All public services have to move toward AI, 'it's natural' – Open International CEO

Management software company Open International wants to continue extending its list of clients in the region as it simultaneously strengthens its presence in the United States, where it is concentrating the majority of its efforts.

Its software for public services and telecommunications is available to clients in 18 countries, which include Telecom Argentina, Claro, Chilquinta, EPM, AES, Veolia and CNT, among many others.

Last year, the company completed a software architecture modernization project and this year integrated ChatGPT, becoming the first company to demonstrate the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in management software.

BNamericas speaks with CEO William Corredor about the company's plans in the region and for the US.

BNamericas: Last year Open International said that there was significant growth in public services after the pandemic. What’s the situation like now?

Corredor: The growth continues. Public services grow with the population and the population in these Latin American countries is growing constantly. In developed countries, there are still a lot of projects to reach rural regions with energy and water. So public services are expanding throughout the region.

It's a little different in the case of the United States, where coverage is practically 100% and where we're the ones who need to grow.

BNamericas: What are the main focuses for Open International in Latin America this year?

Corredor: There’s a very clear trend, not only in Latin America, for public services to have a self-service component. This has naturally been delayed in public services because companies tend to be very conservative.

We've been providing innovation regarding this type of functionality. We’ve been working on artificial intelligence for several years and even including bots in our entire solution. This has recently had a very big evolution with the issue of ChatGPT.

At the CS Week conference in the United States, we presented our integration with ChatGPT, which basically consists of giving ChatGPT all the information on a client so that it can ask questions.

BNamericas: Is this integration already in production?

Corredor: This isn't in production with any client. The integration in our software has already been done and what we did were the initial demonstrations. This was very well received; people were really impressed. At the event we were the only software company that already had the interface up and running.

Obviously, it will take time for customers to start adopting it because, as I said, it's a fairly conservative industry and they will want to be sure of the security issues and the prudence of the responses ... but I imagine that all public services have to go in that direction. It's natural.

BNamericas: How long are we talking about?

Corredor: I think that by the end of this year many more natural language artificial intelligence will appear. It’s absolutely essential for this to happen. And I'm sure that, between now and the end of the year, all companies will have this concern.

For now, sometimes it's an intellectual concern or market curiosity, but I think this is going to heat up and by the end of the year, practically every utility company will be doing some initiative with artificial intelligence.

Until now, it has been very difficult to find specific use cases for the technology.

BNamericas: If you had to rate the digitization of public services and telecommunications in Latin America, how would you say they're doing?

Corredor: Well, now we have the opportunity to compare things with the United States and Latin America is still a region that doesn't have full coverage. I would say that in the capitals the quality of service is very similar to that in developed countries, but I think that there's still a lot to be done in rural areas in terms of digitization.

In Latin America, there's still room for improvement in issues that we've been talking about, such as self-management or the call centers themselves.

I would say that everything tends to be more advanced in private operators, where there's competition, than in government ones.

BNamericas: Open International recently started operations in the United States. How is business going in that market?

Corredor: Well, it's a very different market from Latin America. Most public service providers in Latin America come from a State monopoly and it's gradually become a market that's open to competition.

The United States has been open much longer. So, while in Argentina or Colombia you find about 10 public service operators, in the United States there are 13,000. It is obviously a bigger country and in terms of population. There's one utility provider in the United States for every 200 subscribers.

There are very small operators and also very large ones. Paradoxically, there aren't too many giants. It's a more fragmented market [than in Latin America].

Our target is around 3,400 utilities. But there's an important difference [with Latin America] because here we don't have much potential in telecommunications because, on the contrary, in the United States it's fully consolidated.

Today we have a couple of clients with around 100,000 subscribers and what we want is to move towards larger operators over time.

BNamericas: In addition to the expansion to the United States, a possible expansion to Brazil and other markets has been mentioned. How is that strategy advancing?

Corredor: For now we're thinking of concentrating our efforts on the United States, and from there possibly moving on to Spain. We haven't considered Brazil again. We did at one time and we weren't very successful in Brazil, which is a market that looks inward very much and also at the United States. So we came to the conclusion that to enter Brazil we first had to be positioned in the United States.

In addition, entering Brazil would imply another language, which is also an investment. For the United States we practically had to translate the entire system.

BNamericas: What are the growth forecasts for this year?

Corridor: There are several processes underway. Generally, this software is purchased by tender. There are about six or seven processes a year throughout the region and they're multimillion-dollar projects. At the moment, without giving much specific information, we're carrying out three processes in Colombia, Chile and Argentina. We're awaiting the decision from the customers.

There will surely be two or three more processes in the second half of the year in which we'll be participating. That is from the perspective of new customers.

Regarding the current database, for us it's very important for the database to be updated to the latest version, because that's where we have all the technological development and we can offer new technologies [such as ChatGPT]. Sometimes it takes time between releasing a version and people adopting it, especially in this very conservative world of public services.

We believe that both this year and next we'll be working on our installed base with the project to update them. We already have around 10 that have been upgraded or are in the process of being upgraded to version 8 of our product, which is also a new technology and more focused on the internet, web 3.0, automation and architecture. And a very important feature it has is that it's continuously updated. It's a major technological leap because it literally required rewriting the entire solution in terms of architecture.

It was a big project, which we started more or less in 2015-16 and which we concluded in 2022.

BNamericas: How is the solution being installed? In the cloud or in datacenters close to the client?

Corredor: Both ways. Public services are very conservative and lots of customers aren't currently willing to release their information to the cloud. The market trend is to go to the cloud, which also changes our offering away from the typical traditional perpetual licensing for a service-oriented SaaS solution.

I'd say that more or less half of the customers currently go for one route and the other half the other.