Since I was a little girl, I always wanted to create and run a successful business.
By Lilian Simbaqueba (Founder & CEO, LiSim)
My family says that as a child, I created imaginary corporations that carried out fantastic made-up transactions. After studying systems engineering in Konstanz, Germany, I vowed to return to my country not look look for a job but to generate several of them.
I worked for a multinational company in Hamburg to acquire the knowledge and the economic, relational and conceptual fundamentals necessary to create my own business. This is how, on 1996, 11 years after leaving to Germany, I returned to create LiSim, a company that generates and implements knowledge based on statistical models that foresee mass market consumer behavior.
Although our models have been used in a variety of industries for numerous purposes, the issues that have made us famous worldwide have been our expertise on low income segments and our microfinance support. LiSim and its experts have completed projects in more than 20 countries spreading throughout Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. Our accomplishments have been recognized with awards such as Analdex (Best service exporting company) or Innova (Innovation on Service Offering). I have also been acknowledged as one of the top 100 outstanding managers in Colombia.
LiSim is a young company, not only for its 16 years of existence but also thanks to the young age of our staff whose average is approximately 30 years.
Today, LiSim is made up of 60 Colombians whom are committed with our country, our customers, and our customer´s customers. One of our major clients is Bancolombia, who is our strategic ally. Major telecommunications enterprises such as UNE, ETB and Movistar have also trusted us with their intelligence support and the forecasting for their collection, fraud, churn and profitability processes.
Public companies such as EEPPM and Promigas do too rely on our support, while several retail cards such as EXITO, OlÃmpica and Colsubsidio use our statistical models. Some of our successful business cases have been presented on events such as the World Bank event held in Washington, the Alexandria Business Association event held in Egypt, or the Nicaragua Credit Bureau Feasibility event held in Beijing.
Our statistical models are used in a variety of countries, from Bangladesh to South Africa. We have been privileged to analyze the behavioral patterns of customers around the world. In spite of the different cultures, religions, and other customs which govern our daily life, we have come to the conclusion that when the time comes to pay a credit several tendencies remain; for instance, as we grow older our payment rate improves, we may also say that carpenters aren´t very punctual when the due date arrives.
I thank God every day for allowing me to live my dream. I invite many women to make their entrepreneur dreams come true. I do hope you can count with the support of men as valuable as my beloved husband, my dear father while he lived and the infinite love of my son which inspires me day by day.
Editor’s note: Got a question for our guest blogger? Leave a message in the comments below.
About the guest blogger: Lilian Simbaqueba is Founder and CEO of LiSim. She has led over 300 projects in 30 countries; developed in different Financial Institutions, Microlending, Telecommunications and Real Sector. Since 2008, Lilian has been a part of the Endeavor Entrepreneur Network and is a frequent speaker. She is an engineer with a major in Administration from Konstanza University and an MBA from University of Andres.
