2017 ‘Virtual assistants are the next challenge for Spanish companies’, said Fuencisla Clemares, CEO of Google Spain and Portugal and the featured speaker at today’s session of ‘Desayunos ESADE Alumni’. Clemares discussed the main issues facing companies in terms of their digital development and how to prepare for this fourth industrial revolution. In her view, the arrival of virtual assistants is proof that we have entered ‘the fourth digital revolution’, in which these devices and machine learning or artificial intelligence will play a leading role. With regard to the former, she predicted they will simplify all our tasks. 

As for machine learning, the CEO of Google Spain and Portugal said it is already a fact, ‘because it is present in our daily lives, even if we do not realise it. Since Google Translate implemented artificial intelligence algorithms, tools have evolved as much in eight months as they had in eight years.’ She added, ‘Already we can ask our smartphones to look for photos we took with a sunset at the beach and they will show them to us without our having tagged them first.’ ‘At Google, our priority is to become an artificial intelligence company’, she continued. ‘That is why we are training more than 40,000 engineers.’ 

Next-generation experiences 

In response to the question of whether medium-sized enterprises in Spain are prepared for this fourth digital revolution, Clemares described their performance as ‘regular’. ‘Actually, we still need to master the mobile Web.’ However, she offered tips for companies to successfully anticipate what is to come. ‘You have to provide unique, customer-focused, next-generation experiences.’ She also recommended starting to work on machine learning algorithms to ensure smarter, earlier decision-taking in the face of complex business problems and to optimise marketing and everything customer-related. 

Liquid organisations 

However, none of this will be possible, Clemares said, if it is not being done on the basis of a ‘liquid organisation’. ‘I cannot give the exact formula’, she acknowledged, ‘but I can tell you how our company works. Each week, one of the founders streams a live video conference with our 70,000 employees, we can work from home without giving any explanation, and we encourage disruptive innovation.’ ‘Engineers work with the 70:20:10 performance system. The first number is the percentage of time spent on core work; the second, the percentage spent on any Google-related innovation the employee wants [that is how Gmail was created]; and the third, on whatever the engineer wants.’ ‘That is how we achieve higher employee satisfaction. The battle for engineering talent in Silicon Valley is brutal’, she said. ‘To become liquid organisations, Spanish companies should stop organising themselves in silos and understand that information is power. Transparency and collaboration are the key to the future’, she said. 

On privacy 

‘In Spain, the level of concern and awareness amongst users regarding data privacy and security is not as high as in other countries.’ That is why Google carries out joint information and awareness-raising campaigns on how to surf the Web safely with the Spanish Organisation of Consumers and Users (OCU). She added, ‘Privacy is a debate that will become increasingly important as virtual assistance is integrated into our daily routine.’ ‘Our company, like any other, has the responsibility to safeguard it as much as possible. At Google, we are doing that through four areas: transparency, security, control and defence of the value of data.’

The CEO of Google Spain and Portugal was joined at the latest session of ‘Desayunos ESADE Alumni’ by Javier Castro, a board member of ESADE Alumni, and Sonia Pacheco, a member of the ESADE Alumni Digital Business Club.