Report from Grafinta S.A., Spain.

Without doubt we were not prepared for COVID-19. When all activities in Spain were restricted to only the essential ones, our company was – as were many other companies around the world – forced to re-invent itself to be able to keep working and survive the situation. It was not only the fact that we had to work from home. This was not really the problem. The main problem was all the limitations and restrictions associated with that, such as the impossibility of doing demonstrations or meeting the customer personally. Spain is a country where personal contact is extremely important in all kinds of relationships, including business relationships. We were not the only ones suffering due to this limitation; our customers were under lockdown too, so we soon discovered that this was an advantage for us: it was much easier to get in contact with them and have their attention. Due to this, the surveyors were always available by phone, with time to spare with us and open to what we had to propose. Taking this complete scenario into consideration, we focused on emulating, virtually, a normal

situation. For that purpose, we increased the number of on-line meetings with our customers, which actually turned out to be more efficient and less time consuming. We prepared webinars in different disciplines, and what was the most difficult challenge: we prepared live-on-line demonstrations, taking advantage of the new technologies. Using remote connection software, we allowed customer access to the programs installed on our data collectors and into some computers particularly prepared for that purpose. Having their hands on the software let our customers feel like they were using and handling the actual real programs. It was demonstrated that, thanks to this procedure, the customer felt like they had taken part in a real demo. The results of all our efforts were pretty good, taking into consideration the existing difficulties, and in fact we have increased our figures during the lockdown.

Gerardo José González

Grafinta S.A

Grafinta. Av. de Filipinas, 46, Primera Planta 28003 Madrid

WEB: https://grafinta.com/