Thirteen years of experience in the audiovisual industry have allowed Juan Carlos Martínez to explore different possibilities that it offers, achieving that today his company has seven areas of work.
Richard Santa Sanchez
Taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the technological development of telecommunications, Juan Carlos Martínez decided to leave aside his work in the automotive industry and 13 years ago he created his own company, Seesa Telecomunicaciones, entering directly into the world of video with video communications.
Our Professional of the month invited for this edition tells us that when the idea of setting up the company arose, he invited his mother and two sisters to be capitalist partners and thus be able to make it a reality. "A few years after integrating solutions and selling equipment, mainly videoconferencing and telemedicine, we realized that we needed to integrate the audiovisual world into our portfolio."
One of the challenges he had when starting the company, and for many years, was to convince companies and institutions that video communication solutions would help them save money and be more productive. "At first companies saw our solutions as a nice toy or as something desirable but not necessary. Today companies have already realized that these solutions are very important."
And that is why the landscape has changed, because today they are being implemented in the world. He assures that video communication is fashionable, and being fashionable has emerged a lot of competition and that this is not bad, because it helps them to be better every day.
A long day
Juan Carlos Martínez has never left the city where he was born in 1970 and in which he grew up, studied, created a company and formed a home: Mexico City. Today, their long working hours begin at 8:30 a.m. and end at 9:30 p.m.
"Unfortunately we are working about 12 or 13 hours a day. And I say unfortunately because there is still a lot of time to devote to this, but fortunately there is a lot of work. I hope soon I won't have to work so many hours," he said.
Their daily activities in the office begin with meetings with the company's employees, reviewing pending, how the projects are going. From 11 in the morning he almost always has presentations with clients, demonstrations or visits to his offices. In addition, almost every day he schedules a business lunch with a potential client or a regular client and then returns to the office to continue reviewing the projects.
The experience acquired in his working life, allow him to ensure that the objectives as a manager in the audiovisual industry are to innovate and offer added values to the client.
Travel and read
When he wants to rest and enjoy his family, made up of his wife with whom he has been married for 15 years and three children, an 11-year-old girl and two children of nine and four years, the CEO of Seesa prefers to travel. He assures that among his hobbies are travel, sports and reading.
"We've always loved to travel. We try to know other countries and within Mexico we also like it. Once a year we go skiing, in February, with the whole family we go to the United States, Canada or Europe. Personally I like to practice diving, golf and tennis. I also really like to read."
Our Professional studied Business Administration at the Ibero-American University, has a master's degree in senior management from Ipade and studied a diploma at Alcatel University in telecommunications when he started with the company.
Shortening cycles
Seesa is a company that today has seven divisions: videoconferencing, telepresence, telemedicine, control and monitoring centers, institutional and corporate television, elearning and telephony and data, always focused on the corporate world, they do not work in the residential sector.
In this approach, its clients are in the private sector the large corporations and from the public sector the largest public institutions in Mexico. With these clients, one of the main challenges that the company has had to face has been generated, which is the time it takes to close a business, especially if we talk about public institutions that are subject to political decisions, as at the moment in Mexico that is in the electoral stage and that is why the projects stop.
"I think the main challenge is throughout the sales cycle or the closing of projects. A project can take up to two years to lock up due to its size. Sometimes, when they are so large and thousands of dollars, the sales cycle goes from six to 24 months. That is why our main challenge is to try to shorten the long cycles of business closure," he explained.
An anecdote that he remembers during the 13 years in the audiovisual industry, was to have entered the world of health through video communication technologies focused on this field. "It has been a very father satisfaction and so much so that right now we are creating two companies focused on the world of health. Video communication took us to the world of telemedicine and now it has taken a slightly more different path, it is a different industry focused on the telehealth part."
Growing industry
For our Professional of the Month, the prospects of the Latin American audiovisual industry are positive and growth. In his concept, "the industry is going to continue to grow, it is getting bigger, it is going to ask for more and you are going to have more competition, so the challenge is good because it is going to continue growing. Also, because every day people are turning more towards technology."
"Companies have realized that telecommunications help them to be more efficient, more productive and generate savings, they have also realized that technology is always there to help us do more with less, in addition to giving us comfort," adds Juan Carlos Martínez.
And in this growth and development China will play an important role because, says Martinez, the products that are brought from that country are no longer a problem for the industry. "I just benefited from that, I closed a contract with a Mexican state company and I did it with Chinese technology. This one is no longer bad, it is as good or better than the traditional one, so instead of seeing it as a competition we should see how to make alliances."
He concluded that Chinese goods should not be seen as a problem because they are pushing prices down and that is not a bad thing. In addition, because competition will always be healthy, there comes in added value and innovation of each company, so competition helps the industry.
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