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SIA

Workforce and time management for LATAM

Panama
Market: Internet and IT, Artificial Intelligence, Mobile applications
Stage of the project: Operating business

Date of last change: 01.11.2020
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Idea

SIA has developed a simple-to-use cloud software to help companies in Latin America with time management, scheduling, and other critical workforce operations. We simplify day-to-day employee management processes through an employee app.

Customers can use SIA to track employee hours, create error-free timekeeping data for payroll systems, dynamic scheduling, leave management, and task management. Currently, businesses in LATAM use fingerprint scanners to check employee time, use excel spreadsheets to consolidate and process the data.

Current Status

Jan 2020 SIA product soft launched in Panama;
Jan - April 2020 $100k raised from family and friends
Mar 2020 – date all business sectors closed in Panama (except for banks, food
industry, hospitals and pharmacies)
Aug 2020
Over 1,000 employees uses SIA software for time &
attendance
Total of 13 new paying clients
Over 50 companies expressed interest in SIA solution (most
waiting for the economy to re-open) (We are still in quarantine
at the moment of this submission)
30% monthly growth recorded in Q2 2020
Only USD $500 spent on marketing to date
No client churn

Market

We have interviewed over 75 HR managers and business owners, across 10 sectors, who have given us the same feedback on their most common pain points in managing workforce. LATAM has a workforce of +300 million, with one of the lowest productivity levels in the world, and is estimated that 1/3 of companies make payroll errors every month. The total addressable market in LATAM is $22B USD annually and is ready for automation. We believe SIA can help companies in LATAM automate workforce management and save millions in payroll-related errors.

Problem or Opportunity

Most businesses in LATAM use spreadsheets for time keeping, email or paper for all workforce management tasks. Companies have to manually consolidate logbooks and raw time keeping data from fingerprint scanners for processing payroll. This process is inefficient, prone to errors, and subject to fraud. Most workforce tasks are managed the same way, which cause administrative strains and create a loss of productivity to companies and HR teams. In the region, most of the software for scheduling and time & attendance are imported from the USA, they are not tailored to this regions specific labor laws and are expensive to implement.

Solution (product or service)

With SIA, companies can consolidate and automate time keeping data in the cloud, manage multiple locations, use powerful dynamic scheduling for employees, and in particular benefit from accurate error-free data for payroll. Time keeping is done on our app which runs on generic devices, like tablets and mobile phones (unlike the rest of the competitors, that use proprietary biometric hardware and fingerprint scanners). SIA's app identifies users using facial recognition and geo-location, and automates many HR workflows that are particularly time consuming, such as leave management, shift changes, and task management. We plan to use machine learning to improve operational efficiencies.

Competitors

We have two types of competitors.

1. On the lower end, we compete with simple and inexpensive hardware solutions to measure time & attendance. These “software-less” finger-print based biometric machines are the standard go to product in LATAM for SMEs. In this space, SIA sees a great opportunity as managers must manually download data from biometric devices. The data comes in a raw format and is not always useful.

2. On the higher end of the spectrum, we compete with companies like Kronos (ADP competitor in US) with presence in Latin America. While many big companies use Workforce from Kronos, they are not happy with the user experience and complain about the lack of features relevant to the LATAM market. In addition, Kronos is considered to be expensive; as it requires costly implementations, licensing and proprietary equipment. SIA has been approached by large enterprise customers asking for more flexible, responsive and less expensive solutions.

3. We fear companies like Humanity and Deputy that have cloud-based workforce management and scheduling functionalities at very similar pricing as SIA. They have done a great job of simplifying scheduling and time & attendance processes. However, these companies have simpler time and attendance workflows, they are focused on simple labor laws like the ones in the US, Australia or Canada.

Advantages or differentiators

SIA unlike other competitors in the region is on the cloud, uses generic tablets running our apps facial recognition for verifying the identity of employees. We automate and streamline workforce management through an employee app.

Our cost are 5x less than our main enterprise competitor.

Finance

SIA revenue model is SaaS, we charge $3.50 per employee/month in Panama. We are focusing on companies with 30 - 3000 employees, however, our plan is to launch a more intuitive onboarding experience that allows smaller companies to self-onboard. At the moment we offer free migration services with our Customer Success team.



We believe that SIA can revenue $30M / year within 3-4 years. We have a clear path on how we can achieve this.

Latin American is made up of 21 countries, they all speak the same language (except Brazil), and are culturally very similar, this is an advantage for scaling in this region. It has more than 300 million employees and most of employers are still using spreadsheets to consolidate time and attendance data into their payroll systems, and manage all workforce tasks by pen and paper.

Business model

Our Business model is SaaS

In the last 60 days (during complete lockdown) we have sent out quotes totalling 46,000 employees. Our goal is to convert 25 - 40 companies totalling 20,000 employees by the end of Q2 2021. This would equate to 70k MRR by the end of Q2.

A combination of inbound and sales strategies. We are building great content in Spanish and we plan to hire sales reps that bring clients to start trials. That’s when our customer success team engages with leads, catering to their experience and maximizing our features and converting them into paying customers.

Since SaaS and cloud-based software is new in the region, prospects underestimate all the benefits their company will get by using these services, we believe that setting up free trials will increase conversion rates, and maintain high LTV customers.

Other sources for user acquisition:

- Paid marketing channels have brought very high-quality leads, especially through Adwords, but the volume of leads so far is low.

- Partnerships: We have developed integrations with a handful of the most popular payroll software systems in the region, and they are sending us leads. They want their clients to have better user experience and decrease the mistakes of time attendance data used on their systems.

Money will be spent on

30% will be used to increase our technical team, mainly on backend programming and architecture.

25% will be used on marketing to bring in new leads.

30% will go to growing our sales and customer success team.

15% will be reserved for cloud costs.

Offer for investor

We don't have a fixed equity percentage.

I would depend on the investor and invested amount.

We are looking for smart money, and investors that bring operational value to the company.

Risks

One of the risk we face is not allocating enough funding to scale the team to meet the current demand. Right now we are saturated with onboarding and growing the tech to meet the feature requirements our roadmap has for Q4 2020 to Q2 2021.

Incubation/Acceleration programs accomplishment

CIUDAD DEL SABER FUNDING

MIT SANDBOX PROGRAM

Won the competition and other awards

GOOGLE STARTUPS FUNDING

AMAZON STARTUPS FUNDING

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT BANK NATIONAL INNOVATION WINNER

NATIONAL INNOVATION AWARD PANAMA

Photos

Photo 1 - Workforce and time management for LATAM

Product Video

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Idea
Current Status
Market
Problem or Opportunity
Solution (product or service)
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Advantages or differentiators
Finance
Invested in previous rounds, $
Business model
Money will be spent on
Offer for investor
Team or Management
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Lead investor
Risks
Incubation/Acceleration programs accomplishment
Won the competition and other awards
Invention/Patent
Photos
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