It all started in 1945, as a small bakery in Mexico City that sold four types of bread and adopted the design of a white bear with a chef’s hat, an apron and a loaf of bread under his arm as its image.
From your humble beginningso Baby group has evolved to become one of the world’s leading bakery companies, with 203 bakeries and operations in 33 countries. Its 10,000+ products include popular brands such as Oroweat, Sara Lee, Entenmann’s and Takis.
Producing millions of consistently high-quality breads, cakes and snacks daily requires meticulous attention to metrics and data. That’s why, a few years ago, Grupo Bimbo started working with Microsoft to make digital transformation the foundation of its business strategy. The company adopted Microsoft Azure as its cloud provider and deployed Azure IoT technology in its GB Connected solution, which collects analytics from the company’s devices and manufacturing machines in real time.
Additionally, Grupo Bimbo will implement Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability across its global operations. The solution will allow the company to integrate data from multiple sources across its operations and supply chain to gain a complete view of its sustainability efforts.
News Center Latin America recently spoke with Juan Pajón, director of corporate systems at Grupo Bimboabout how the 77-year-old company is using data and technology to build on its success and grow into the future.
NEWS CENTER: Why did Grupo Bimbo decide to embark on this digital transformation? What did you hope to change or improve?
Innovation runs in our veins. Our history has been marked by great success for over 77 years, and we want to keep it that way. We want to keep innovating in the bakery industry.
With all the innovation and transformational aspects that technology has brought to the industry, we knew there was no way we could continue to do this without the use of technology. The most important thing for us is that technology alone is not enough. We need to transform the way we work. We need to make an impact on the business through technology to drive change processes and increase the retention of our teams.
This technological transformation will put us in a position where we will be more agile and able to respond to market trends and needs much more quickly. And, most importantly, we will work with our data, which will be ready to be consumed and transformed into business information and insights.
NEWS CENTER: How do you define digital transformation and what does it mean for Grupo Bimbo?
For me, digital transformation is only valuable if we manage to make a commercial impact on the company, to make it grow and win market battles. It’s not just about automation or digitization, but there must be a business reason behind it.
In the coming years, we will focus on our customer-centric strategy, and we can only achieve this if we use data – not just our own data, but also data related to our customer profile. This strategy will be very important for us.
We are also working on what we call the “frontline obsession”. As part of these efforts, we are working on different strands. It’s extremely important to us to make life easier for frontline workers and to ensure that, through technology, we can help our sales team focus and serve customers – doing so much more efficiently. And the same goes for our workers on the production line. We are also working hard to digitize our daily activities.
NEWS CENTER: What are these strands that you mentioned in your frontline obsession efforts at Grupo Bimbo?
One is data. It consists of cleaning and identifying data anomalies in order to correct them much more proactively and quickly. The other is the value chain. We are working on initiatives to make production lines more efficient in our manufacturing processes and maintenance exercises.
In addition, we will complement this aspect with our industrial Internet of Things (IoT) program, GB Connected, with which we are generating actions to have more information on the efficiency of production in real time. Everyone at the company, from executives to employees bringing in fresh bread from the oven, trusts the data, giving traditional food production a wonderful 21st-century flavor.
NEWS CENTER: How does Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability impact Grupo Bimbo’s digital efforts and sustainability goals?
By 2025 we want our operations to use 100% renewable electricity and by 2050 we want to become a net zero carbon company. We want to make sure our industrial operations don’t affect the planet, so we’ll use clean energy. We are also striving to reduce food waste.
Sustainability was a very important aspect as we began to work more closely with Microsoft over the past few years. We understand that acting in an environmentally responsible manner is not something we do just because we have to, it’s the way we do business. And I think we share a lot of values, ambitions and goals in terms of sustainability with Microsoft.
We teamed up with Microsoft to co-create the Cloud for Sustainability solution, which is really important to us. We are in the process of rolling it out across our global operations, which will help us to have greater control and visualization of our sustainability goals for the future.
NEWS CENTER: What have been the main challenges so far for Grupo Bimbo in its digital transformation journey?
One of the challenges was ensuring that we worked with our change management team to achieve successful adoption of new technologies because, in a sense, we had to change the way we work. We were used to working in a local world where we customized and tweaked tools. And now, in the new world of SaaS (Software as a Service), adoption is key. Therefore, the cultural aspect is important.
For a transformation to be successful, we need to pay attention to three fundamental aspects: people, processes and technology. It’s not enough to invest in technology if we don’t also invest in our people and if we don’t change the way we work.
The digital transformation brings many positive things, but it also implies a new challenge in terms of cybersecurity. Before, we mostly worked in corporate offices, and today we work from different locations, such as our home, cafeterias, or our operating locations, such as bakeries or distribution centers, more often than before. So what we need now is to protect ourselves by considering a much larger environment. We have implemented the Microsoft security suite, this has helped us to ensure that as we grow, we do so responsibly and securely.