Bimbo y Covid-19: Operations (and support) pass the test

Every day starting at 8am Grupo Bimbo’s Business Continuity Committee meets virtually to make decisions about the business’s direction at a time when the disease requires restrictions or even legal confinement. In this forum, different leaders of various company divisions define actions that become immediate realities in 300 distribution centers and 22,000 delivery routes everywhere in Mexico.

GB Business Director José Manuel González Guzmán is one of those decision-makers. He admit to us that in all this time, the committee has defined actions that have altered process dynamics that were integral to processes such as distribution schedules and the full design of the “Bimbo Is with You” program that consisted of some twelve support measures for microbusinesses and other miscellaneous business owners who constitute one of our business’s largest branches.  

The group has managed to do all this in a period of no more than three weeks. During the still ongoing covid-19 period, GB’s operational complexity was disrupted at every corporate level, with exhibitors in a particularly visible position. But naturally the issue involves all logistics and fabrications, communications, marketing and finance teams. In short, the impact reaches the business’s every corner. At times like this, to what end should decisions be made that will repercuss among thousands of collaborators all over Mexico?     

“It has to be about our people,” González Guzmán affirms categorically. Those who listen to his section’s Connection Center—aimed at store owners and small retail outlets—can access José Manuel by telephone, e-mail and social networks to address resolving GB-related needs and guarantee on-time supply and distribution, even in a grave crisis.  

This space is essential to hearing their clients and for offering solutions like more flexible payment deadlines through their “Crédito Pesito1” (i.e., petty cash credit) with which they can keep merchandise on the shelves at the same time payments come due a few days later, to support the retail outlet’s sales and liquidity. We’re also leveraging Quibo, a platform that provides tech to small businesses through which they can receive credit and debit cards as well as food vouchers as  payments, sell telephone airtime and receive utility payments.

José Manuel González Guzmán acknowledges that the Connection Center was one  of the Business Continuity Committee’s guiding lights when deciding on anti covid-19 actions.