Portobello Grupo

According to a survey conducted by Data Makers with Brazilian executives and released in September 2023, 73% of the country’s C-level professionals consider digital transformation extremely important for the future of business. Despite this, Brazil’s’ 2023 Digital Transformation Index (ITDBR), carried out by PWC Brazil and Fundação Dom Cabral, points to a low level of maturity of Brazilian companies in this matter, and the industrial sector is among those with the lowest average index. 

A leader in innovation and recognized as one of the world’s leading players in the manufacture, export and sale of ceramic tiles, Portobello Grupo, takes the lead by appointing leaders and approving a digital transformation plan that will make their processes more fluid and further boost the company’s existing innovation culture. 

In 2023, when we arrived at the Group, our mission was (and still is) to lead the company’s digital transformation at its three manufacturing units (Portobello, Portobello America and Pointer) and one retail unit (Portobello Shop). Our challenge is to ensure autonomy and alignment among all of the Group’s elements. 

Understanding digital transformation as a link with the Group’s DNA and as a change in mindset to make work more fluid, generates more sharing and collaboration, refine data, and, thus, add value to the end product. The first step was to approve a plan for this purpose, the Be Digital phase, which was a strong digital literacy kick-off with the employees of all Portobello business units. 

The engagement of the entire corporate ecosystem around this change—which is also cultural—is one of the pillars of a successful digital transformation. People must understand that the changes are developed while respecting everyone’s work and legacy. These changes help them focus on real issues that require greater human attention, leaving repetitive or low-complexity processes to machines. In this model, the employees have greater autonomy and dedicate their time to what truly matters. This practice unlocks their potential and makes everyone more productive and creative, leveraging company innovation. 

"According to their report on digital transformation, companies that have already incorporated this change perform 60% better in experimentation compared to 2% of the others."

By implementing digital solutions in its business model, adding new ways and platforms to operate, driving total, real-time engagement, and adopting a culture of data analysis to base decision-making, Portobello Grupo puts technology at the centre of business. It transforms the experience of its internal and external communities by delivering an end product that is even more assertive and with high added value.

In this context, Business Intelligence (BI) is another crucial aspect of the digital transformation journey. Industry experts agree that if one of the main purposes of digital transformation is to put the customer at the centre, making their experience with the brand better and reducing attrition, having a database on how this customer behaves and, more importantly, data that indicates a change in this consumer’s behavior, good BI allows the company to predict trends and prepare more quickly to meet them. It also ends up becoming a benchmark. With machine learning, there is also great potential to offer insights on how to meet business targets even faster.

Data collection and interpretation and the engagement of all employees with the digital transformation go hand-in-hand with the automation of processes when our other strong axle comes into play, Go Digital. How do I make the cloud journey happen? How do I create tools to guide digital products and services? How do I create service-oriented platforms? These are some of the questions we are seeking to answer with excellence. Automation also includes reducing the use of paper and cloud storage, which allows companies to develop automatic, encrypted processes with digital signatures, which are then filed in a digital environment, replacing physical data centres with a data lake: a repository of protected data with no size limit. It makes the process faster, with less infrastructure and equipment involved.

According to consulting firm McKinsey, digital companies post up to three times higher EBITDA and stand out in innovation. According to their report on digital transformation, companies that have already incorporated this change perform 60% better in experimentation compared to 2% of the others.

This makes it clear: the industry must make its processes more fluid, assertive, and less polluting – yes, digital transformation also contributes to a reduction in waste production and increases savings in energy and natural resources. Digital transformation is in line with Portobello Grupo’s values, which opened its first manufacturing plant outside Brazil in 2023, and it plans to take our swing, flexibility, and ingenuity to the world with the Brazilian way of doing things well.