Contxto – Fielo—loyalty and incentives management application from Brazil—received US$7 million in funding in its recent round from Lorinvest and Confrapar. The startup plans to further expand into the United States and Brazil.
Competition is thick in all industries; that’s just a fact of business. However, building customer loyalty is increasingly in the limelight. This get particularly difficult as a business’ customer base grows. Keeping track of everyone and everything can be a handful.
To solve this Fielo developed a platform that is well-meshed with Salesforce. Through it, businesses can directly oversee their rewards and loyalty programs using their own databases. This avoids disjointed management through spreadsheets or hiring an independent agency to do so.
Fielo, seeking loyalty through Salesforce
The startup was founded in 2012 by Sanjay Agarwal and has already worked with various businesses from around the world such as Country Road Group from Australia, the French Schneider Electric, and Colombia’s Terpel.
Salesforce, which held 19.5 percent of the global market share in customer relationship management (CRM) software is the dominant player. Meanwhile, its nearest competitor, German multinational SAP, holds 8.3 percent.
These numbers help to understand why it is that the Salesforce-Fielo alliance is an irresistible pull for investors.
Furthermore, a couple of weeks ago, Fielo also launched its Employee Solutions software that encourages employee engagement with Salesforce’s line of offerings such as its CRM, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud. This makes sense. Time and again, academic and anecdotal evidence have shown that motivated staff leads more optimistic revenue for companies.
Latin America and the cloud
Speaking of the cloud, services that stem from this tech are highly valued in emerging markets and Latin America isn’t the exception.
In this region, the market of cloud-related professional services was valued at US$1.156 billion in 2017. It’s expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.8 percent from 2018 to 2025.
These numbers are fueled by Latin America’s increasing adoption of Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT) that rely heavily on the cloud to store and manage information at a lower cost. Particularly the regional financial industry, especially banks, is most interested in exploring cloud-based solutions.
However, for an integral adoption of cloud solutions, one particular challenge must be met: cybersecurity awareness. In Latin America, there’s a lot of misinformation regarding the cybersecurity risks in cloud computing.
Individuals and enterprises may erroneously assume that information is perfectly protected, categorized, and under control when it’s “in the cloud” since the data is not accessible via a physical location. This line of thought is dangerous and may lead to the loss of information or users unwittingly allowing access to unauthorized parties. Data scandal, anyone?
In that vein, governments may play a key role in providing the framework to establish parameters to keep data safe while also ensuring a user’s privacy.
In places like Europe, through its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), authorities are taking the wheel to ensure their population’s information is protected. In some parts of Latin America, steps are also being taken in that direction.
For example, next year in Brazil, its central bank will define a cybersecurity policy that will cover the requirements for using cloud computing solutions. With so many neobanks, this move makes sense.
Meanwhile in Mexico, another fintech hotspot, there are public policies that aim to reduce cyber attacks as well as raise awareness of data security. However, there is no regulatory framework per se . there.
That is not a comforting thought considering its high rate of cybercrime.
-ML
