Speaker: Karim Mena, Operations Manager, Caiman Products
Introduce yourself: Tell us about your organization and/or team.
Karim Mena: My name is Karim. I'm an operations manager at a Mexican company that works hand to hand with the Mayan fishermen communities in the Yucatan peninsula.
What led you to AppSheet?
Karim Mena: The fish that is caught in here has a great demand in the North American and Asian market. However, the Mayan fishermen for decades have faced numerous issues when trying to sell their fish- regarding legal, sales, administrative, food safety and sustainability aspects of the supply chain. And all of these issues are derived from communication challenges. This results in the fishermen having to sell their fish in the local market at a price that is usually below the cost.
What is the most useful and impactful app that you have deployed?
Karim Mena: Our mission as a company is to shorten the path between the Mayan fishermen and the end consumer- such as restaurant and small businesses in the U.S., so that these consumers can access these products at a lower price and the fishermen can sell their products at a greater value. And during the last year, we managed to achieve this by leveraging Google's AppSheet technology. We developed over 150 web and mobile apps combined synchronously to handle as a single system all of these communications, and all of the aspects of the supply chain, both in Mexico and in the U.S..
What benefits have you realized with AppSheet?
Karim Mena: This suite of digital tools allowed us to help 1500 fishermen to sell a combined of over 1000 metric tons in the U.S. and Asia during 2022. This was 10 times our average yearly operation in the years prior to this app. This communication system wouldn't have been possible without the speed, affordability and the low technical requirements that Google's AppSheet and all of its Google Workspace integrations provided.
What’s the future of AppSheet within the organization?
Karim Mena: Now we hope to bring this positive impact to even more Mayan communities in the years to come. We will continue to develop more apps that will get us further into the supply chain- and we'll make every process even more efficient and more automated, so that we can scale this to more people and with a greater value to both consumers and the fishermen.
