Jorge Vaccaro, Chief Executive Officer, Zen

My name is Jorge Vaccaro, and I’m the CEO of Zen. We’re a SaaS distribution company that works throughout LATAM, and we also have our own digital factory where we build applications for our customers. We’ve been doing this for the last 22 to 23 years.

We operate specifically in Chile, but we also have offices in Argentina, Peru, and Ecuador, along with a small operation in the United States.

As a company, we started very early on adopting the first SaaS solutions for ourselves. We initially started out as an outsourcing company, working as a service desk supporting IT systems for external companies. As early adopters, we implemented our own project management and help desk solutions, which eventually led us to represent some of these SaaS solutions across LATAM.

We’re well-rounded in the sense that we don’t only distribute subscriptions — we also provide consultancy on all the solutions we represent. And if companies need to connect these solutions to their environments, whether private or cloud-based, we can do that too. We build applications to extend the scope of whatever solution they have, which is probably a key differentiator.

We’re also up to date: we have certified consultants on staff, and we’re an ISO-certified company from a procedures standpoint. So we’re a well-rounded alternative for companies that need to implement and move their vision forward.

AI is the big elephant in the room — or at this point, I’d call it a dinosaur, because it’s impactful in every sense of the word. It can get overwhelming given the sheer scope of functionality that can now be delegated to AI.

Many of our partners are implementing AI at a very deep level to further automate their solutions. From a CX perspective, which is one of our biggest verticals, a lot of work that used to be handled by human agents is now shifting to agentic AI. Nowadays, if you reach out to a vendor to check on an order or report an issue, you can usually speak to an intelligent bot that fully understands what you purchased.

I’d say level one used to be handled by workflows, mostly through chat or email. Now that’s being extended, so a human is really only needed when the AI can’t properly assess or respond to an inquiry.

It’s not just about support anymore, either — it’s now being used to build. Right before this session, I was programming bots to help manage decisions and generate reports for myself. AI accelerates a lot of our internal procedures. We’re building with AI, we’re doing quality assurance with AI, and we’re trying to adapt to the trends we’re seeing.

About a month ago, I saw that Google announced 75% of their code is now written by AI. We’re heading in that direction — we’re not quite there yet, but it’s a good, achievable goal. It can be overwhelming, but it accelerates whatever you’re doing, and you have to take advantage of it, because if you don’t, your competitors will.

Social marketing. There’s so much exposure you can get for yourself now, and the primary goal for any business is to increase sales. There was a time when, if you had the money, you could just sponsor a segment on a radio station. Nowadays, it’s all about creativity — the hook, how you present yourself to the market, how you operate 24/7, and how you retain and grow your customers.

It’s about building an engaging relationship with your customers and delivering proactiveness in the conversation, because technology moves so fast that you need to communicate in a language your customers understand. You have to bring technology to a more human level, and from there customers can take advantage of it. It’s all about exposure, branding, and keeping relationships — sales, marketing, strategy, relationships. The human side of things is what matters most.

We have plenty. What’s interesting about us is that we work across many different industries, so we have to be very open to each customer’s reality. I often tell my friends that I can go from a conversation about raising chickens to one about wood-exporting industries in different parts of South America — there’s a broad range of conversations we have as a consultancy.

We’ve implemented interesting solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and for cement companies, some at a large scale. We usually operate behind the scenes for the end user, but from a broader perspective, some of the implementations we’ve done are quite large — pharmaceutical, cement, and travel agencies are some examples.

I use AI on a daily basis — three different AI vendors. We started with Google, so we use Gemini a lot, but we use two others as well, and we’re strengthening those relationships, hopefully becoming partners with another vendor too. We’re also bringing some of that back to our customers.

On a more personal note, I build applications for my own kids. Just a couple of days ago, I built an application to help teach my kids German, since they study at a German school and need to strengthen it. I don’t speak German myself, so I built a tool to help them.

Pretty much. I could, but then I’d have to go live out in the field, I guess. Nowadays it’s a must.

That’s a very good question — as an entrepreneur, there are just so many mistakes you make. I’d tell my younger self: you don’t have to rely on any external support, you can do it yourself — you just have to believe in yourself.

I started out thinking I’d only work as an outsourcing company for a handful of customers for the first several years, but I wasn’t thinking big enough. So: think big, go big, and believe in yourself. That would be my advice to my younger self — and I think I’ll take that advice for myself as well.