SIIGO

Transform accountants and entrepreneurs’ lives is the Siigo purpose, a purpose which is evidenced since its beginnings, its transformation to The Cloud and nowadays, as a technological ally with its entire digital ecosystem.

Siigo is a dream that began with five clients in 1988. Its founders Ricardo Ortiz and Fernando Rebellon were pioneers at selling technology in a world where computers were not even common. At the very beginning, this enterprise was thought “simply” as a system to elaborate and print documents and although that nowadays it may seem something basic, it was the first step of an enterprise that now has an internationally recognized accounting and administrative software. Even though to reach this point, the path has been long, Ricardo Ortiz was a visionary for his time and that experience served so that with the arrival of the color computer, he saw a unique opportunity for the business to evolve and in that way with his business partner they began to create a software capable of displaying information in an easy way, function that made entrepreneurs fall in love and remarked a growth milestone that let Siigo to receive its firs foreign capital investment for a technology enterprise through a Belgian multinational company.

By 2010, Ricardo Ortiz decides to buy back the 100% of the company to his business partners and in the same year, David Ortiz enters as Innovation Manager. With these changes,

strategy also changed focusing on one single product selling, leaving behind the 12 products that he was trading together with the Belgian entrepreneurs; that single product would allow Siigo to mass transforming more SMEs in Colombia. That substantial change highlights the importance of returning to the heart of the business. That is how the Siigo culture starts to play a crucial role in organizational development.

All above and the decision of working in The Cloud, fosters a hyper-accelerated growth. For this reason, in 2012 important transformations took place within Siigo, one of them is that with the new refocusing it appeared the opportunity of applying to be a member of Endeavor, a world class accelerator whose main objective is for startups to grow at a pretty fast pace. At the time of being selected, Siigo receives exposure to a big host of mentors and other entrepreneurs’ experiences that allowed the company to start developing a much more ambitious and international vision. By the end of 2016 Siigo was already an organization totally on The Cloud. This marks an important transformation point, not only for the organization but also for its clients. Opposite to what was happening with traditional programs which had to be installed directly in the computers and reinstalled to get an upgrade; Siigo clients were already able to instantly perceive the improvements and access the information from anywhere with Internet access, which shows the strong commitment to accompany the SMEs transformation in the country.

With this transformation, one of the Siigo´s main inputs, its culture, keeps taking more prominence than ever. Within the organization, the values are lived in each area and they are not the common ones at any organization, they are challenging and perhaps simple at their perception but they break the normal paradigms and make Siigo a different enterprise; this is how the purpose of transforming the lives of the accountants and entrepreneurs is really and genuinely breathed,

and each collaborator has understood that takes a part of this purpose and might contribute to fulfill it from each assigned task.

Siigo as a technology company in the middle of a change of its business model from local software to Cloud based software needed a capital investment to continue growing. In 2017, Accel- KKR appears, one of the most important Silicon Valley technology investment funds, and becomes the ideal fund for Siigo. Beyond their investment return, Accel-KKR worries about the enterprise´s constant growth and Siigo´s culture was one of the main attributes that not only distinguished Siigo form others but also increase its probability of success in the market. This was how they decided to make their first investment in Latin America.

What is interesting in this investment, additionally to the capital injection, has been the incredible knowledge that this new partner has brought with it, remarking the beginning of new transformations in such organizational, business and market level. The obtained resources were used to accelerate the development of new technologies in such way that it was possible to offer more innovations and solutions. This ease the operation of Siigo clients and with those technological possibilities, the big change for Siigo business model arrived, the purpose of transforming the lives of accountants and entrepreneurs becomes much more tangible by launching a totally fee free for accountants in the country product: Siigo Contador (Siigo Accountant)

Siigo Contador (Siigo Accountant) was born as a tool for accountants around the whole country to have software access free. The idea with this is to achieve the purpose of transforming the accountants’ lives and that they can make the transition from paper or Excel accounting to a software that automates many processes.

Siigo Contador (Siigo Accountant) is completely parameterized and allows to include all the companies which the accountant works with, in that way Siigo achieve all the information to be entered from a single place, even more for enterprises that do not have the possibility to acquire software; this tool, managed by its accountant is ideal for analyzing financial information. Additionally, accountants have the

possibility of associating their client enterprises to Siigo Nube (Siigo Cloud), which was designed as a perfect complement so that the entrepreneur, with Internet access, will be able to operate, administrate and have the complete control of his enterprise anywhere any time. Also, all that operational work that the accountant must do in a traditional model, like typing sales, purchases and expenses, is eliminated when the information and the company´s accounting are automatically synchronized, having as a result that the accountant´s operative work decreases up to a 60%. This gives the accountant the possibility to increase the number of clients he advises, to dedicate more time to more strategic tasks which improve the results of its client entrepreneurs and to transform its role into becoming a better financial advisor that makes the country´s economy grow.

By implementing this model of offering the main accountant tool for free, Siigo managed to increase its sales significantly, due to the same accountants are the ones to promote their enterprises to invest in Siigo Nube (Siigo Cloud), with the aim of optimizing processes and speeding up making decisions, crucial issue at the time of managing an enterprise.

In that way, with the creation of this product and while the Accel-KKR investment started showing its results, in 2018, David Ortiz assumes the presidency of the company and with him, it begins a new revolution: virtual operation. With the aim of transforming the entrepreneurs lives and helping them to be more efficient through digitation and help to increase the enterprises that survive beyond three years index, Siigo decided to overturn its sales and services model to virtual channels and in this way to impact as many entrepreneurs as possible in the shortest time. From the opportunity attraction, its conversion and further customer service for implementation and software use,

all the activities began to be carried out virtually and, in that way, a real time support is offered at each step of the entrepreneur technological transformation.

This virtuality is the one that allowed Siigo to be the enterprises transformation ally, due to the mandatory transit that they must begin for the electronic billing process; although this process has many benefits, including costs savings, processes optimization and cash flow improvement, it also means a huge effort for most enterprises that have traditionally carried out all their processes manually.

The idea that enterprises can implement this billing software process is that they take the first step towards the digital world and meet all other technological solutions within the Siigo Nube (Siigo Cloud) software. In this software entrepreneurs find an intuitive tool that allows them to manage their business from anywhere

David Ortíz, Presidente General de SIIGO

and quickly, in addition to key indicators, allowing them to make the best decisions in such agile and timely way.

This software also dynamizes sales and inventory management processes and can in addition be integrated automatically with the accountant software. An important function Siigo Nube has is the opportunity of generating a payment button so that entrepreneurs are able to receive online payments, which results a very powerful tool in these times when market is becoming more digital each time. In summary, what Siigo makes is help micro, small, and medium entrepreneurs all around the country to run a more technological company to become more competitive, by giving them access to a tool that allows them to be at the same level of big enterprises at a cost that adapts to their needs. Siigo also allows the accountants to improve their quality of live by avoiding moving around at the time of having updated information at

a single place and promoting the accounting work transformation adding the possibility of an assertive and timely financial advice.

Although technology is present in our daily lives, many enterprises still cannot adequate their processes into the digital world; it is the reason because at the end of 2019, Siigo strengthened its digital ecosystem by launching its new app. It allows entrepreneurs to control the enterprise from a cellphone, in addition to generate electronic bills from the same one. In addition, through an integration, its clients will be able to connect with different apps that allow them to carry out all their operations in an easy and agile way always from the same Siigo Nube software. Entrepreneurs then have the possibility of sending reminders to their slow payers’ clients, receive online payments, control their inventories, and even pay their payroll. All of this with the aim of keep improving the competitiveness of MSMEs through technology, because what this ecosystem allows is that such small businesses have access to the last technological advances at a low cost.

However, the interest of Siigo for transforming those micro, small and medium entrepreneurs’ lives does not stop, and for that reason it has allied with Colombia Fintech in order to be able to give them the possibility to access credits through Siigo Nube and help them to grow. In that sense the FINTECH element is a powerful tool to fulfill this purpose through a MARKETPLACE on the platform, where Siigo enterprises and accountants users will be able to access to online credits with differential market rates, as alternative sources to traditional finance system and as a mechanism to combat against informal loans.

In addition to the digital ecosystem launching, 2019 represented a year with a revenue growth of 71% largely thanks to the issue that its operation is more digital each time and in that way, nowadays, Siigo has more than 850 collaborators and impacts more than 140.000 enterprises and 52.000 accountants. Currently, the Siigo´s aim is to keep fulfilling its purpose in Colombia and to extend this dream and be able to transform entrepreneurs and accountants lives in Latin America, for this reason an internationalization process began, which includes organic and inorganic growth.

Finally, it is important to highlight that culture, purpose, and cutting-end technology use and development is what has allowed Siigo to keep in force for more than 30 years in the Colombian Market, becoming the administrative and accounting software leader for MSMEs in the country.