I am Luis Guillermo Morales and I am a proud graduate of the University of Celaya with a degree in Administrative Industrial Engineering.
Before graduating I had the opportunity to do an internship at GKN Villagrán and later I was selected in the first Trainee program at Avon Cosmetics Celaya. And it is important for me to share these first experiences as a professional, because together with all the theory and skills I developed as a student, it was the perfect combination for my professional start.
While Uni gave me great bases to start my professional history and as such, the new way of teaching and measuring students through competencies I think it is an excellent way to stimulate us as students and continuous improvement, because life outside the classroom comes to have important challenges that can only be overcome with good foundation, because it is obvious that experience is not the "strong" of a recent graduate.
After graduating from college I started working at Beta Procesos, a company proudly from Celaya, where we are dedicated to the manufacture, sale and distribution of detergents and sanitizers for the food and institutional industry. My first position was as Chief in the operational commercial area, where I was in charge of reviewing the cleaning and sanitizing processes of our customers. This included giving massive and personalized training, both in the field and in the classroom. Even the solution of technical problems and continuous improvement in the application of the products.
After 5 years I took my current position, as Administrative Commercial and Marketing Manager at national level. Where I am mainly in charge of issues such as cost and resource control for customer service, analysis and authorization of equipment investments for new customers, price list development, commercial cost analysis and proposal development for potential prospects.
Every day I continue to learn new things, but something that fortunately I learned in my short experience is to "follow up" my goals and write down each one of them. Whether it is daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly follow up, but always FOLLOW UP! I have an excellent work team but I have found that when we stop measuring actions and setting goals, we get lost along the way.
The mix between my soft skills, studies and short experience have led me to certain professional micro-victories:
- For the second consecutive year, I have generated a 4.8% increase in sales nationwide. By simply executing and following up on the annual price increase (inflation) of all our customers in Mexico. This has never happened before in the history of the company, as it was "tedious" to follow up with 1,200 customers scattered throughout the country. Together with the excellent work and born ability of my Commercial Director, we achieved a 22.1% sales increase in 2018.
- I managed to reduce customer service expenses by 14% since 2017. I arrived at this result with simple actions but a lot of follow-up: I measured expenses, verified how much was really necessary, and then topped up monthly budgets for each person providing customer service. In 2018 we managed to automate the process with the help of our IT department, with the creation of a Beta electronic portal.
- Right now I am measuring the frequency of customer visits, which is a fundamental part of our business, service. In August 2018 we had 57% compliance nationwide, in March 2019 we are at 79% compliance. And we will surely close 2019 with 90% compliance. This will increase the trust and loyalty of our current and future customers.
I believe that the success equation does exist and it is based mainly on Pro-activity + Knowledge, both in our hands.
I recognize the work of the Uni as an educational part of the development of the competencies that we students need for the beginning of our professional lives. I expect Celaya to be a competitive city at a national level, not only in industrialization and technology, but also in human talent.