Four months after joining Insular Carrocera S.A., our Group’s company based in the Canary Islands, as manager, Inés López Martel grants us this interview for our corporate blog in which she addresses the company’s future challenges and goals. Among them, she mainly cites that of facing generational change. “A challenge that is exacerbated by the situation in a sector where new generations are reluctant to enter,” she specifies.
What has been your impression of the group since you joined as manager last March?
The impression has been very positive. I am very happy with the welcome from both my colleagues at Insucar and the team of managers and executives of the parent company, as well as, of course, the welcome from the ownership.
The onboarding process, along with Beatriz and Juan Luis, has been very easy.
Furthermore, from the beginning and for three months, I was able to count on the invaluable presence of Pedro Juan Boix, which allowed me to assimilate all the necessary information about the sector, thus enabling an orderly and cordial transition that has made my integration much easier.
Without a doubt, it is being very rewarding to work so closely with the different members of the management team and colleagues from the Group. Everything has been made very easy.
What aspects would you highlight as strengths and in which areas do you think we could improve?
In general, active listening is one of Grupo Castrosua’s most evident strengths. The ease and interest I have perceived in being able to express opinions, approaches, needs, and ideas that could be helpful in better management and achieving results is one of the Group’s most evident strengths. I believe that successful businesses are precisely those capable of managing this process well.
And regarding improvement, nothing to add at the moment. I do believe that we must continue the current business line and continue to strive not to neglect and maintain active listening towards the customer, towards the market, and towards our sector, which is fundamental. It is also important to listen to the evolution of other sectors to analyze their needs and focus the business and efforts to provide a professional and effective response to customers.
I say all this with the full humility of someone who has just landed in this business sector, but from my years of professional experience in other sectors, I can comment that, considering the historical moment we are coming from, let’s remember the terrible damage the pandemic inflicted on the business fabric and the very turbulent and globally unstable moment we are currently in, I believe that a great effort is being made both personally and professionally to mitigate the consequences of all this reality, which is worthy of admiration.
Do you feel the support of the parent company? Has the beginning been easy?
Yes, I feel very supported by the entire team in general and the management team in particular. With Beatriz, the CEO, for example, we have bi-weekly meetings where we are aligning the Group’s strategies with Insucar’s.
Certainly, this beginning has not been complicated for me at all. The difficult part will come later, when we move forward with everything. You see, I come from another sector of the industrial world, outside of automotive and bodywork, but I am not afraid of learning and I am experiencing a very exciting process.
Are the Group’s objectives present in your operational vision?
Without a doubt. It is true that we are a service workshop and not a factory, but we try to keep the Group’s vision of keeping the customer at the center of our attention intact to find the best ways to “pamper” them. In this sense, the alignment is total with our operational vision.
How do you think your previous experience will help you in your current role?
Previously, I held management and commercial director positions. Two different roles that, without a doubt, will allow me to adapt and put into practice everything I have learned in this new stage.
On the one hand, as manager of a small factory, I learned to work with a perspective of prevention and maintenance. This experience will allow me to apply procedures focused on prevention, that is, to focus more on the preventive and less on the corrective. In other words, to generate more planned work methodologies to be more structured and minimize problems before they arise.
I have also been a Commercial Director, a role in which I have always felt very comfortable. Furthermore, I understand the relationship with customers as the axis from which business, growth, and continuous improvement ideas often stem, so it is one of the tasks I am best able to undertake and which is closely linked to the Group’s service vocation. I firmly believe that the customer should always be the central focus of the organization, and we must listen to them actively and continuously. We must constantly seek what services we can offer to continue helping them in their growth and expansion.
In Insular Carrocera’s business model, how do you plan to balance the different functions and what will be your preferred areas of action?
I believe that a Manager must also be the company’s best salesperson. One of my tasks is to generate aligned procedures between the Group and Insucar. To do this, it is essential to have commercial skills and be able to motivate the rest of the staff about the need to carry out this process or any other. Moreover, I believe that all workers should have commercial skills, from the spare parts salesperson to the occupational risk prevention officer. It is an attitude that must be implicit in all company positions to a greater or lesser extent; we must strive to convince.
Business development is fundamental for the growth of any company. What strategies do you have in mind?
We must continue doing well what we already do well, that is, if something works, why change it? However, this approach implies continuous monitoring of methodology and continuous improvement of our processes. Our strength is the repair of vehicle bodywork and paint and the electromechanical maintenance of ramps, doors, and air conditioning. We are experts in these services, and this is recognized by our main clients.
We have specialized labor and top-quality materials that position us as a leading company. We must certainly not neglect this line of business or diminish our service capacity in it to continue providing the same care to our main clients.
However, we must broaden our view to identify possible new opportunities. In the Canary Islands, for example, we have a great dependence on air, sea, and land transport. We could explore a business branch by adapting our services to freight containers, refrigerated boxes, industrial vehicles, etc. We can serve new clients with these characteristics just as well as we currently serve the needs of buses, public transport vehicles, or discretionary transport.
And with 22 employees under your supervision, how do you plan the strategy?
Well, I have launched several initiatives always in collaboration and consensus with other areas of the company such as Human Resources and the Office of Development and Well-being. One of them, which has also been of great operational use to me and which I have brought from my previous experiences, is the creation of periodic interdepartmental meetings. Thus, once a week, we talk with the warehouse, workshop, and billing coordinators to share common information and seek collaborative improvements.
In addition, I am scheduling individual meetings with each of my colleagues, as I believe that by getting to know them a little better, I can help them enhance their strengths and reinforce their potential weaknesses or shortcomings through training or the development of more dynamic and understandable protocols. And all this will contribute to the overall efficiency of the company, without forgetting, of course, their personal problems, in which I will try to offer my greatest support.
Without the well-being of the workers, no strategy we design can be implemented. For this very reason, I want to know what they think of the group, what they would like to be trained in, where they would like to develop their careers, or what improvements they believe we need.
I would like to replicate this experience every year. It is another active listening action to improve the work environment and make them feel part of the business development. There is a great team at Insucar, and we must involve them and make them participants in the company’s day-to-day operations.
What are Insucar’s specific challenges and how do you plan to overcome them?
Right now, the most important challenge for Insucar is generational change. In the months I have been here, we have incorporated three professionals with little or no experience who face the challenge of integrating into a team where some workers have been in their positions for over 30 years. It is our duty to support them in this process while ensuring that our quality of service to the customer is not affected at any time.
This succession is fundamental for the company’s survival and represents a real challenge from a human resources perspective. A challenge that is exacerbated by the situation in a sector where new generations are reluctant to enter. Sector associations tell us that few young people are truly interested in seeking work in the sector and that, even after being trained, they are reluctant to enter the labor market.
For this reason, we are in contact with the managers of the Dual Vocational Training centers in the community and working on developing agreements that allow future professionals to have their first work experience with us. We want to attract talent to our workshop and make Insucar an attractive company where people want to develop their careers. A task that we know will not be easy, but which is essential for us and for the sector itself.
How do you envision Insucar’s growth?
We are already a benchmark within the passenger transport vehicle repair and maintenance sector. I would never want to lose sight of that, but rather look towards other road or even maritime transport sectors. I believe we can apply our good work to other types of vehicles and other sectors. We also want to envision being benchmarks in other transversal areas such as electric or hybrid vehicles. Maintenance, prevention, repairs… It is essential to focus on this sustainability area, very much in line with the Group’s development and expansion values, in which Insucar wants to contribute its bit and participate in future projects to the extent that the parent company requires our involvement.
Customer relationships are crucial for any business. What measures will you implement to strengthen relationships with existing customers and attract new ones?
Well, I’m going back to what I’ve said before, as I consider it fundamental. We must see the customer as another part of the organization. Any manager must always listen to each case with attention and analytical ability.
Among the actions we are already carrying out with our clients, I like to highlight the periodic meetings with them in which managers from both parties involved in the service offered are present. These meetings or visits should be used to report on the status of negotiations or the service, seek areas for improvement, and discover new solutions that we can provide from the company.
What are your specific goals as manager? Do you want to highlight any other issues?
To make Insucar a more proactive company in its possible development, modernization, and facing the possibility of new specializations within the sector. All of this would continue to enhance the value of Grupo Castrosua through a quality service offering from Insucar.
To grow, to position ourselves as reference workshops in new, unexplored sectors where I firmly believe we could provide a good service.
I would like to express special thanks to the ownership, Beatriz Castro and Juan Luis, for placing their trust in me to manage this project. I would also like to thank the entire Castrosua and Insucar team for their full collaboration and for making the integration and welcome process very easy for me.
What do you think of Inés’s vision of work and future for Insucar? We are attentive to your possible suggestions, which you can leave in the comments active on this post!
