AI Innovations Shaping Smart Cities and Safety Standards | Mirza Sanchez from ISS

Ernesto: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors stole from birth. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intervideos and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase diversion by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get extra 50% of more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Mirza from ISS. How you doing today, Mirza?

Mirza Sanchez: Hi. Thank you for inviting me in, Ernesto. I’m doing good.

Ernesto: It’s great to have you on. And we’re talking a little bit about ISS and what it’s all about. But let’s do our listeners to get a little bit more about what ISS is. So, in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Mirza Sanchez: Of course. ISS, that stands for Intelligent Security Systems, is a video analytics and AI-powered video software developing company. So we have been in the business for almost three decades now. We were founded in 1996, and our headquarters are in New Jersey. To this day, we have 27 patented technologies, and we are considered one of the pioneers of both video security software, video intelligence services, and AI-powered analytics for security software.

We talk about being in the third wave, and that is one of our current taglines. So let me talk to you about the first and the second wave first so we can tap into what we are doing today and where the industry is going.

So the first wave of technology is back when video started. We had very archaic video software and video surveillance systems. We had CCTV. We had the start of coding, very, very bad quality video, and mostly nothing of the sort of what we have today.

So the second wave started with the start of the internet. We could have live video, we could have live information coming on video, but we didn’t have anywhere to put it. We had endless tapes, endless cassettes, that didn’t really hold a lot of information. And the same thing: the cameras did not have the quality that they have today.

So on the third wave, we start with all cloud-based technologies, all AI-based technologies. So that is exactly where we are today. Obviously, cameras and camera manufacturers have a lot better quality than they did 20 years ago. And what we do is tap into that technology and give people insights.

So a lot of camera manufacturers and a lot of companies today, they say, “Oh, we can capture video. We can do live recording. We can identify this and that,” but they don’t really store or they don’t really get trends out of that information.

So what we do on top of having live video, identifying missing objects, guns, cows, pizzas, cell phones, whatever you wanted to identify—what we also do, and it’s an added value we offer, is having personalized dashboards and being able to identify trends from this data.

The trend today is data. Everybody talks about data. Everybody talks about data intelligence. Everybody talks about how we can get data. But then a lot of companies stop at getting data. Then you need to process that data. Then you need to identify what that data means. Then you need to get trends from that data.

And you can do that, as you were saying, for automating leads and for getting a lot of information for selling. But in the business of security, in the business of safety—for example, take a city—you can identify valuable trends of where you have more violent crimes, where you have a lot more intersection road accidents, where you have pedestrians being run over.

So it’s a little bit of how this intelligence of the third wave taps into what we need today, both in cities and in corporations also.

Ernesto: And so that way our listeners could get a good understanding of the key problem or problems that you solve for your clients—what would that be?

Mirza Sanchez: We work with a plethora of different industries, but in Latin America, our biggest industries, or the ones that we have the most focus on are smart cities or safe cities, critical infrastructure and transportation.

Ernesto: Okay, awesome. And so how would somebody usually find out about ISS? Is there a top client acquisition channel for you guys?

Mirza Sanchez: Well, we have social media, and we have our website. Actually, our website is under complete renewal right now. But I think LinkedIn is a great tool for us because there’s a lot of people in the industry that are watching, and we can see where the trends are going.

For our industry, that is such a delicate use of information where we cannot talk about a lot of the clients that we use. Nobody’s trying to see what we do on Instagram or what we do on TikTok. We’re not going to do dances on a mining company to showcase our video cameras. So you have to know your audience.

And for us, in terms of social media, I think LinkedIn has been a great tool in pulling people into our website. Via LinkedIn has been one of the greatest advancements we’ve had in the last year.

Ernesto: That’s awesome to hear going into those new channels. So that way our listeners can get in touch with you or visit you guys, they could always check you out at iss.com. What role does your website play for the fine admission?

Mirza Sanchez: First of all, it’s a window display of everything we do. To be honest, as I said, it’s not as easy as trying to find shoes, trying to find a dress, going into Amazon, kind of browsing around. People are looking for something specific. If you are working in the government, you’re looking for government solutions. If you are working for a critical manufacturing industry, then that’s what you’re looking for. So that’s how our clients tap into what they need.

We have the website be the first stop of a valuable added value contact with our clients. And it also is very important when we are working on bids or when people want to know more about what we do and how our services differentiate from what our competitors offer.

As I said before, a lot of people offer data, a lot of people offer AI-based sensors, a lot of people offer analytics. But what ISS does differently and why people have been getting in touch with us and wanting a demo and wanting to see what we can really do is, first of all, the fact that our company is pretty much engineer-based. Everybody but the marketing team is an engineer, so they know what they are talking about in terms of technology. We have over 200 developers all around the world. We have a lot of people that work remotely, so we can really say that we source talent from everywhere in the world. And I think that is something that people really value.

Now that we were talking about the revamping that we are doing on the website, we want that to be a lot more reflective of who we are today. We want people to see the phases of ISS. We want people to see the technology of ISS. We want people to see why ISS has been the best at what they do for almost 30 years.

Ernesto: Awesome. Awesome to hear that from you. Let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about you, being the leader there for ISS. What are some key tasks you focus on your B2B?

Mirza Sanchez: I think making sure our processes are streamlined. In marketing for a security company, as I said, it is not easy because there is a lot of things that are not available to the public. So we handle a lot of sensitive information, which is on top of the multifaceted basis of marketing. You can advertise and you can talk about things, but you cannot talk about half of the things that you do. So you have to get really creative on that side.

So I think that would be the first thing: making sure our processes are streamlined when it comes to information. Within the team, we are as transparent as can be about information that is public information, that is private information, that is internal only. So I think for us, access to information would be one of the most important processes.

And secondly, when it comes to my team, I work with four wonderful women. We handle all the Latin America and the Caribbean. So I have three coordinators that oversee each of the regions: Spanish-speaking South America, Mexico/Central America/the Caribbean, and Brazil. That is big in itself, so it needs its own coordinator. And obviously the language is different.

So we have trilingual daily meetings, which is fun and challenging, because as much as people want to bag Latin America in a single region, the truth is that it’s 34 countries, and they are also different. So that is challenging on its own.

And we have it as one of our goals or motives: work global, think local. So when we do publicity or when we target clients in Brazil, we don’t do the same for Panama, we don’t do the same for Mexico. We don’t have a suit that fits everybody, because that’s not how it works in Latin America.

Ernesto: Definitely. Awesome to get that from you. Well, let’s switch to our next section, which is our rapid fire question rounds. Are you ready for that?

Mirza Sanchez: Yes.

Ernesto: All right, awesome. First off, what is the last book that she read?

Mirza Sanchez: Sorry?

Ernesto: Yes. What is the last book that she read?

Mirza Sanchez: The last book that I read: Why Do We Get Sick? I cannot remember the author, but it talks about how the way we eat is the root of all evil or the root of our healing. So it was really interesting.

Ernesto: Definitely. I read a similar book like that. It’s really interesting. Great read. Next up is: what is one single thing that company is focused on at the moment the most?

Mirza Sanchez: Developing AI-based sensors.

Ernesto: Perfect. Now, if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to fix for your role as a marketer today?

Mirza Sanchez: Oh, that’s a hard one. I would say easy automation. The truth is that everything automates nowadays, and everything you can kind of make into a process. But there are endless tools now, and the offer of tools and automation and what you can do and what you can’t do is limitless, pretty much. But there’s a learning process.

So if there was a—you know, like what we were doing in the nineties—just kind of click here, click there, and it’s done. But the more information we have, the more complicated it is. So if I could choose something, I would definitely say just have the processes be a little more easy to automate.

Ernesto: Okay, great to hear that. And lastly, what is one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Mirza Sanchez: Never stop learning. There’s always going to be a new tool, there’s always going to be a new trend. Five years ago, if you were talking about TikTok being one of the biggest tools for marketing today, I would laugh and say, who wants dancing videos? The same happened with Vine. That was at the height, and then it vanished. The same happened at some time with Twitter—now X. Their entire audience changed, their entire message shifted.

So you never have to stop learning. If you say, you know, “I do Vine, and this is what I do,” “I do TikTok,” you don’t know tomorrow. Maybe you get slapped with a lawsuit, maybe you get slapped with a cease and desist, and you can’t do whatever you’re doing now. So never stop learning.

Ernesto: Okay, perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much for that advice. Well, it’s a pleasure to have you on with us here in today’s episode. But before we end, I do want to give you the last word. If our listeners forget everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about your company?

Mirza Sanchez: I would like to say that we are working with artificial intelligence in order to make processes more human. A lot of people talk about how artificial intelligence is here to replace us all, but the truth is that it is actually a tool to enhance our life.

In the case of ISS, we want to make airports safer. We want to make cities safer. We want to make children more aware of the dangers of the world. So that is one thing that I would say. AI is being used as a tool, not as a replacement.

Ernesto: That’d be awesome to hear that. Well, thank you so much for being on today’s episode. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot.

Mirza Sanchez: Thank you so much. Have a good day.