An opportunity to think about the future

The largest DIY store operator in South America is the Chilean trade company Falabella with its Sodimac division. Sodimac is the only Latin American company to be included in the global top 20 DIY retailers; with sales, after conversion, of EUR 4.753 bn it reached twelfth place in the 2019 ranking.
And how has 2020 been? Of course, the review of the last year cannot exclude Covid-19. DIY International wanted to know from Sodimac: "What has Sodimac's experience been this year, with the pandemic and the new trends and concepts (including e-commerce) that you are seeing and developing?" The management gave a detailed reply:"Sodimac is Latin America's leading home improvement company, with operations in seven countries (Chile, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay), around 250 stores, a sales area of some 1 800 000 m² and e-commerce operations in its different markets. The pandemic brought with it strict restrictions on the company's operations in the different countries and drastic changes in consumption dynamics and capacity, with distribution centres operating at full capacity.
In consumer behaviour, we have seen an acceleration of digital channels that we had anticipated would occur over a period of five years. We initially focused on operational continuity, while protecting the health of our employees, customers and suppliers, so as to be able to provide customers with basic necessities and other general goods. We established a series of measures and strict protocols that go beyond official requirements and include additional safeguards for store operations and contactless e-commerce deliveries.
We also saw the pandemic as an opportunity to think about the future and look at how we could listen more closely to our customers in order to evolve our value proposition and accelerate a series of initiatives to integrate our physical stores and digital channels and enhance customer experience. For years now, we have been working to digitize our products and services, improve our logistics processes and strengthen interaction with consumers, and the pandemic became an opportunity to bring forward and reinforce these processes.
In our digital transformation, we are working in areas that include strategy and innovation; decision-making based on the customer buying journey; development of an agile culture; expansion of our technological capabilities; automation and the incorporation of artificial intelligence in our processes and decisions; business…