Innovating, Challenging and Acting in Times of Crisis

Certainly, the past two years represented a historic impact for all the economies around the world and the passenger industry in Mexico was no exception. A completely collapsed market left two options: innovate, challenge yourself and act accordingly or close the company. The decision at Mercedes-Benz Buses Mexico was to fight back.

Proposing innovative solutions that focused on the solution rather than on the problem became more important than ever. The management team was challenged to be open to change and received clear targets. How did we do it? Under four fundamental pillars:

1. Start by listening to both internal and external customers
2. Build solutions and always think about solutions, rather than the problem
3. Lead for the long term and provide comprehensive mobility solutions for today and for the future
4. Progress together, seeking the benefit of customers and society

Once these strategic pillars were defined, the work began among the organization’s core: the people. For the company, our associates have always been its best asset and for this reason, several focus groups were created. In these groups, topics like employees’ feelings related to the different stages of their working life in the company (first day, day-to-day, development), work-life balance, security and culture were deeply discussed. This involvement of the entire organization, together with the transparency and the honesty with which decisions were made, generated an environment of absolute trust among the team. In addition, the development of people was always a priority because it is well known that this maximizes the company's potential. This combination of trust and development was key to achieving the transformation that the organization underwent.

With clear and well-established objectives and the feedback from the focus groups, the decision was to organize multidisciplinary teams that worked on transformation vectors and structured and optimized processes within the organization. These vectors covered sales models, product costs, production strategies, people development, IT roadmap, future products, overall quality, customer and market and finance optimization, among other aspects. During a crisis, problems become more evident and the solidity of this new basis allowed us to face adversity in a better way. The team was fully organized and genuinely convinced that it was possible to overcome this challenging situation and never lost faith.

If we recapitulate, first we defined our strategic pillars and second, we focused on people, mainly on building trust and ensuring everyone in the organization understood the purpose. The third key action related to customers and business partners. Innovative, new ways to be close to our customers, suppliers, authorities, and other stakeholders were defined. For example, the virtual encounter in an interactive, real-time avatar-platform, the dedicated real-time TV-programs developed for customers, a Digital Summit that allowed the continuance of an active training program for the dealer network salesforce, the online service assistance program OLA Mercedes-Benz, or the real-time central monitoring of customer operations. All these new tools were important elements to stay extremely close to our customers and our business partners despite the pandemic restrictions. The reason why the tools succeeded was that they were tailor-made and were created together with customers and suppliers to ensure they fulfilled their purpose.

Despite the challenging situation, the fast reaction and the innovative solutions brought overall positive results. Market share increased by 9 percentage points during the last 36 months. Everyone in the industry faced the same main problems: a contracted market and a broken supply chain; however, seeking alternatives to mitigate the delay of missing parts became a daily job. In-house production was boosted and became key to complete vehicles and deliver them to customers. Moreover, the efficiencies that the company implemented allowed a production efficiency increase of 15 percent and an overall inventory reduction of more than 55 percent. Besides creating operational flexibility, finances became healthier in the most important moment.  

The transparent communication with employees generated a commitment that today has become a world reference. In such uncertain times, employees appreciated being involved in the decision-making process. Additionally, during this period, the organization renewed a couple of important certifications, such as Best Place to Work for LGBT+ community, Socially Responsible Company, Pink Company and Environmentally Responsible Company, that strengthen the commitment to society.

People ask which strategy kept the team motivated and the answer is simple. The bus industry moves people, connects them to destinations and creates stories. Innovating, challenging and acting was not the easiest path but it was the right one to keep the world moving. Therefore, carrying out these three great activities helped us build a new work culture in the company that permeated each associate, supplier, business partner and, of course, was transmitted to our customers. Furthermore, this cultural transformation laid the basis for the future. During the redefinition of our path, our vision remained the same: providing comprehensive mobility solutions.