Last week, Scalefusion had the opportunity to connect with Mr. Rafael Vazquez, Senior Sales Director at Xiaomi Technology. The candid interview turned out to be an interesting conversation where he has enlightened us with some of his perspectives and powerful insights about Enterprise Mobility, the upcoming influence of new-age technologies and his experience as a leader in the Mexican market. Read the full interview below.
How was your journey so far at Xiaomi Technology? Tell us about your struggles, triumphs, and lessons as a leader?
Rafael: It’s been a year at Xiaomi Technology, and I must admit that I had my share of business learnings and market observations. The journey, although hectic and combative, has imbibed some important insights about the carrier-based market, its challenges and how we can explore the opportunities it provides. I have met business targets, though there are major challenges and milestones to complete. Competing in the open market is a field that is constantly growing in Mexico; however, carrier business remains with over 80% of share in the country.
What is your mantra behind success, and how did you make it to the top?
Rafael: Interesting question indeed! Well, I would say it is a combination of resilience and expertise that you gain in your field. In my case, the understanding of the local open market, its rules, processes, and challenges have helped me to assess the possibilities of the carrier-based market better. At Xiaomi, I have been involved in tropicalizing the way to work in a carrier-based market. Here, I am involved in managing the Mexican market and supporting various projects in the LATAM market LATAM market.
What is it that drives you every morning to work?
Rafael: Well I have been involved in this job for 20 years I love my job. My passion and dedication to the telecommunications field drive me every morning to work. There are so many technological innovations happening in this sector that keeps you intrigued and on your toes every day. I personally love to be a part of global events and exhibitions around mobility, connectivity, and telecom.
What are the top 3 factors that will highly influence mobile technologies in 2020?
Rafael: The first, I would say is 5G: It will basically bring to us enough bandwidth resources needed to perform daily activities and interactions with technology. This will enable us with more resources and advanced ways to communicate in every possible way. The new-age wireless network technology will help build faster and more efficient connections that will enable businesses in more than few ways such as enhanced delivery of services and solutions, improved business operations and customer communications, and effective use of big data analysis.
The next would be IoT: As one of the most rapidly emerging communication concepts, Internet of Things is being adopted in several business sectors for a variety of benefits it provides such as better asset utilization, enhanced operational processes, improved security and safety measures, increased productivity and company cost savings. The interconnection of multiple devices, processes, people, and data enables them all to seamlessly communicate with each other in real-time, which helps extracting meaningful information and taking efficient and faster business decisions.
The 3rd one would be User Experience: User Experience is going to play a crucial role in the coming years. It is definitely going to be led either by the carrier-based market and vendors or the open-market technologies in applications. Companies are realizing the importance of creating a great user experience in terms of usability, appeal, and design. Also, the importance of user experience is evident through the popularity of brands like Google, Apple, and Amazon, who have been recognized in the global market as product differentiators as they created beautiful experiences for their users.
How do you think Enterprise Mobility is going to evolve in the next 5 years?
Rafael: Enterprise mobility is penetrating almost every industrial sector along with its associated technologies such as chatbots, digital assistants, augmented and virtual reality, IoT, 5G, biometrics, face recognition, advanced data analysis and so on. However, I can see that it’s yet to become a mass-market as the components (as in knowledge, expertise, technologies, and implementations) used in Enterprise Mobility are expensive to execute for every employee and hence not every company is ready to leverage its benefits in a full-fledged way. Here in Mexico, Enterprise Mobility is more prevalent in bigger corporations.
Can you tell us more about Xiaomi’s latest announcement of investing over $7M, in 5G, IoT and AI?
Rafael: I think the main reason is that these technologies are going to make the worldwide market more interconnected, from the mobility viewpoint. Today, you can do so much with your mobile phones that the presence and availability of these technologies to all the users across the world will make more sense than ever. Together these technologies make an aggressive portfolio in the product ecosystem.
What are the core values that drive and define Xiaomi Technology as an organization?
Rafael: Basically, Xiaomi as a brand is driven by the quality of its products and honest pricing. Our CEO, Mr. Lei Jun have founded the company based on the belief that ‘technology reaches all people’. At Xiaomi, we always aim to offer high-quality products at a very affordable price.
Rafael, what is your personal take on leadership?
Rafael: For me, an excellent leader needs to have a certain involvement with the team. According to my personal experience of leading a team, the individual should have excellent communication skills based on clarity, transparency, and openness. Having worked for Chinese companies over the past 7 years has gained me more experience in a lead role with its particularities, in which there is a need to have a strong and clear communication among colleagues.
Scalefusion would love to thank Senor Rafael for finding time to offer his valuable thoughts and insights. We loved his friendly, honest and approachable demeanor throughout the conversation.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position, information or point of view of Xiaomi Technology.
