CEO View: Client Demand Dictates Globant Focus on Pure-Play Digital Services

As the United States continues on a path of digital revolution, the largest Nearshore IT firms are adapting their own service delivery strategies to suit, with Argentina’s software giant Globant being no exception.

Martin Migoya, Co-founder and CEO at Globant, explains how the customer experience revolution has changed the Nearshore services ecosystem, while revealing some enlightening realities about talent availability.

Nearshore Americas: You once said that the user experience revolution is leading to a change in how software is being created. What specific ways is this changing the Nearshore IT services sector a few years later?

Martin Migoya: The revolution is continuing today and the whole IT and technology ecosystem is being disrupted by it. Suddenly, every brand needs to provide a wonderful experience with technologies that they didn’t use before, and many big technology firms are leading the charge. Companies are having to look deeper into how to create a great experience, looking past the basic mobile apps that used to suffice, because consumer information that is available to us today can be used to create an experience that is much more contextual for specific customers.

In terms of how that has affected Nearshore, companies today want digital journeys and software products that feel different and create an emotional connection to their brand within their consumer base. Globant is now pure-play as it relates to these next generation technologies, which is differentiating us from other players in the new digital game.

The transformational tsunami as it is today represents a huge opportunity for technology players in this region. The thing is, a supplier’s whole culture needs to be focused on it to create these experiences.

Nearshore Americas: How are you getting people to the level that can support this dynamic ecosystem and new business approach?

Martin Migoya: We just invested in a company called Acamica, which helps us train our people in many different ways. The culture within the company is at the center of training for new people, and we are geared toward that same emotional connection that our clients want to achieve.

You will find an even distribution of designers, engineers, and innovation people at Globant, who are all needed for the digital journeys I was mentioning. This by itself creates and atmosphere that people get connected to, which helps them to learn more from their peers.

Nearshore Americas: Can you give a specific example of how service delivery has changed in today’s market? How have the standard development practices changed?

Martin Migoya: The original way of doing things was to make a specification, start programming, and then present the finished product after a number of months. The things is, this final product may not have connected with the reality of the client’s needs.

Today, service delivery is performed in very short sprints of no more than 2-3 weeks, with a continuous connection to the consumer, and developing an understanding of their reactions. We start very early on the consumer cycle with the consulting side of our organization, defining the initial drafts of minimum viable products (MVP). We then launch that MVP, which has little functionality but a high level of accuracy and working perfectly, and then we try testing that initial core functionality to understand how the consumer react to it.

After every sprint, we always find new products in the market and new approaches to what has been done before, so we are making software that is constantly evolving and is never 100% finished, because the vision is constantly changing and affected by consumers and their reactions.

Nearshore Americas: Where is Argentina is its progress to developing new IT talent?

Martin Migoya: Like most Latin American countries, a large transformation is required in education, as well as a shift in how we think about what to teach and how to teach it. The sooner we do this the better.

Despite this, Argentina is definitely one of the next generation countries giving more opportunity to people in the services sector. The government really understands that taking people out of poverty requires a lot of education, and see that the next generation of employment will come from the services space, so has been very supportive of the activities that help accelerate this.

I think that a combination of offline and online education will be perfect mix of technology and human interaction, creating the best possible results in the fastest time.

Nearshore Americas: What choke points is Globant currently experiencing with talent?

Martin Migoya: We are at the point where our company is scaling enough to grab raw talent from universities, people who know just the basics, and then train them in many different manners. We have no problem finding people in any of the countries in which we operate. I don’t see a bottleneck in talent itself. Maybe in some skills that we have to train, but never in talent. It’s pretty evenly distributed across the world, which is the good news.

To create the right kind of experts takes time, there’s no avoiding that. We don’t always gather people who are 100% ready for market; they have to spend some time on projects before they become experts.

Nearshore Americas: What are your biggest challenges and concerns as CEO, and what are your clients primarily worried about?

Martin Migoya: I first have to get the basic things right. While there is plenty of talent available, you have to find the right people. We’re actually using many tools for that, such as AI. The second thing is keeping up with the dynamism of the technology industry, because keeping up to date is right at the core of how we generate value for our customers.

Our clients are mostly concerned with two things: how to become more digital and how to cope with the incoming wave of AI. These things have to work together to create the best customer experience, so we are primary connecting with that. Suddenly every brand needs to have good experience with things that weren’t necessary before, so they are still looking into how to create that experience.

AI and the cognitive revolution will be the next big thing to disrupt the market, so this is a pretty consistent concern across our entire landscape of customers, both large and small.