Senex

Seniors in Europe have low digital skills and they risk being isolated in the coming years because of that. According to Eurostat data, in the age group between 65 and 74, 76% have low digital skills. In the same age group, 44% of people have never used a laptop.

Senex is an on-demand digital teaching and support service that is provided by highly specialized personnel at home or in affiliated places. The service aims to be easy to access for the senior population and quickly scalable to various cities via the e-Senex artificial intelligence platform. The staff providing the service is called NET and provides technological support just like a grandson supports his grandparent, also teaching him something new and chatting with him.

The aim of Senex is to provide a social impact by improving the digital skills of seniors and making them more autonomous in the digital world.

Post office booking, public services access, buy your food online, online money transfer. These are just some of the services available today online. The digital revolution underway is making people’s lives easier making faster numerous services and purchases. 

However, which target audience is really benefiting from it? Surely new generations born with technology have nothing to worry about. The situation is different for those who are over 65 who could respond to their needs in a faster and more concrete way, but who instead remain increasingly isolated.

According to the Aging Europe 2020 report, in 2017 within the EU-27 states of the European Union, 44% of people in the 65-74 age group never used a computer in their life. In 2019, the shares of seniors with basic and higher digital skills were very low, at 16% for people aged 55-64 and 8% for those aged 65-74. Furthermore, the percentage of the elderly population is growing rapidly, simultaneously with an increase in life expectancy: between 2015 and 2050, the percentage of the world population over 60 will increase from 12% to 22%.

Senex's support is performed through the transfer of knowledge between generations. In Senex, young people support seniors to understand the technology and enhance their digital skills. This approach allows collaboration between generations and mutually enriches each other. Both generations, therefore, become an important resource for society, guaranteeing a generational balance where continuous exchanges of knowledge and solidarity take place. 

In Senex, we have nicknamed these young people “Grandsons on-demand” or NETs. They are digital natives, who undergo specific training to help them interact with seniors. 

The senior in need of support calls a telephone number to which a customer service operator takes charge of customer requests and insert them into the e-Senex platform. The platform identifies the most suitable NET in the area according to skills and availabilities. The selected NET goes directly to the senior's home. The senior receives the required technical support as well as educational support and socialization. Our motto is: "Chatting is for free!"

Once the service ends, the NET carries out the checkout procedure directly on the e-Senex platform and the Senior receives a call from our customer service operator to collect feedback in order to continuously improve the service.

The target customer for Senex are seniors (population over 50).

Currently, the need of solving digital-related problems is overcome in two ways:

- With the help of children and grandchildren

- Digitization initiatives mainly managed by Cooperatives or Volunteering associations in partnership with the public 

Both of these solutions often make use of volunteers or low-cost resources and they are limited in time and locations. For this reasons, the majority of the elderly population is underserved.

To understand these needs we are performing a testing phase on the elderly population of one of the major city in the south of Italy. Indeed, the service is currently performed in the metropolitan city of Bari, where there is an important partnership with the University for the third age "Giovanni Modugno" which, starting from the 2021-2022 academic year, will use Senex to provide support for its teachers and its members in the use of Zoom platform. During our first 30 hours of support on-demand, we understood the needs and expectation of our customer segment and we are learning how to behave with elderly people and how to teach them to use technical devices.

Senex is currently the only service on-demand for digital support and education focused on the elderly.

Senex is perfectly aligned with the Digital inclusion challenge for different reasons:

- The elderly population, especially in the most developed countries in Europe and America, is the segment with a higher risk of being isolated due to poor digital skills. 

- The isolation, that we experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic, can impact the health and wellbeing of people and increase healthcare and social costs.

Senex project started at the beginning of 2021. During the first 2 months, an accurate analysis of the market has been performed. The main problem that we wanted to solve was the social isolation of elderly people. After different interviews and questionnaires, we understood that during the pandemic crisis the social isolation of this target was mainly due to the lack of digital skills among the population. We expected a more and more digital world in the next years and seniors can be excluded from this new society. 

During May 2021, we performed a beta test, with the support of the University of the third age of Bari, on 30 paid people to whom we delivered our service directly at home. We fixed different issues such as: 

- How to use the Zoom platform

- Support in the purchase of a new printer

- Support in tablet configuration

Nowadays digital support is mainly provided by qualified personnel exclusively from a technical point of view without any communicative and empathetic skills. Another missing point is a clear focus on a specific target. The delivery of this kind of service requires a different approach between an adult and a senior person.

The innovation behind Senex consists mainly in the adopted approach. Indeed:

- Senex combines support with education, with the aim to provide digital skills to our customers and using an empathetic and listening-based approach;
- Senex is focused on a very specific population target that more than other needs support in the digital transition.

Currently, we have served, without a dedicated marketing budget, within the metropolitan city of Bari, in southern Italy, about 30 seniors, in a 3-week beta test of the service.

The goal is to serve 289 customers in two Italian cities (Bari and Brescia) by the end of 2021 and complete the validation phase, with a total of 422 hours of service delivered.

The objectives for the following years are:
- 2022: 1,983 customers, 589 recurrent customers, 2 cities, 5,964 hours of service delivered
- 2023: 10,164 customers, 3,250 recurrent customers, 6 cities, 45.718 hours of service delivered
- 2024: 32,283 customers, 10,522 recurrent customers, 12 cities, 152,915 hours of service delivered
- 2025: 65,682 customers, 23,367 recurrent customers16 cities, 375,541 hours of service delivered

The main KPI that we are adopting to evaluate signs of progress in project deployment are the following:

1. Amount of hours of support;
2. Minutes of conversation between customer service and senior during the booking call;
3. Amount of customers;
4. Amount of recurring customers;
5. Amount of partners.

Considering the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the main objectives that Senex sets itself are:

1. No poverty: focus on the fight against youth unemployment
2. Good Health and Wellbeing: An elderly person capable of booking clinical assessments online and research clinical information is more aware of his health and services available;
3. Gender Equality: 80% of our clients are women. This highlight a desire for women to acquire new skills and to be, even in old age, on the same level as men;
4. Quality Education: in Senex, we want to have an education tailored for everyone;
5. Reduce Inequalities: Senex has the objective of reducing inequalities in access to digital services.

Roberto Salamina: CEO, Full-time

Serena Sciolti: Marketing & BD Manager, Part-time

Lucia Berardino: Advisor, President of University of Third Age

Paolo Campagnano: Advisor, Director of Impact Hub Trento

Emanuela Notari: Advisor, Longevity Expert & Journalist

All members of the Senex team and advisors have outstanding previous experience in the social or impact sector or into the Silver Economy:

• Roberto Salamina, CEO. In 2017 he founded TeiaCare, raising € 1.5 million and closing more than 200k of contracts with Nursing Homes around the country. He has an important professional network and is well known in the field of senior services. He has high-level financial and execution skills gained from his previous experiences.
• Serena Sciolti, BD & Marketing. Since 2016 Serena has been working in the Third Sector for Il Dado Gira Coop, an important social cooperative in the province of Lecce. During her experience, she has been mainly involved in following the projects of the cooperative both from the point of view of promotion but also for the coordination of the same. She also contributed to the diffusion and organization of the "Notte della Taranta" festival, an important cultural event known nationwide.

Advisors

• Lucia Berardino: Doctor of Sociology. Formerly an official of the Puglia Region, engaged in volunteering for over thirty years, she has been directing the Giovanni Modugno University of the Third Age for 10 years.
• Paolo Campagnano: Co-founder and director of Impact Hub Trentino. Active nationally and internationally in the areas of cooperation and social innovation.
• Emanuela Notari: 20 years career in advertising and more recent expertise in writing and publishing direction. She is an expert on longevity themes as a partner of A.L.I. Active Longevity Institute.

All current and future Senex team members must strongly share the company's three core values: 

• Sympathy: understanding people's real needs and not letting them feel the burden. Understanding seniors means being able to feel their thoughts, recognize their point of view and together be able to find the right solution.
• Diversity: each of us is different from the other and for this reason we believe that each person has something special and that everyone has the right to show his diversity to the world. In Senex, we embrace all the differences and we aim to make the differences our strengths and not our weaknesses.
• Awareness: knowing the other and his needs are essential to be able to help him. In Senex, maximum attention is paid to our seniors, their stories and their lives. For us, seniors are a precious asset and being aware of their value helps us to fully satisfy them.

These values guide us and support us in creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team.

As founder of Senex, I strongly believe in the social impact that companies must generate and I think that Solve, with its mission and its challenge, focused on digital inclusion, can support me to create a sustainable business worldwide and gives the possibility for every senior to have the basic skills to use responsibly digital technologies.

The main support we expect from Solve is in the area of marketing and service deployment. Creating a targeted and focused strategy for service deployment, particularly in the US market, is the contribution we would like from Solve's partners. 

Another support is related to the research of technological partners, whether companies or even better people who can be future members of the Senex tech team.

We would like to partner with associations or organization with a focus on seniors services. These organizations can help us with marketing strategies and service deployment across different locations.

I believe that Senex, according to our mission to make digital and technology accessible for the most fragile segment of the population, i.e. seniors, is the right team to receive the HP Prize for Advancing Digital Equity. 

If the prize is won, it will be used to further accelerate the Senex diffusion campaign and to explore the U.S. market in addition to the European market, which is already Senex's target.