July, Tech Month: Guayaquil brings artificial intelligence closer to SMEs
Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant promise or a conversation reserved for big tech companies. This July, Guayaquil proves it: the city is living its Tech Month with an agenda designed so that micro-entrepreneurs, business owners, students, and the general public can approach, without barriers, tools that until recently seemed reserved for a select few. At SimCodec, with ten years supporting Ecuadorian companies and SMEs, we celebrate this initiative and want to help you make the most of it.
What's happening in Guayaquil this July
Throughout July 2026, ÉPICO —the Municipal Public Company for the Management of Innovation and Competitiveness, part of the Guayaquil City Hall— is running an agenda of more than a dozen workshops and training sessions on artificial intelligence, data analysis, and robotics. The program is aimed at micro-entrepreneurs, business owners, students, and anyone who wants to strengthen their digital skills.
The goal is clear and very concrete: to bring these tools closer to those looking to improve how they manage their businesses or boost their employability. It's about grounding AI in everyday work —productivity, sales, marketing— rather than staying in theory. It's a powerful sign that digital transformation is also being democratized on the coast.
IA 360: the program that grounds technology in your business
Within this agenda, IA 360 stands out, a program ÉPICO launched in partnership with UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). It runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays in July and covers four major areas: productivity, sales, human resources, and marketing.
What makes IA 360 interesting is its practical focus. It doesn't stop at explaining what artificial intelligence is; it shows concrete applications to:
- Automate repetitive processes that consume hours of your time today.
- Optimize customer service with faster, more consistent responses.
- Generate content for your sales and marketing channels.
- Strengthen entrepreneurship and employability, whether you run a business or want to grow professionally.
Why an SME should take advantage of this
Many small and medium-sized businesses believe AI is expensive, complex, or that "it's not for them yet." The reality is the opposite: SMEs are precisely the ones that notice the impact fastest when they automate a task or improve customer service, because every hour and every sale counts more.
Free training is an opportunity to lower the fear, understand the language of these tools, and start imagining real use cases in your operation. Doing it as part of a community —alongside other entrepreneurs from the city— also lets you compare experiences and discover applications you might not have considered.
How to prepare to get the most out of the training
So the hours you invest truly pay off, we recommend arriving with a little homework done:
- Identify your bottlenecks. Where does your time go? Which tasks do you repeat every week? Those are your best candidates for automation.
- Bring real examples. A typical email, a customer service message, or a post you usually make. Practicing with your own materials speeds up learning.
- Set a small goal. Don't try to transform your entire business at once; pick one process and aim to improve it.
- Note your technical questions. Whatever remains unresolved is exactly where a technology partner can help you afterward.
The full program, with schedules and formats, is available on ÉPICO's official agenda and on its official social media channels. For registrations and available spots, we always recommend checking those official channels, which hold the most up-to-date information.
How we approach it at SimCodec
Here's the point we most want to share with you. Getting trained is the first step, and it's a huge one. But between learning to use an AI tool and taking it to production —truly integrating it into daily operations, with your systems, your data, and your team— there's a gap that many SMEs feel the moment they leave the workshop.
That's where we come in. At SimCodec we are five partners with ten years of experience, and we count on ÉPIC as a strategic partner. We support companies so that the spark a training session ignites turns into something that works every day: we connect AI with your industrial automation, your cloud systems, your network infrastructure and, when needed, we develop custom software so the solution fits exactly the way you work.
Our approach is simple: from the idea to real implementation, with close support and without unnecessary jargon. Because technology is only worth it when it solves a concrete problem in your business.
Take the first step this July
Guayaquil's Tech Month is an invitation to let go of the fear and get started. Make the most of it: attend the workshops, try the tools, make mistakes, and learn. And when you want to bring all of that into your operation in a sustainable way, we'll be here.
Which process in your company would you like to automate first? Tell us your case and let's talk about how artificial intelligence can work for you, not the other way around.
