Grupo Bimbo brings digital transformation to production, quality, onboarding, and more

Finding a way to accelerate transformation
Grupo Bimbo’s entry point to ServiceNow was very much a traditional one: it deployed IT Service Management across its American business, primarily as a ticketing tool. It wasn’t until the group’s digital transformation team traveled to ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2019 customer event, that the engagement began to gather pace.

"Four of us went, and each found dozens of different use cases," says Daniela Olvera Perez, Digital Experience Director, Grupo Bimbo.

Daniela says there was an appetite for change within the business, but until that point it wasn’t clear how this could be delivered consistently and at scale. The Knowledge conference changed everything.

“We were blown away by the possibilities. We’d never considered ServiceNow in a platform sense, connecting multiple systems. We could see how digital workflows could transform the future of work, and that ServiceNow was more than a ticketing tool.”

Winning converts to digital workflows
If Grupo Bimbo was to bring new business units on to the Now Platform, Daniela knew they would have to win converts rather than force adoption. To build faith in ServiceNow, the decision was made to start by reimagining how associates engage with IT.

“IT touches everyone – password requests, hardware, email. If we could transform workflows here, for 135,000 associates worldwide, we could demonstrate the possibilities of the platform to the widest possible audience,” Daniela explains.

Within weeks the digital transformation team was inundated with requests from different business units to digitize more processes with ServiceNow. The challenge then was to prioritize projects based on ease and impact.

“We quickly proved that ServiceNow could be a cost-effective, low-code option for a range of different use cases,” Daniela adds. “We then started looking at projects that could impact locally but could help establish a global framework.”

Refining global production and quality
Today, ServiceNow touches almost all parts of the business. It is part of the onboarding of new associates, brings clarity to production efficiency, and provides an audit trail around quality control.

Perhaps the most significant implementation is across production processes. Following the suggestion from one Spanish factory, Grupo Bimbo began work connecting the local ERP system. This would give real-time visibility to what was going on at any given moment, removing the need for associates to pull a manual report out of an Excel spreadsheet.

The group has 208 production facilities, worldwide. “You can imagine how important this data is to a business of our size,” says Daniela.

Quality control has also come onto the Now Platform, strengthening processes across multiple departments. Today, Grupo Bimbo can call up the exact status of each product, in terms of nutrition and quality. “This information is core to our business. Quality is everything,” says Daniela.

Transforming the associate journey
For associates, the most evident demonstration of change is the new onboarding process. The business takes on many new associates each month in Mexico alone. The challenge was to digitize this previously manual process, not simply to improve administration, but to provide a modern, engaging first impression to new hires.

Using ServiceNow HR Service Delivery, the onboarding journey can now be an entirely digital experience. There is a structured cross-departmental process for bringing new associates into the business, from the issuing of contracts to health and safety briefings to the provisioning of IT equipment. New starters are sent a welcome video from their line manager; a feedback session is triggered automatically after 28 days. The process is consistent and reflects a modern business; associates are guided, supported, and integrated every step of the way.

Reinvention and growth
“I find it exciting working with ServiceNow. Every engagement opportunity comes with a new set of learnings around the possibilities,” explains Jose Antonio Parra, VP for Digital Transformation. “Just when you feel you are starting to exploit all the ServiceNow capabilities, new ones come along. Digital tools and platform are all about reinvention and growth around originally modest ideas.”

Daniela says the excitement generated at the initial visit to Knowledge has been fully vindicated with the speed, flexibility, and simplicity of the Now Platform. The ability to move quickly and adjust locally will be key to maintaining momentum, particularly as projects become harder to find or more complex to deliver.

“We are the biggest bread making business in the world. There are different regulations in different parts of the world, and different languages to consider,” says Daniela, “but the fundamentals remain the same. ServiceNow, and our work in Mexico, will allow us to create a global framework with the ability to adapt locally.”

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