After graduating from Harvard Business School with an MBA and an abundance of applied experience, Gome Gomez joined Grupo Tracsa and set out to make more efficient an operation that was already quite streamlined. He attempted to learn every granular level of the business—from the CEO’s routine to customer service—and soon learned that in order to find areas where innovation was possible, he needed to first learn intimately their customers’ businesses.
So he started on the ground, surveying the breadth of Grupo Tracsa’s industrial service operations across Mexico. He visited one of the world’s largest egg producers, agave plantations whose length seemed to span for miles, a large-scale carrot farm and—at the entirely opposite end of Grupo Tracsa’s enterprise—a precious metal mine, where he descended almost half a mile beneath the earth’s surface. He was not only amazed by the sight of their machinery at work, he observed an unexpected commonality between the relatively disparate interests of their clients.
“Seeing our machines at work, facilitating so many different functions was incredible,” says Gomez of his experience. “I took away an invaluable lesson. Judging the priorities of our customers it was clear that their need for efficient and reliable equipment had evolved into a need for equipment that seamlessly integrated into every level of their business.”
Gomez got to work solving for a lack that had yet to emerge: as the leader of Grupo Tracsa’s Product Support Division, he created a new Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) unit dedicated to providing its customers tools that increased process digitization, telematic monitoring, and more effective data analytics. Besides investing on augmenting extant hardware and software capabilities, Gomez strengthened his area’s human resources by growing his customer-facing team by nearly a fifth of its starting size. As Grupo Tracsa continues to expand, after almost half a century in business, the breadth of their growth will be driven by data-centered and technified solutions.
“Our clients have many differing needs but we still strive to offer products that deliver on the shared goal of optimization,” says Gomez. “With a platform that deploys various apps, enterprise-grade software, and robust operational processes, we can make it so our clients spend less time thinking about their equipment and more time thinking about growing their businesses.”
Innovation, Gomez learned, doesn’t necessarily mean meteoric projections and lofty convictions. Listening to the client and observing their needs can lead to the development of solutions that solve seemingly minor pain points, but that ultimately compound for significant benefits.
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