Vaca Muerta's Productivity Challenge: Why Technology Is the Best SME Investment

The Vaca Muerta boom is happening now. Projections for 2031 already point to $55 billion and an operating scale expected to grow eightfold. Growth at this level demands more than meeting production targets. It requires operational efficiency that matches the scale—and a willingness to challenge long-held assumptions about what productivity means. In a market moving this fast, the rule is clear: companies that fail to adapt their mindset and technology to keep pace will be left behind.

We have already seen this shift in the software industry. With the arrival of Artificial Intelligence, productivity across our teams increased between 3x and 7x. Clients reacted immediately: if solutions can be delivered faster and at a lower cost, the market begins to expect pricing and timelines to follow.

The Oil & Gas supplier ecosystem is headed for the same scenario. As Vaca Muerta expands, new competitors will enter, operators will raise their expectations, and competition will increasingly come down to who can deliver each service with the best combination of price, speed, and traceability. Under that pressure, simply cutting margins and discounting prices destroys the business. The smarter path is to make the existing structure more productive: solve more problems, handle more volume, and grow without adding administrative staff every time a new customer or truck is added.

Horacio Marín summed it up well in his closing remarks at Supplier Day: many companies are still measuring their operations against an outdated standard of productivity, even though today's technology makes it possible to accomplish the same work in half the time. The debate over whether digitalization works is already behind us. The priority now is to change the mindset and decide where to start.

That does not require massive investments or throwing out the Excel spreadsheets and systems already in place. The key is to incorporate lightweight technology, such as autonomous agents, that integrates with the infrastructure an SME already uses and eliminates the invisible losses that eat into profitability month after month.

We see this every day in real operations. We worked with a company struggling with fragmented information that was receiving more than a thousand emails a day, including purchase orders, invoices, and inquiries through WhatsApp. By connecting an autonomous agent to its processes, the company automated 78% of its administrative workflows. In a single transaction, the system detected a $14,750 discrepancy in an invoice before it was paid, reaching a 204% ROI in just four months. No people or systems were replaced: mechanical work was eliminated so people could apply their judgment where it truly adds value.

The same is true in transportation and logistics. One freight company moved from managing its fleet across disconnected spreadsheets to monitoring every vehicle in real time. Anticipating maintenance before an engine fails, optimizing routes, and managing fuel consumption immediately reduces operating costs. At the same time, it gives the SME the carbon footprint records and traceability that operators now demand at the negotiating table.

Over my 26 years in the technology sector, I have seen a clear pattern: companies that use technology only to cut costs eventually end up competing on price until they exhaust their margins. By contrast, those that use it to eliminate small day-to-day errors, deliver better service, and make decisions based on real data build a business that is very difficult to match.

For an SME owner managing daily operations through WhatsApp, email, collections, and paper receipts, the starting point is not to go looking for tools blindly. It is to look closely at the operation itself. Where is time being lost? Which invoices fall through the cracks? Which errors keep recurring? Which processes would break if demand doubled tomorrow? Those pressure points are where the opportunity lies.

Vaca Muerta is more than a market: it is a historic opportunity that will change Argentina's future. SMEs in the sector cannot sit back and wait for major operators to make digitalization another box to check. They need to get ahead, take the initiative, and build the efficiency required to live up to the role they play in this transformation. Technology is the bridge to get there today. The real advantage will belong to those who choose to lead the change rather than react once the market has already left them behind.