Sergio Kaufman, CEO of the massive Accenture for Latin America, often repeats that new gold is data and true to the notion he made concrete this morning the purchase of Ergoa company in Argentina that leads one of the most dynamic segments of the knowledge industry: It helps companies make decisions based on data.

Ergo, founded by Karina Salerti and Ariel Guelmos, uses big data, analytics and artificial intelligence. The team consists of 200 data specialist and will join Accenture’s Artificial Intelligence division. The transaction amount was not reported.

According to Guelmos with the data, “companies can achieve better business results, faster, from optimizing their way of working, customer service and diversifying themselves through new products and services ”.

The importance of data

People and machines create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data on the cloud continuum, on the internet, and in data centers. “Advanced data tools and Artificial Intelligence allow companies to transform data into intellectual capital like never before,” Karthik Narain, global head of Accenture Cloud First, said in a statement.

Asked about the timing of an operation that should have been millionaire, Kaufman said Clarion that the high inflation and uncertainty that now dominates Argentina do not harm the knowledge economy. “But worry about the future in a country there is no reason not to be like Canada and Australia.

That’s the exact argument to convince the world’s leading management of Accenture, a massive thing that stimulates the export of technological services. Of course, to continue to grow the big challenge is the lack of talent. Kaufman said they face a high demand in the country on what is a process highly accelerated digital transformation of companies.

They have industry requirements oil company to those in charge of the management of its wells, banks in full innovation and legal services. Accenture has a staff of 250 attorneys, making it the largest law firm in the country. In parallel, it is highly demanded by its foreign clients. It exports 60% of its production.

English and mathematics, the key to the job

At Accenture they toured the country where they were baptized the talent bus,with Kaufman at the helm looking for young people from universities. The plan is to go to 24 cities in 16 provinces. They started in Córdoba where they added 320 people. “They are talented but they lack more math knowledge and more fluent English “, said Kaufman.

In his vision, there is tremendous room to grow in this sector. “Eastern Europe is exporting approximately US $ 200 billion to the knowledge economy and us Just $ 6 billion. But we face a lot unfair competition from foreign companies taking talents trained in Argentina by universities and trained by companies that take them black and pay them into foreign accountsr. This is the blue competition. “

Therefore, companies develop different types of incentives to cover these specialists and retain them.

“In the pandemic, a line was crossed, it doesn’t matter where you work. We arranged that each team would choose how. These are spaces for cooperation, “he said when he said they had deactivated the building they had in Panamericana, and concentrated on the City at the large Parque Patricios headquarters. There are only 3,000 places there. for a company with close to 11,000 employees, indicating that many will work from wherever they choose.