the other will not. I would say more ahead we will converge on all areas have pre-made settings because the partners that we will bring to accelerate the business, and which incorporated the technology is already being pre-made. But then eventually the dimension longer be so great that the technology will be also already integrated by third parties.
TeK: What expectations are in terms of goals in the near future to the growth of these new areas outside of Telecom?
Rui Paiva: We think that by 2020 or 2021 because we are behind one year, at least 40% of the business will have to come give.
TeK: And these areas of utilities, healthcare and financial sector will be the main? Or other areas may arise in the near future?
Rui Paiva: I think it will be the partners that we will take to new areas, we can not do all things. Right now we are focused on preparing these areas and then think of course the market will look because the technology is agnostic.
These solutions apply to companies that have many systems back and has many customers. The complexity is what makes all these flaws. We use internally, but a company like ours, which has few customers, it is B2B, it does not have much logic.
We have a Russian client who has 100 million customers. We here could set it up in the Directorate General of Taxation which has 10 million and it took an afternoon.
TeK: Despite the commitment to new areas the event these days is mostly people of telecommunications and yet little representation of other industries.
Rui Paiva: Yes because it continues to make sense to put it all together, so confluímos at times, and this is a community that has experience to tell and which already has a significant size.
TeK: In terms of the evolution of the business, the prospect of growth for this year is referred as 10%?
Rui Paiva:
10% for Portugal is great but not globally. I think we have to grow at least 20%. We have it on budget and we are fighting for it. We must see that we are at the beginning of the year and typically do most of the revenue at the end of the year, so we’re on track.
TeK: What expectations are in relation to your international presence? They will expand the number of countries where they have offices, and pay taxes, and the number of employees? The new business areas have influence?
Rui Paiva:
We will continue in the same countries where we [are 12] but let’s get more people out. We have almost half of the employees outside and we have been recruiting more international level, or to the plant which is in Braga.
TeK: Lately WeDo has grown more organically, without significant acquisitions. They are considering new purchases?
Rui Paiva:
We always consider but for now I think we can continue to grow organically. It makes sense is we hire very good people to help us do channel, we get some very good people at Microsoft, what is the best way to internationalize knowledge.
TeK: Fleeing now WeDo and passing Sonae SSI, the recent acquisition of S21sec is already bearing fruit? They finished the integration within the business?
Rui Paiva:
We are still in the process of integration because it is a complementary area. Basically what we do is we buy areas we feel we are the market trend and have growth, and with so many data nowadays there are two areas of interest that are security and analytics. Of the business plan view was a company that had a series of problems and therefore managed to get and are “clean” all this. This year will be a year of consolidation of cleaning and the next is one year, we hope, of growth.
TeK: With the new data breach legislation this area also tends to grow …
Rui Paiva:
The world is changing a lot in this area, data privacy and control that’s right, because the problems are all electronic, no longer do only physical tampering. It’s a way for us is very important to be there, but you have to learn how. But we want the same logic: that builds on a product and that product is global. They have a basic service but also product and we are now developing the technology for it.
TeK: Looking for Portuguese companies do not see the same capacity as WeDo has to fill a room like this, with such an important representation of an industry such as Telecom and so many countries. What differentiates and how it can “replicate” the model?
Rui Paiva:
Yes, it is true as so many people and so many countries there is none. There is one thing that is important to say, much of the technology companies worldwide are made to be sold, not to be large. Another business that there is very similar is biotechnology. In this aspect Portuguese companies are no different because the big event is the sale.
Then there is something else: most of Portuguese companies are services, and these can not climb, no logic, especially in a country that does not have critical mass. They have to be product companies and a few of these.
If I make a list exist us, Outsystem, Altitude Software, Spring and PHC and these as well. But there are few. And these companies when the plan is to grow, it has to invest a lot and squander the results in return on investment. Usually people want to cash-in and it can not do investment. We invest in marketing and promotion about one million euros per year. This event is here cost 250 000 euros.
It must also convince the shareholders and not easy because the growth cycles cost. But this story to get product that is multi-market, set up with partners to space, it is a single trend. I think if we can do well so we can make a serious case of a software company in the world. I do not know, but I think we’ll do a story.
When we designed the company when we started, we define the company procedurally. We did all the drawing. We had the advantage that we had all worked at multinational and had brought these methods. There are many cases of people who have been laid off from multinational to do this, because even we we earned more money in multinational than here.
To me what motivated me, and to many others, was that we saw that the decision was always taken out. Why work in a multinational here in Portugal is not challenging. Make money but there is the challenge for the “brain”. We wanted to do the opposite: if Microsoft has a headquarters in Redmond why we can not have a seat here?
Fatima Hunter
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