Nacional de Calidad y Sanidad Vegetal y de Semillas (SENAVE) oversees the safety for consumption of all imports and exports of plant products and plant by-products in Paraguay. The technology sector at SENAVE was facing massive setbacks amid institutional-wide processes that were stuck on paper and needed to be digitized. With the support of a trusted business partner, SENAVE found the solution they needed in Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure. Since implementing Nutanix, SENAVE has experienced ease of scalability, improved operational efficiency, and elevation as a leader in technological innovation.
| Establishment as a leader in adopting innovative technology | Ease of scalability | Improved operational efficiency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Successfully overcame common public sector innovation setbacks by implementing cutting-edge technologies to become a frontrunner in the field. | Provides the possibility for easy growth as the institution finds new software, applications, and platforms to improve functions. | Experienced immense cost and time savings by digitizing processes that used to function exclusively in-person and drained vital resources. |
I can't stress enough the time and cost savings that we’ve experienced by digitizing our records granting process through Nutanix infrastructure. It used to take months to complete, but it now takes at most a week, usually only two or three days.
Part of the Paraguayan government as an office of the State, Nacional de Calidad y Sanidad Vegetal y de Semillas (SENAVE) supervises the phytosanitary status of all imports and exports of plant products and plant by-products to ensure they are suitable for consumption.
Rafael Mendieta, CTO and DTI Director at SENAVE, is in charge of technology-related planning, executing new technology, and managing budgets for innovation initiatives. His team consists of ten people that are committed to supporting SENAVE’s 620 employees and external users.
As a public institution, SENAVE does not move as efficiently toward new, innovative technologies as the private sector. Due to this slow pace, one of the main challenges SENAVE was working to overcome was implementing a paper reduction program.
“By removing the use of paper within SENAVE, we’re also helping to de-bureaucratize the government,” explains Mendieta. “The path we wanted to follow was more applications, more platforms, less paper, and less burden on our employees.”
While the paper-reduction program was always part of the plan for SENAVE, the push that really kick started the initiative was the COVID-19 pandemic. “When the pandemic started in 2020, our original plan was to decrease our use of paper by 20% in the next two years. The pandemic pushed us to achieve that goal in six months out of necessity to continue functioning as an institution,” Mendieta says.
Mendieta and his team knew that transitioning the institution from processes reliant on paper to technology would be putting the public image of SENAVE on the line. “If a service fails, it leaves a wrong impression on your customers. With technology, users expect processes to always function properly without support from external sources, so we knew we needed to find the right solution to implement,” explains Mendieta.
As part of a state and government entity, Mendieta and his team were unfamiliar with the best high-tech solutions on the market to implement their paper-reduction initiative.
To overcome this hurdle, SENAVE partnered with the International Executive Service Corps (IESC) as a part of their Proyecto Sistemas y Tecnología Agrícolas para Facilitar el Comercio (T-Fast) in Paraguay.
“Thanks to the collaboration with T-Fast and their consultancy, we were introduced to the concept of hyperconvergence as the solution we needed for our project. I was honestly not familiar with the concept at the time, but through research and observation I noticed hyperconvergence was used by Google and the big DTI companies, and I was soon a champion of introducing it at SENAVE,” shares Mendieta.
Introduced through T-Fast, SENAVE decided to partner with Nutanix for the hyperconverged infrastructure solution they needed to enact their paper-reduction initiative and push the institution toward further technological innovation.
By implementing the Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure, SENAVE now has 100% electronic processing platforms, which has successfully reduced human error in many organizational processes.
The SENAVE team’s productivity has substantially increased, thanks to Nutanix. Specifically, the process in which they grant records of technical professionals—referred to internally as a SENAVE record—has been astronomically optimized by making it electronic, providing both time and cost savings.
“SENAVE records authorize our agronomists to carry out their activities in the field. In the past, the registration to get one of these records was as complicated as getting a driver’s license,” Mendieta explains. “They had to come from the countryside to the capital two separate times to complete the entire process in-person. Now, with the electronic procedure implemented through Nutanix, they do it all from home. Even the registration or license we give is issued online through a QR code. I can't stress enough the time and cost savings that we’ve experienced by digitizing this process through Nutanix infrastructure. It used to take months to complete, but it now takes at most a week, usually only two or three days.”
In addition to benefiting the internal team, SENAVE customers are also positively affected by the utilization of Nutanix infrastructure. “Our users are delighted by our increased digital capacity. We still have some procedures that we’re working to digitize, and our customers are already asking when they can be transferred to an electronic process,” Mendieta shares. “I was surprised at just how enthusiastic our users were that we transferred from paper to digital. We had users reach out to congratulate us and express their excitement for the transformation.”
Although Mendieta did not personally participate, his team was also very pleased with the Nutanix training experience. “The training experience was quite good with Nutanix. They have a super user-friendly management console, and if we ever have any questions, we can always contact Nutanix support for help,” says Mendieta.
Ultimately, the synergy in the partnership between SENAVE, Nutanix, and T-Fast provided SENAVE with the technological innovation they need to spur institutional growth and improve user satisfaction far beyond initial expectations.
Moving forward, SENAVE plans to expand their use of Nutanix solutions, specifically on an external site for disaster recovery.
“Starting with Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure is just step one in hundreds of steps in front of us. We want to go much further, and we think we can do that by protecting ourselves with external site replications of Nutanix for disaster recovery,” details Mendieta. “Disaster recovery is extremely important for our institution because we strive for continuity. If a service stops or our platform goes down, it’s very noticeable for our users. They’ll call us and ask what’s happened or how long it will take to get back online.”
“There's much more available to us within Nutanix, and we're excited to see what comes next,” concludes Mendieta.